During a town hall with CEOs on Tuesday, President Donald Trump took a swipe at former President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill ― aka the American Recovery Act ― by claiming that the 2009 law was a trillion-dollar dud.
“Nobody ever saw anything being built,” Trump said. “I mean, to this day, I haven’t heard of anything that’s been built. They used most of that money on social programs, and we want this to be on infrastructure.”
This is a false portrayal of the Recovery Act ― not just because its cost came in under $1 trillion, a third of which were in tax cuts, but because Trump has almost certainly seen plenty of things built with stimulus money. If he hasn’t, he doesn’t need to travel far. Projects built with stimulus funds, and businesses that benefited from the law’s passage, surround his current home and the properties he likes to frequent on the weekends.
Take, for example, Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., the very street where Trump now lives and where the Trump International Hotel stands. There was nearly $20 million spent on “streetscape construction” to improve 6.5 lane miles of Pennsylvania Ave., according to funds tracked in ProPublica’s database.
Or consider the site of Trump’s pre-inaugural event: a concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which was rehabilitated with stimulus money.
To get to the White House, the Trump International Hotel, or the Lincoln Memorial, one might consider taking public transportation. That, too, was a beneficiary of the stimulus. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority got $184 million in funds to purchase hybrid buses and paratransit vans, among other things.
Trump, of course, doesn’t take public transit. But he does occasionally visit federal buildings. He will likely, at some point, find himself at the Herbert C. Hoover Building ― home of the Department of Commerce ― which got $112,158,081 in stimulus funds for renovation. Maybe he will stop by the St. Elizabeths West Campus of the Department of Homeland Security (a stimulus recipient), or the United States Coast Guard Headquarters building (a stimulus recipient), or wing 2 of the Department of the Interior Main Interior Building (a stimulus recipient).
His grandchildren, some of whom are now residents of D.C., may attend public school in the city (OK, not likely). If so, they would be entering a system that benefited from stimulus money. The D.C. government got over $73 million in education stabilization funds through the Recovery Act. And if any of the younger Trumps are looking at colleges, perhaps they’ll decide to attend George Washington University, which got $15 million in stimulus funding to renovate its Research Center for Neglected Diseases of Poverty. When they graduate from said college, they might choose to pursue a career in law or lobbying. Maybe they’ll end up at the firm Booz Allen Hamilton. Located just two miles from the White House, Booz Allen got $71 million in stimulus funds as part of a competitive grant program to help provide broadband to unserved and underserved areas of the country.
We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. Before Trump’s grandchildren go off to work or attend college, they’re likely to spend a few weekends at their grandfather’s various iconic properties.
Perhaps they’ll go with the president down to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia ― where they could thank the stimulus for the cleanliness of the water, since the Loudoun County Sanitation Authority got $1.5 million to help with wastewater treatment.
Along the way, the Trump family might pick up a baguette or two at the French Bread Factory (just 14 miles away), which got a $1.4 million loan through the stimulus. Or they might pass a number of local businesses that received stimulus funds for construction projects ― like the Southland Concrete Corporation, which got $8.6 million to help with the construction of the National Institute of Health’s Neuroscience Research Center, or M.C. Dean, Inc., which got nearly $50 million to help design and build the Social Security Administration National Service Center.
Most likely, though, they won’t be spending time in Sterling, because the president prefers to weekend at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. But even there, they wouldn’t be able to escape the Recovery Act.
Palm Beach County got $840 million in stimulus funds, or roughly $635 per person, much of it to help with community needs. The school board, for instance, got a $59 million grant as part of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, while Palm Beach State College got over $7.5 million through the account.
Local housing was a major beneficiary. Colonial Lake Apartments, 12 miles or so from Mar-a-Lago, got $6,846,934 in stimulus funding for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The Westgate Plaza Apartments, about six miles from Trump’s resort, got $6,100,000. And the Westgate Belvedere Homes Community Redevelopment Agency, also nearby, got $2,441,578.
The stimulus also helped with Palm Beach’s infrastructure needs. Companies use stimulus funding to secure local levees in the Palm Beach area by financing turf reinforcement, excavations, and soil cement. And just to the west of Mar-a-Lago, the Lake Worth Lagoon was restored with the help of $23 million in Recovery Act money.
Though Trump and his properties are surrounded by projects, businesses, and community functions that benefited from the stimulus, it’s actually quite understandable that he may not have grasped the extent of the law’s effects. In many cases, the recipients of the money themselves are unaware that they benefited from an Obama-era program. That’s because the funds were often siphoned through a state agency or a contractee, or came in the form of a loan. There were few “big” or new initiatives tied to the program, aside from the memorable failures. Often, the money helped refurbish or repair existing projects ― a less glamorous but probably more consequential pursuit.
As Obama’s time in office came to a close, his aides grew more forthcoming about their failures to sell the Recovery Act and its benefits. Trump, for all his shortcomings as a politician, seems unlikely to disappoint in that department as he goes about putting together his own major spending bill ― a $1 trillion project aimed squarely at infrastructure.