Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Monday detailed his caucus’s strategy to block a Republican measure centered on White House security funding.
Schumer outlined concerns about Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) effort to secure $1 billion in federal funding for White House security, including relating to President Donald Trump’s new ballroom project. Schumer argued in a letter that the funding, proposed in the judiciary committee’s reconciliation bill, is unnecessary. Democrats will use legislative maneuvers to block the provision from passing the Senate, he warned.
“Democrats will fight the Republicans’ reconciliation bill with every tool we have,” Schumer wrote. “We will bring Byrd Rule challenges. We will offer floor amendments. And we will force vote after vote to make the choice unmistakable: will Republicans vote to help American families — to lower costs, to restore savage health care cuts, to roll back cost-spiking tariffs — or will they vote to fund Trump’s gaudy ballroom?” he wrote.
The Byrd Rule allows lawmakers to raise a point of order to the Senate parliamentarian to challenge any provision of a reconciliation bill they deem “extraneous.” The rule aims to prevent lawmakers from hijacking the reconciliation process to pass partisan provisions that are not budgetary in nature and would likely face difficulty passing under normal procedures.
Democrats believe Grassley’s security funding measure to be such an extraneous provision. The reconciliation bill text does not directly fund ballroom construction, but it allocates the funding to Secret Service-related elements of the facility.
Trump has said that the ballroom itself will be privately funded and cost around $400 million. But in the wake of an attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where a gunman faces charges of attempting to assassinate Trump, Republicans have sought to grant the project federal funding. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is among Trump allies looking to propel the project, introducing a bill that would allocate $400 million in federal funding to the ballroom after Trump argued the WHCA incident proved the White House needs its own secure venue to hold high-profile events.
Democrats have opposed the new ballroom, framing it as a costly distraction from more pressing issues. Democrats have sought to paint Grassley’s latest White House security funding measure as a move to “hand Trump a billion dollars to build a ballroom.”
“The Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to answer this moment with a deficit-busting, party-line bill that pours billions more taxpayer dollars into a rogue ICE operation and a billion-dollar ballroom, while doing nothing to end the illegal war in Iran or ease the Republican affordability crisis bearing down on working families,” Schumer wrote in his letter to Senate Democrats. “At a time when Americans can’t make ends meet, Republicans say ‘Let them eat cake’ — and then hand Trump a billion dollars to build a ballroom to serve it in.”
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Republicans have pushed back against accusations that the judiciary committee’s measure is funding ballroom construction.
Grassley’s provision “provides funds for Secret Service enhancements, including, but not limited to security enhancements related to the East Wing Modernization Project,” a spokesperson for the Senate judiciary committee previously told the Washington Examiner. “This necessary funding will ensure all presidents, their families, and their staffs are adequately protected.”