In a move that has sent shockwaves through the gilded halls of Mar-a-Lago and caused a dramatic dip in the price of floor-length sequins, Senate Republicans have mercilessly axed a cool $1bn earmarked for President Trump's proposed White House ballroom. Yes, you read that correctly. The party of fiscal responsibility, the very same party that once declared war on the national debt with the fervour of a crusader attacking a salad, has turned its firehose of thriftiness not on corporate tax loopholes or defence contractors, but on a dance floor.
Let us pause to savour the sheer, crystalline absurdity of this. A ballroom. For a man who has spent his entire adult life measuring success by the square footage of his gilt-edged misery. The plans, leaked from the Department of Something or Other, were reportedly for a space so vast it could host a waltz between a golden toilet and a life-sized statue of Trump holding a replica of the Constitution with a tear in his eye. The budget included $500m for a chandelier shaped like his hair, $200m for a marble floor etched with his tweets, and $100m for a revolutionary air-conditioning system capable of blasting a constant breeze of "You're fired!" at anyone who dared to stand still.
But, alas, the grownups in the room have intervened. Led by Senator John B. Tightwad (R-Meanvillle), the rebels issued a stern statement declaring that "a nation with crumbling infrastructure, a healthcare system held together with duct tape and prayers, and an education system that teaches children that reality TV is a career path cannot afford a ballroom." A noble sentiment, to be sure. But one cannot help but wonder: why now? Why on a ballroom and not, say, on the thousand other fiscal madnesses that have bled this nation dry, from military parades that look like Soviet grocery store queues to trade wars that have turned American farmers into amateur economists and professional cryers?
The answer, my dear reader, lies in the politics of symbolic cruelty. The ballroom is not a budget item; it is a punchline. It is a giant, shiny target that says, "I am so out of touch that I need a ballroom to feel big." And the Senate Republicans, masters of the politically expedient temper tantrum, saw an opportunity. They could posture as the grownups, the fiscal hawks, the ones who say "no" to the big, bad president. But let us not mistake their stinginess for principle. These are the same people who will vote for a tax cut for their billionaire donors tomorrow and declare the deficit a myth. This is not fiscal responsibility. This is political theatre, a pie in the face thrown at a man who has made a career out of eating pies he doesn't need.
And what of the president? His reaction has been, predictably, volcanic. In a series of early morning tweets that read like the diary of a petulant teenager discovering his allowance has been cut, he decried the "horrible, weak, pathetic people" who would deny him a ballroom. He threatened to veto the budget, to shut down the government, to call in the national guard to guard his dancing shoes. But the damage is done. The ballroom dream is dead, and with it, perhaps, a tiny sliver of the grand delusion that this presidency was about making things great again. Turns out, it was about making one thing great: the president's ability to twirl in a tuxedo.
So we dance on the grave of this absurd project. We sip our gin and toast the hypocrisy of politicians who have finally found something to cut. But we do not clap. Because while they were busy cancelling the ball, the clock was ticking on the nation's real troubles. The students are still borrowing books, the hospitals are still triaging patients, and the bridges are still groaning under the weight of a country that would rather spend a billion on a ballroom than on a single, solitary soul. And that, dear reader, is not satire. It's just the news.
