Independence Arch, or "Arc de Trump," plans include taxpayer funds

Washington — American taxpayers volition assistance money the operation of President Trump's planned triumphal arch successful Arlington, Virginia, according to the spending program for the National Endowment for the Humanities released by the medication this week. 

According to the endowment's spending plan approved by the Office of Management and Budget successful September, $2 cardinal successful peculiar inaugural funds and $13 cardinal successful matching funds "are reserved for the arch." NEH, an autarkic national agency, often funds projects done a operation of national dollars and matching backstage contributions. NOTUS archetypal reported that payer funds are expected to beryllium utilized for the arch. 

It's not yet wide what backstage funds whitethorn spell toward Independence Arch, though the president antecedently indicated that leftover backstage funds from his White House ballroom summation could beryllium used. The White House has not yet disclosed an estimated outgo for the arch. The president has said the monolithic ballroom he's gathering astatine the White House astatine a outgo of $300 cardinal to $400 cardinal volition beryllium funded wholly by private donors, successful opposition to the arch.

OMB and NEH did not instantly respond to a petition for comment. 

The president says the arch volition commemorate the nation's 250th anniversary, and he's antecedently displayed a exemplary successful the Oval Office. The renderings and exemplary amusement an arc resembling France's Arc de Triomphe sitting crossed from the Lincoln Memorial connected the Virginia broadside of the Potomac River by Washington, D.C. The president said helium wants the arch to beryllium the "biggest 1 of all" successful the world, adjacent though the projected tract is situated on a formation way for adjacent Reagan National Airport. 

"It's the lone metropolis successful the satellite that's of large value that doesn't person a triumphal arc," the president said successful December. "... And this 1 is going to stroke them each away. The 1 that radical cognize mostly is the Arc de Triomphe successful Paris, France. And we're going to apical it by I deliberation a lot."

When CBS News' Ed O'Keefe asked the president successful October whom the arch is for, helium responded, "Me. Going to beryllium beautiful." After the president said the arch was for him, immoderate nicknamed it the "Arc de Trump."