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Lawmaker denounces "gold-plated" White House ballroom, says reconciliation favors enforcement funding over families
Summary
In recorded remarks, a lawmaker called a proposed White House ballroom a "gold plated billion dollar ballroom boondoggle," argued the reconciliation bill neglects family needs while adding funds for ICE and CBP, and cited $103 billion in unobligated agency balances.
A lawmaker in the transcript criticized a proposed White House ballroom as an extravagant use of federal funds, saying, "Gold plated billion dollar ballroom boondoggle." The speaker characterized the project as "harder to swallow" and compared it to "Louis the fourteenth" architecture that would turn the White House into an "auxiliary dwelling unit."
The speaker said that although "in reconciliation, we won a round," Republican lawmakers were attempting to insert new language that would advance former President Trump’s priorities, urging listeners to "stay tuned." The lawmaker linked rising costs facing American families—"the cost at the pump," fertilizer shortages and a "3.8% inflation rate"—to the war in Iran and said the reconciliation bill did not allocate funding to address health care, housing, education or infrastructure needs. "Not 1p in this reconciliation bill goes to address the challenges that American families are facing on health care, on housing, on education, or invest in American infrastructure," the speaker said.
On immigration enforcement, the lawmaker argued the package includes "a massive amount of money for ICE and CBP" and asserted that those agencies were already holding "$103,000,000,000 of unobligated funds." The speaker added that the "normal budget for those 2 agencies is about $20,000,000,000 a year," using those figures to argue that additional appropriations were unnecessary. These claims are presented as the speaker’s assertions and are attributed in the text; the transcript does not include verification or a response from agency officials.
The remarks closed with a political framing: "billionaires win and families lose," the speaker said, and called instead for a focus that would let "families thrive" and require the affluent to "pay their fair share." The transcript contains no recorded vote, motion, or management response on these points, and does not show follow-up debate or procedural action in this excerpt.
