President Donald Trump wants Congress to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars to secure his new East Wing ballroom. Several GOP lawmakers aren’t interested.
As Republicans race the clock to approve a reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement before President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline, a growing number of GOP lawmakers are raising concerns about a provision that asks Republicans to sign-off on $1 billion for security enhancements — including $220 million for the East Wing ballroom.
The line-item took Republicans by surprise after Trump insisted that the ballroom — which will take the space of the now torn-down East Wing — would be paid for exclusively by private donations.
Now, plenty of GOP lawmakers — from vulnerable Republicans to hardline conservatives — are expressing skepticism over the provision. Some don’t like the price tag, some don’t like that it’s being included in the fragile reconciliation package, and many just don’t like the optics of approving a ballroom when gas prices and inflation are on the rise.
“It’s not one of the top 30 things I care about around here,” one House Republican, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told MS NOW. “Members are really irritated, they don’t understand why this needs to be a priority. Particularly swing-seat members just think that the White House doesn’t really get it. They don’t understand what a big problem this is.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retiring moderate, also told MS NOW there are “a lot of concerns in our conference.”
“The president offered up a good plan — that donors are gonna pay for this,” he said. “I think the voters, the citizens, were acceptable of that. But then to see a billion dollar fee come out of this that we’re gonna have to pay for. I think we should stick to the plan. This should be a donor-driven project, that’s what the president said, and I think that’s what voters want.”
On the Senate side, Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he supported allowing the White House to build the ballroom with private funds. “And that’s still my preference,” he said.
And Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine — the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans up for reelection in November — suggested she wasn’t in favor of Congress approving money to secure the ballroom.
“President Trump indicated that the ballroom was going to be built with private donations,” Collins said. “I think that’s the commitment that should be kept.”
The mounting opposition is taking shape a week after the Senate released sections of their reconciliation bill, including $38.2 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection, and, in an unexpected twist, $1 billion for “security adjustments and upgrades.”
Of that pot of security funds, $220 million would be used for the ballroom, including bulletproof glass and drone detection technologies, according to a breakdown obtained by MS NOW.
Republicans and the White House have argued the ballroom is necessary to keep Trump safe, especially after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In a letter to congressional leaders last week that was obtained by MS NOW, U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Secret Service “will use this critical funding to address urgent needs in response to the unprecedented increase in threats against the President and other public officials.”
Curran met with Senate Republicans at their weekly lunch on Tuesday and presented a breakdown of the $1 billion, with $220 million going toward the ballroom, a source familiar with the matter told MS NOW. On Wednesday, Mullin is scheduled to meet with the Republican Governance Group, composed of more moderate House Republicans.
Even after learning the breakdown of the funds, some GOP lawmakers weren’t swayed.
“It’s still $220 million dollars,” one swing-district House Republican told MS NOW.
The firm — and increasing — opposition is raising questions about whether the ballroom funding will be stripped from the final bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has spoken in favor of the money, and insisted on Wednesday that “most of our members are prepared to support the funding for the secret service that’s needed to enable them to do their jobs.”
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But when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was asked about the line-item, he was more coy.
“A lot of people said things and made judgments about it before they saw the breakdown of the cost. And I think everybody’s processing that right now,” Johnson told MS NOW. “And as I said this morning, the Senate has the pen, so we’re not going to prejudge anything until we see what the final product is.”
That verdict could be in soon.
On Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — whose panel has jurisdiction over the ballroom funding — said he predicts Congress will know whether the provision is in-or-out by the week’s end.
“That’s what’s going on right now, so you’ll have to ask me that question at the end of this week,” he said.
The question of whether or not to fund the ballroom’s security apparatus is a particularly thorny matter for vulnerable Republicans, who are caught between voting for the money and prompting affordability attacks from Democrats, or opposing the funding and drawing Trump’s ire.
Democrats are already sharpening their attacks. In remarks on the floor this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans are proposing a reconciliation bill “that would force Americans to pay for Trump’s billion-dollar-ballroom and tens of billions of dollars more for Trump’s masked agents while including zero — zero — dollars to bring down Americans’ costs.”
“Ask Americans how many people want to see a billion dollars for a ballroom and no money to help reduce the cost of food, the cost of electricity, the cost of housing, the cost of childcare,” he added. “When will Republicans take the hint?”
Vulnerable Republicans, for their part, are treading carefully, making it clear that they want the provision out.
“The way it’s currently written, I’m not supporting it,” the previously-quoted swing-district House Republican told MS NOW. “They said it was going to be privately funded, so this is a retreat on that. Second, there are many, many other things that we should be spending a billion dollars on.”
Another purple-district House Republican said “we’re hearing from a lot of folks who are frustrated with it.”
“Of all the things we should be voting on, this is the last thing we should be voting on,” this Republican added. “It should come out.”
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.