According to The Daily Beast’s Trump’s Vanity Projects Blamed for Mount Rushmore Neglect, the spending by Trump on “Washington D.C. beautification” and his statue projects are being cited as the reason why some of our national parks, such as Mt. Rushmore, do not get the badly needed maintenance money. But Trump adminsitraion officials insist that they are simply shifting money from one place to another based on how past presidents have done things.
Mt. Rushmore has a backlog of $57 million dollars of deferred maintenance at a time when there are over $24 billion dollars of long-delayed repairs throughout all of the U.S. park systems. Officials claim that Trump has redirected approximately $67 million of park entrance and recreational fees to high-profile Washington, D.C. projects (fountain, gold leaf on statues, etc.) near the Lincoln Memorial instead of to the parks themselves. They state that this action goes against the intent of laws designed to keep most of the fee income generated by the parks within those same parks.
Officials caution that if this trend continues, Mt. Rushmore will be losing millions of dollars per year that could have been used to repair roads, fix water systems, upgrade visitor center facilities and address safety concerns.
The administration states that it is researching new ways to generate additional funding sources for National Parks such as through endowment programs and greater utilization of park pass revenue. In addition, supporters say that prior administrations, specifically during the Stimulus era under President Barack Obama’s, spent significant amounts of money on their preferred priority areas such as infrastructure and public works. But some note that Trump’s actions represent yet another example of a president redirecting federal funding toward the types of projects that he believes best fit into his overall legacy.
