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President Donald Trump frequently boasts that his projects are ahead of schedule, under budget and saving taxpayers money.
But following the money invariably leads back to the taxpayers.
Not just donors.
Trump has long promised the massive ballroom he plans to add to the White House would be paid for by him and with private donations.
“This is all my money and donors’ money,” he told reporters Tuesday in front of the construction site as hammers and machinery banged in the background.
But while Trump views the ballroom as his and his donors’ “gift” to the country, he’ll need taxpayers to chip in too. Trump is looking for a $220 million check from Senate Republicans, who would have to pass it on a party-line vote — which has already run into some challenges. That’s larger than the originally advertised total cost of the project, whose size, scope and price tag have ballooned.
Trump said requests from the military and the Secret Service made the project larger and more expensive.
The US Treasury.
In exchange for the president dropping a lawsuit against his own government, the Trump administration is expected to allot nearly $1.8 billion from an effectively unlimited US government “Judgment Fund” for people who say they were targeted by the Justice Department.
Vice President JD Vance refused Tuesday to rule out the idea that rioters convicted of attacking police officers on January 6, 2021, could be compensated.
Critics of the fund, he said, should consider that there are many different “pots of money” and that the administration could both help everyday Americans and make amends to people he said were “mistreated by the last administration.”
“The question all of us ask every single day is, ‘How do we make our fellow citizens more prosperous?’” Vance said.
Congress could theoretically step in to put guardrails on payments from a fund that it created in the 1950s to settle lawsuits, but it’s not clear it will.
Previous presidents have used the fund in ways that angered Trump. The Obama administration, for instance, tapped the Judgment Fund to settle a decades-old dispute with Iran over a failed arms deal and to kickstart the deal by which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear aspirations.
Trump later withdrew the US from that deal, and now he’s engaged in an undeclared war on Iran. His administration has not said how much that war — which is in ceasefire mode — will cost, although Trump has mused about taking Iran’s oil and making “plenty of money.”
One Pentagon official recently said $29 billion in taxpayer dollars had already been spent, but that seems likely to be far lower than the war’s ultimate cost.
While there are real questions about paying for the war, Congress has already given the president $257 million to rehab the Kennedy Center, which in Trump’s real estate developer language translates into having the project “fully financed,” even though taxpayers are on the hook.
He used that same term, “fully financed,” last October during an event he hosted for wealthy donors and corporations that chipped in for the ballroom.
The White House released a list of donors, many of them tech companies with business before the government, but has not detailed their donations. At least one donation may have been made under duress. Trump settled a lawsuit with YouTube over suspension of his account years ago in exchange for a $22 million donation to the ballroom project, according to court documents filed last year.
Back when he was hosting donors at the White House, Trump predicted there would be money left he could use to construct a triumphal arch in a traffic circle in front of Arlington National Cemetery.
But it turns out that taxpayers will be paying for some portion of the arch. Democrats have noted that millions in taxpayer funds Congress appropriated to the National Endowment for the Humanities could go to the arch.
The administration has also looked to the humanities budget to pay for Trump’s planned “Garden of Heroes.” The garden, which is meant to feature 250 life-size statues of notable Americans, is, like the arch, meant to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The government has already earmarked around $74 million for the garden, according to a recent CNN report, and is also looking for additional donations both for the garden and for Trump’s controversial vision of turning a local DC golf course into a championship links.
Trump’s plan to beautify the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument by painting it blue is also running into issues. Trump originally bragged the work could be done for less than $2 million, but a CNN review of federal contracting data shows that more than $13 million has been allocated for the project.
The Air Force is preparing to unveil a new-to-Trump Air Force One that was donated by Qatar. The US government’s acceptance of the $400 million plane raised ethical questions and also flirted with violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
But Trump defended getting a free gift, although accepting the plane ended up being quite expensive.
CNN reported funds to modify the plane — hundreds of millions of dollars — were diverted from Sentinel, a behind-schedule nuclear weapons modernization effort. The plane is meant only to be a bridge to the next iteration of Air Force One, which is also behind schedule. A new fleet of planes to transport the president is expected after Trump leaves office.
Taxpayers paid to upgrade the jet, but Trump heaped thanks on Qatar.
“I could be a stupid person (and) say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was — I thought it was a great gesture,” Trump said last May.
That wasn’t the last time Trump raised the question of intelligence when pressed about money. This month he called a reporter “dumb” when she asked about the doubling cost of the ballroom, despite Trump’s repeated claims that it is on schedule and under budget.
“I doubled the size of it, you dumb person,” he said on the White House lawn.