May 10, 2026, 4:01 a.m. ET
Republicans love to claim that they’re the party of fiscal responsibility. Yet when it comes to giving President Donald Trump everything he wants, they’re more than happy to shell out serious cash – and have the American people foot the bill.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Republicans rolled out a roughly $70 billion package proposal on May 4 that would use taxpayer dollars to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Tucked into the bill is a $1 billion appropriation for Trump’s ballroom – you know, the one taxpayers weren’t supposed to be responsible for.
“Not one penny is being used from the federal government,” Trump told reporters in November. This is only true by technicality – Republicans are stressing that the $1 billion won’t be used for construction, but rather “security adjustments and upgrades.”
The $400 million project – which, by the way, was only supposed to cost $200 million, and is being funded by major companies like Lockheed Martin and Palantir – was already inappropriately extravagant for a country whose national debt just surpassed its annual gross domestic product for the first time since World War II.
But to spend an additional $1 billion on a ballroom that no one actually wants when Republicans have simultaneously made cuts to social services and the president has plunged our country into a costly war with Iran is laughably offensive. Clearly, congressional Republican don’t care about saving money. They only care about doing the president’s bidding and harming people who rely on government services.
There are better ways to spend $1 billion
I understand that funding security feels pressing following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, but the needs of the American people should take precedence over a frivolous ballroom that only serves as a boost to the president’s ego.
When Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, they made $536 billion in cuts to Medicare through 2034. They cut federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by nearly $187 billion over the same time period. The National Park Service budget has been slashed by $1 billion.
As if these cuts weren’t enough, Trump’s 2027 budget proposal suggests cutting 10% of non-defense spending, including cuts to Housing and Urban Development programs, the Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health.
Agencies and programs that help keep our country running and ensure people are able to live dignified, healthy lives are on the chopping block – yet throwing more money at the president to build the ballroom of his dreams and a seemingly never-ending war with Iran is completely fine, according to the GOP.
Republicans are shamelessly doing whatever the president wants while also claiming to care about the economy, the national debt and the strain on everyday Americans. People can barely afford groceries and gas, yet their tax dollars are going to be spent on security for a wing of the White House that very few Americans will ever actually get to experience.
These politicians are making it clear that government spending was never a problem – the problem was spending money on people they deemed undeserving.
American voters don’t want any of this
The fact that this bill would also give billions to ICE raids is also abhorrent and, according to an Economist/YouGov poll from March, not aligned with what the American people want. Half of those surveyed said they “somewhat or strongly support” abolishing the agency altogether.
The ballroom is similarly unwanted. An April poll of U.S. adults from Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos found that 56% of respondents oppose the East Wing modernization project.
Yet Republican leaders don’t care, so long as they’re avoiding Trump’s wrath.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed this out on X, writing that “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Schumer is right – funding ballroom security when a quarter of the country is living paycheck to paycheck is so cartoonishly evil that Republicans look more like movie villains than measured politicians who care about government waste.
Democrats can use this to their advantage in the November elections by honing in on the fact that Republicans have not, in fact, been good for the economy, nor are they doing anything to curb government spending beyond harming the most vulnerable people in our country.
Conservatives are likely to try to pass this bill along party lines. Democrats need to bargain with more moderate members of the GOP to remind them that this, in fact, is not what their voters want.
Republicans only seem to care about the people they represent when they’re up for reelection. They clearly don’t care about Medicaid and Medicare users, SNAP recipients or anyone they can turn their nose up at. It was never about saving the American people money. It never was. It was just about harming people they deem as unworthy.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky: @sarapequeno.bsky.social
