With a new Republican plan in Congress calling for $1 billion in funding for security improvements tied to the White House ballroom project, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood says he doesn't want any public money going to support the ongoing project.
The ballroom funding is part of about $70 billion proposal to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] and Customs and Border Protection [CBP] for the rest of Trump’s presidency.
“I’m not supportive of public funding,” said LaHood. “I think the president said he’s going to raise this money privately. We’ve got to make sure that we have proper transparency on that raising the money. But I do not support public funding of taxpayer money doing the ballroom.”
Trump had said previously it would be paid for with private donations. LaHood wants that to remain the case, with complete accountability.
“We need a full listing of who’s giving money and how it’s going to [be spent],” he said. “We do that when we do presidential inaugurations, for instance, either a Democrat or Republican. That is funded privately and we know where every nickel and dollar comes from for our presidential inauguration. We should have that same process of full transparency for the ballroom.”
Advocates for putting public dollars toward the ballroom have pointed to the shooting at last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton in touting the need to hold those types of events on White House grounds for security purposes.
“That’s not something I’m supportive of, but what I am supportive of is full transparency and openness and shedding light on who the donors are, how much they’re giving, and what that money is going to in terms of the ballroom,” LaHood reiterated.
Redistricting
LaHood said he would like to see implementation of a “fair maps” system for determining congressional district boundaries, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision related to key portions of the Voting Rights Act.
“I think all this gerrymandering is a race to the bottom; it’s terrible for our democracy. You now have politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians,” said LaHood.
The Supreme Court’s ruling prohibits using race to draw legislative district maps, leading Illinois Democrats to pause their push for a redistricting amendment to the state constitution.
While he stopped short of saying whether he believes state lawmakers should pursue efforts to redraw maps here, LaHood did advocate for using an independent commission to establish the district boudaries.
“Illinois is ‘Example No. 1,’ it’s a poster child for how we should not gerrymander,” he said. “I would like to see a fair map initiative put in place, and a reversal of the gerrymandering that we’ve seen in Illinois, which makes districts very blue and very red, and we split up counties.
“You see that in Peoria and Tazewell. Peoria should be in one congressional district, Peoria County. Tazewell County should be in one congressional district. That’s not what we have now, and so it leads to confusion and it leads to, again, an eroding of our democratic principles.”
