A cohort of Senate Republicans wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom after a third assassination attempt was foiled over the weekend.
Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., plan to introduce legislation that would unlock $400 million for the administration to construct the ballroom.
It would effectively see Congress cover the tab for Trump’s ballroom, which initially was projected to cost around $100 million but has ballooned to $400 million in the months since it was announced. Their bill comes on the heels of a new tidal wave of support from the GOP for the ballroom, which lawmakers previously had kept at arm’s length after Trump announced plans last year to build it where the East Wing once stood.
But the new push was spurred when a gunman on Saturday attempted to enter the packed Washington Hilton ballroom, where Trump, Vice President JD Vance and his Cabinet, along with hundreds of journalists, were attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
“If this is not a wake-up call, well, it should be,” Graham said.
Their bill would use customs fees on imports to pay for the ballroom, which Trump and the White House previously touted as being entirely funded by outside donations.
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Whether Senate Democrats support the plan is an open question.
“I don’t understand why it is that every idea, it doesn’t matter if on its face is good or not, Democrats choose to oppose it if it has anything to do with Donald Trump,” Britt said.
Some Democrats are calling for more information on what exactly happened on Saturday.
“The notion of, ‘Oh, this thing happened at Hilton, so let’s just throw millions of dollars at a ballroom,’ I mean, that strikes me as odd,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said. “Let’s get to the bottom of what happened and what the solutions are.”
Others argue that the White House should have come to Congress first before moving ahead with the demolition of the East Wing and construction of the ballroom.
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“Do we need a ballroom? Well, that, we can discuss that, what it looks like and all of that,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., told NewsNation. “This isn’t about Donald Trump. It is really about safety. It’s really about safety. I think it should have gone through the right congressional process.”
The legislation would effectively kill two birds with one stone for the administration — provide both congressional approval to blast through an injunction that has stymied construction, and alleviate criticisms of influence peddling for donors to the lavish, 90,000-square-foot gilded ballroom.
Graham wants Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to expedite the bill and swiftly get it onto the Senate floor for a vote but is open to throwing the legislation into the forthcoming budget reconciliation package to fund immigration operations for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
Thune said that the Senate is currently focused on funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but noted that he agreed with the argument that Trump and future presidents need a secure facility for events readily available at the White House.
“And, obviously, there’s a vested stake, I think, in our government in ensuring that we protect our leaders, like the president, and the vice president, his Cabinet, all of them are targeted the other night,” Thune said.
