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Republicans will find it very difficult to make good on their vows to fast-track President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, even after Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner attack targeting him and his administration.
Democrats are not convinced that the $400 million ballroom is needed, seeing little connection between the gunman who targeted the Washington Hilton and Trump’s long-sought venue, which is too small to host the correspondents’ dinner. Republicans are offering competing proposals to approve the ballroom, showing they aren’t on the same page.
And GOP leaders are reluctant to add language approving the ballroom — which a federal judge recently ruled must get Congress’ signoff — to a forthcoming party-line immigration funding plan that can skirt a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., said they would introduce a bill dedicating $400 million in customs fees to construction of the ballroom. Graham said he’s leaning on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “expedite” the bill and that he wants it to be a standalone vote.
“I want to get it done yesterday, and I’d like to do it as a freestanding bill with an offset,” Graham said on Monday night. He added that he’s already started selling the bill to Democrats, some of whom are “rattled” by the attack.
But he has a lot of work to do. At the moment, Senate Democrats say the ballroom authorization lacks sufficient support in their caucus to get 60 votes. Moderate Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., decried political violence but said “I don’t see the connection” between the attack and the new ballroom.
“This ballroom has nothing to do with what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told Semafor. He said that other than Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., he didn’t know of any Democrats who support the ballroom: “It’s pretextual. It’s the Trump adoration society.”
“The only way this would actually be a response to security would be if the president was going to say, ‘Any of my meetings that are a big size will be in this secure location. I won’t go out.’ It’s a totally unrealistic, bootstrapping argument,” Welch said.
Graham actually said he would advise against doing more events like the correspondents’ dinner in hotels like the Hilton, saying Congress would “be idiots” to do so. But some Republicans also concede the ballroom might not be able to host every large presidential event.
“Everyone is appalled at the incident this weekend. And it does speak to a lack of security. But I’m not sure all of these events are going to be moved to the White House. And I know there’s certain historical preservation groups that still have concerns,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told Semafor.
Trump’s attempt to build the ballroom unilaterally is tied up in court, with an appeal pending to the finding that Congress needs to approve it.
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Other Republicans are contemplating going their own way to push for ballroom funding, which has its own pitfalls.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has a bill authorizing the project, said Republicans could add a nominal amount of spending to a party-line budget reconciliation bill. That’s currently not in the plans; the party just advanced its version of that bill, with the narrow aim of providing roughly $75 billion in immigration enforcement funding.
And Graham might not get a vote from Paul, whose brand of libertarianism can clash with Graham’s hawkishness, for a separate bill: “It can be done in reconciliation. I’m not for spending $500 million doing it. I’m always conservative. And he already has the money,” Paul said.
Graham said if people in his own party oppose his bill, they can “vote no.”
“I want to vote. I want to see: Where is America on this? I bet you 90% of the people would love to have a better facility than the Hilton Hotel to make sure this crap never happens again,” Graham said.
Thune said it’s not clear whether they could add ballroom money to the party line bill at this stage, even as he acknowledged the “inadequate” security facilities on the White House campus and suggested Republicans would “see what’s achievable.”
Even if Thune tried, House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said the plan for the current reconciliation bill is “pretty airtight” on only funding immigration enforcement.
Although Graham said he wants to move very quickly on his legislation, Congress also has a full plate right now: The Iran war is still unresolved, key foreign surveillance powers run out this week, and the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down.
Room for Disagreement
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he’d currently oppose authorizing the project because the ballroom would be too small to accommodate large events like Saturday’s dinner. But he’d be open to talking more about it on a bipartisan basis.
“That’s a totally different story. And the fact that — right or wrong — that he’s torn down half of the White House structure already puts a burden on us to come up with the right space done the right way,” Durbin said.
Burgess’s view
You may have noticed Congress isn’t great at moving quickly, and the ballroom is no different, despite the efforts of the president and his allies to galvanize political support for it in the wake of the attack. It’ll take a lot more effort to get Democrats on board — and plenty of effort still to do it without them.
Still, Trump really wants the project, and Graham can be relentless in the halls of the Capitol. I wouldn’t expect this fight to go away right away, either.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.