“The votes are not there,” one key GOP senator reluctantly conceded. “We will lose.”
As Republicans walk away from their own plan to spend tax dollars on the ballroom, remember:
This has nothing to do with procedural hurdles and everything to do with the fact that too many GOP senators don’t want to vote for this wildly unpopular idea in an election year.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-05-20T21:31:58.906Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/republicans-start-walking-away-from-own-plan-to-spend-tax-dollars-on-trumps-ballroom
On Tuesday, as part of a weird press conference, Donald Trump again endorsed a Republican effort to secure public funding for “security” measures related to his ballroom vanity project. A day later, a reporter asked him whether he was concerned about Congress giving up on the proposal. He said he was not.
Hours later, it became clear that he should have been. The New York Times reported:
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said [the taxpayer money] for President Trump’s White House ballroom project has been stripped from a filibuster-proof budget bill because there were not sufficient Republican votes to support the funding. “We’re back to square one,” he said, adding: “The votes are not there. We will lose.”
The entire trajectory of this fight has been bizarre for a while.
For months, Republican officials in the White House and on Capitol Hill assured the public that the ballroom project would be privately financed. Two weeks ago, however, the party’s position changed unexpectedly, and GOP senators unveiled a package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which included a $1 billion provision that, if approved, would spend taxpayer dollars related to the ballroom.
The proposal was expected advance through the budget reconciliation process, which meant Republicans could circumvent the 60-vote threshold and pass the bill with a simple majority.
Roadblocks quickly emerged. In order for a reconciliation bill to advance, it has to meet a series of stringent conditions, which in this case proved to be a problem: The Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian informed GOP leaders over the weekend that the money for the ballroom would either have to be changed significantly or removed altogether....
To be sure, there’s still some fluidity to the process. But as things stand, according to a key member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Republicans are walking away from their own unpopular idea. Watch this space.
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