WASHINGTON — Republican senators, normally eager to back President Donald Trump’s agenda with little questioning, are uneasy about allocating a billion dollars for Trump’s new ballroom at the White House.
Shelling out $1 billion for a gilded event space at a time when voters are furious about the economy strikes some as bad politics. Trump previously said the ballroom would be funded by private donations.
Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) said he supports the ballroom project, but the public cost is a bit much.
“I can’t get my hands around the fact that a lot of people are really hurting, and they see a billion dollars, and a billion dollars is an awful, awful, awful lot of money,” Justice told HuffPost. “To think that it’s going to cost a billion dollars — I mean, that’s a thousand millions.”
As part of a bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Senate Republicans included $1 billion for the Secret Service “for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project” — a euphemism for Trump’s ballroom project, which began with him tearing down the historic East Wing of the White House.
