What we pay for Trump's egomania
Brad Reed for Common Dreams
Renovations made to the White House—including the
president’s luxury ballroom—are the biggest projected expenses, as the analysis
cites reporting from The Washington Post
last month to estimate that they will cost $927 million.
After the White House renovations,
the second-most expensive Trump vanity project highlighted in the report is the
estimated $400 million that will be required to provide security upgrades to
the luxury jet the president received as a gift from the Qatari government.
The report finds that taxpayers will also be on the hook for
$257 in renovations to the the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the
Performing Arts, which the president has threatened to tear down unless he is allowed to slap his
name on the side of the building.
The president’s “Triumphal Arch” monument is another
big-ticket item, as the report calculates it will cost $100 million to
construct. Trump’s infamously botched attempt to renovate the Lincoln Memorial
Reflecting Pool, meanwhile, is set to cost taxpayers $16 million.
The Democrats on the JEC also released a Trump Vanity Calculator, an online tool that shows the opportunity costs of the president’s assorted projects.
Among other things, the calculator shows that the $1.8
billion spent on the projects would be enough to pay for more than 607 million
school lunches, or 117,000 additional Head Start slots, or 246,000 Pell Grants.
Redirecting the spending on the Trump projects would also be
enough to restore funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—which were cut
as part of the Republican Party’s 2025 budget law—for over 429,000
families.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), ranking member of the JEC, said the report shows that Trump “has wasted taxpayer
dollars on projects that benefit himself instead of the American people.”
“Trump’s abuse of taxpayer dollars is especially egregious
at a time when families are grappling with high costs for rent, groceries,
childcare, and other necessities,” Hassan said. “President Trump admits that he
doesn’t think about the financial situation of Americans, and the American
people can see that; instead, he thinks about how he can use their money to
build gold-plated monuments to himself.”
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to cut
Americans’ energy costs in half while keeping the country out of foreign wars.
In February, Trump launched an illegal war against Iran
without any congressional authorization that has sent energy prices
skyrocketing, including record-high prices for diesel fuel.
Through it all, Trump has continued touting his vanity
projects, including the aforementioned ballroom and arch, even as polls show
that the high cost of living is American voters’ biggest concern.
With the midterm elections
just six weeks away, a survey released by CNN on Wednesday shows that just 24% of
Americans say that Trump has the right priorities as president, while
two-thirds say he has worsened economic conditions in the country.
