The price tag keeps ratcheting higher on one of President Donald Trump’s favorite perks of being president. Since returning to office last year, he has spent a major chunk of his time focused on renovating, remodeling and relandscaping the Executive Mansion and the broader White House grounds. The Washington Post now reports that the potential price tag is likely to exceed $900 million — with the lion’s share of that coming from taxpayer funding.
That’s a much higher number than the Trump administration has previously claimed and far exceeds the meager amounts Congress has historically set aside for White House maintenance. It’s also a figure that seems likely to grow as the president continues tacking on new projects and nitpicking over the details of those already underway. Through shady donations from wealthy funders and corporations, questionable accounting practices and an entirely misplaced sense of focus, Trump is well on his way to converting the people’s house into his own billion-dollar dream home.
Trump is well on his way to converting the people’s house into his own billion-dollar dream home.
The planned ballroom being built over the demolished East Wing is the most visible and expensive item on the list of “modernization projects,” as the White House is calling the renovation efforts. Also underway are a helipad on the White House South Lawn, a pair of updated fountains across the street at Lafayette Park, a new visitor screening center and a subterranean bunker. The underground military facility has provided the basis for the administration to claim in court filings that the ballroom is necessary for national security purposes. (A federal appeals court disagreed, issuing a ruling last week further blocking work on the above-ground portion of the project.)
All told, the Post identified $875 million in funds for Trump’s projects that were cobbled together from several sources into a relatively obscure “White House Repair and Restoration” account that typically only holds a few million dollars each year:
To assemble the funding in that account, the White House budget office authorized a series of transfers from the U.S. Secret Service and the White House Military Office totaling $500 million, planning and budget documents indicate, while an additional $305 million came from private donations. The documents reviewed by The Post show another $70 million directed to that account but do not identify the source.
The Post has been doing yeoman’s work tracking the differences between the president’s claims and the actual cost cited in contracts and other planning documents. Among the many scoops Post reporters have produced include a cost estimate from the contractor working on the ballroom totaling $600 million. That more than exceeds the $200 million original estimate for the work and the $400 million the administration has said private donors have provided. Confusingly, that price tag it still less than the $305 million in private money that has reportedly been placed into the “Repair and Restoration” account. Exactly who has donated to the ballroom project and in what amount remains a closely held secret.
(MS NOW has not had the chance to review many of the primary sources the Post’s reporting has drawn upon.)
Importantly, there has been little that could be described as urgent or vital about these big-ticket renovations. Trump’s changes are largely cosmetic when compared to the last major overhauls of the White House. The Truman administration was forced to essentially abandon the Executive Mansion for years as the structure was found to be in danger of collapsing. The yearslong gut renovation required only around $80 million in today’s dollars to accomplish. The Obama White House spent around $375 million over four years to provide crucial updates to the electrical system and other structural repairs.
One could at least argue that the helipad solves a problem, albeit an absurdly niche one. The newest helicopters slated to serve as Marine One have exhaust vents that aim heat downward. The helipad would prevent those vents from scorching the grass below — and boy, does Trump care a lot about grass. According to a tally from The Associated Press earlier this month, “He’s mentioned grass in at least 45 public events or interviews over the past 18 months — or at least once every 12 days.” (That figure doesn’t include his posts on Truth Social about lawn work.)
Lockheed Martin, which owns the company that produces the helicopters, has said it would finance $5 million of the helipad project. However, whether that will cover the total cost comes with a question mark, especially after Trump suddenly decided that things were all wrong. After weeks of around-the-clock work, the president last week reportedly “expressed a desire for a landing pad that sits level with the horizon, prompting contractors to disassemble their work and consider whether to start by changing the lawn itself.”
The ridiculous nature of these supposed upgrades helps belie how much apparent cooking the books has been required to pay for them.
The ridiculous nature of these supposed upgrades helps belie how much apparent cooking the books has been required to pay for them. The biggest chunk of public money used to finance these projects was meant to pay for Secret Service training and recruitment. Even if, as the White House argues, the money shifted over to these other works was done in the name of boosting security, that’s still nowhere near its intended purpose. Instead, that money was only shifted over after lawmakers refused to pass legislation that would have appropriated hundreds of millions in funding to the new East Wing’s construction.
What we see, then, is a White House that feels comfortable pirating funds that Congress has otherwise appropriated to pay for unnecessary vanity projects. Without further pushback from lawmakers and the courts, there’s little limit to how much more could be siphoned off to satisfy Trump’s obsession. These rushed and unauthorized works have already vastly outstripped their initial estimates, and given this administration’s love of no-bid contracts, they are being done without a modicum of care for anything but speed.
It’s a mismanagement of funds at best, outright corruption at worst and ought to prompt legislators to place stricter limits on how and when public funds are rerouted.
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