Congress
The Lincoln Memorial should be green with envy: This reflecting pool stayed clear
Still blue waters, abundant waterfowl, promenading tourists and barely a whiff of mildew — that is the vision President Donald Trump has struggled to turn into reality this month at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
But that has long been the reality just a mile-and-a-half down the National Mall, where another reflecting pool floats just under Capitol Hill — and under the radar — without a scummy green film floating on top.
As the algae-tinged drama has played out at the Lincoln Memorial, little attention has been paid to its sister pond which is slightly smaller, more obscure and managed by a different entity — the Architect of the Capitol, not the National Park Service.
Both are expensive and challenging to maintain, but the trapezoid-ish Capitol Reflecting Pool hasn’t faced the same intractable problems that have plagued the long and skinny pool to the west.
“Anytime you have a water feature in general … they are beautiful, they’re amazing, but they’re problematic because they degrade faster over time than pretty much anything else you’re going to have,” Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin said in an interview Wednesday. “They require pumps, require pipes — corrosion, animals, diseases, bacteria, algae. There’s a lot of things that go along with that.”
Austin’s agency drains the Capitol pool each fall and sometimes in the spring to evaluate the basin and make repairs. Employees go in with heavy equipment to “remove the sludge that collects throughout the year,” according to a 2017 AOC report.
Then masons repair cracks and other issues with the concrete basin and plumbers tackle pipe and pump problems before refilling the pool. The draining, repairing and refilling can all happen within a week, depending on the extent of work needed, according to an internal AOC bulletin.
In contrast, draining and refilling the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool typically takes about a month.
There is no evidence that the National Park Service or White House sought the AOC’s expertise with reflecting pool maintenance before embarking on the recent renovations across town, which included spraying the floor with an “American flag blue” rubberized coating.
The Park Service has some experience with the Capitol pond: It managed the body until 2011, when Congress assumed control for itself in an omnibus spending bill — scuttling NPS plans for a shallower pool with an overnight draining system.
Instead, the Architect of the Capitol proceeded with a $7.3 million renovation that included draining the pool, thoroughly cleaning it and making repairs to the concrete.
Today, families of ducks call the Capitol Reflecting Pool home, and AOC craftspeople even fabricated and installed ramps to help ducklings make their way in and out of the water. (Some congressional fiscal hawks briefly balked at the expenditure.)
This week, a trio of dead ducks found at the Lincoln Memorial pool increased scrutiny of the Trump administration’s renovation, including the use of high-concentration hydrogen peroxide in the water to combat a recent algae bloom.
On Thursday, eyewitnesses who posted on social media reported the water appeared closer to sparkling, though some residual algae was spotted.
The White House did not address questions about whether it had consulted with the legislative branch on how to maintain a water body before embarking on the Lincoln Memorial project.
“Today, the Reflecting Pool is crystal clear and is reflecting perfectly,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement, calling it a feat “only an expert builder like Donald J. Trump could accomplish.”
Austin also declined to weigh in on why the water at the Lincoln Memorial has been so much more troublesome than the Capitol’s.
“I will not say that our full reflecting pool is without problems, because it certainly does have some issues,” he said. “It’s also smaller, so that’s part of it, too. And it was kind of formulated in different ways, so it’s kind of hard to compare apples to apples on this one.”
The Capitol’s pool, sandwiched between two parking lots and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial was completed in 1971, making it about half the age of the Lincoln Memorial’s. It has not always been without blight, however.
In 2020 there was an algae bloom during a stretch of particularly hot weather. And in 2008, when the pool was still under NPS control, at least two dozen dead ducks were removed from the water after avian botulism took hold. These days, some cracked stone can be spotted along the perimeter.
Several lawmakers who exercise oversight of the Capitol campus declined to say much to compare and contrast the two reflecting pools.
“I want to thank the Architect of the Capitol for keeping it clear and keeping it clean,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview this week when asked if his time on the Legislative Branch Appropriations subcommittee gave him any insight into the pool.
“Size matters,” added Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), a member of the House Administration Committee.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the Legislative Branch Appropriations subcommittee, said he believed the Trump administration’s rushed approach to the Lincoln Memorial rehab was the most obvious distinction between the health of the two pools.
“I mean, anybody with an eighth-grade science class could have predicted that this was not going to go well,” he said.
The House cleared a stopgap funding patch Tuesday to keep cash flowing to federal agencies until mid-December — preventing a government shutdown before Election Day and setting up two major policy battles at year’s end.
The 370-48 vote takes care of Speaker Mike Johnson’s last must-pass bill before the midterms. But swift passage comes at a cost for House GOP leaders, who are now managing blowback from Republicans angry about the contents of the funding patch Senate leaders crafted and President Donald Trump endorsed.
The legislation would fund the government beyond the October start of the new fiscal year, keeping federal agencies running on current budgets through Dec. 11. It also allows incumbents to campaign for reelection without the threat of a government shutdown feeding into political messaging about dysfunction in Washington.
“We want to get a longer-term deal. But at a minimum, let’s ensure that we can continue to see government properly funded and functioning,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday, noting the “chaos” and “uncertainty” of last year’s record-breaking shutdown.
Besides funding the government through mid-December, the bill would temporarily block the White House from finalizing a rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants.
It would also delay a ban set to kick in next month on intoxicating hemp products — to the dissatisfaction of House hard-liners, who threatened to vote Tuesday afternoon against teeing up debate on other bills this week and potentially block any significant House floor action between now and November.
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the Freedom Caucus, was among the Republicans who voted no on the funding patch and said he would oppose moving forward with debate on other bills too. He scoffed at the last-minute pressure campaign from the White House and hemp industry leaders promising to regulate intoxicating products in lieu of proceeding with the ban lawmakers enacted last November.
“They had 10 months,” Harris said in an interview this week, knocking the Trump administration for not taking action sooner to crack down on the products currently sold in the U.S. without age restrictions or other regulations. “There are profiteers who are making money on basically the health of our children, and I object to that.”
Trump is expected to sign the funding patch, which the White House endorsed last month ahead of Senate passage — even though it blocks the Office of Management and Budget from finalizing its controversial rule to overhaul the federal grantmaking approval process.
That Senate-added language, as well as a prohibition on new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, drove significant support from House Democrats.
“This critically stops the OMB rule from proceeding forward that many of us have been pushing against,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said Tuesday, cheering other “incredibly helpful” additions to the bare-bones stopgap House Republicans initially passed earlier this summer.
Democrats also hope to regain control of the House and Senate in the November elections and increase their leverage in December negotiations on government funding for the rest of the fiscal year.
“That’s the huge intervening event,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said this week about the election. “And it will impact whatever comes after it, no matter what anybody thinks. So it’s not like we’ll go back and pick up exactly where we left off.”
The Oklahoma Republican traveled to Ukraine and other European countries last month with his counterpart across the aisle, top committee Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.
The two top appropriators are motivated to strike a year-end deal to fund federal agencies with updated budgets, Cole said, rather than clearing another short stopgap or resorting to a lengthy patch that keeps programs on autopilot through next September
“We both are pretty adamant that we need to get these bills done before the end of the calendar year,” Cole said, adding that he and DeLauro will be “working really hard once we know who the players are on the other side” of Election Day.
Everton Blair was sworn in to the House Tuesday, adding another Democrat to the closely divided chamber. Blair won a special election this month to replace the late Georgia Rep. David Scott, a former chair of the House Agriculture Committee. Another Democratic winner of a recent special election, Aisha Wahab of California, is scheduled to be sworn in tomorrow to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell, according to a person familiar with the plan.
With the two Democrats sworn and voting, Speaker Mike Johnson will be able to lose only one Republican on party-line votes.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that the full, five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill will likely be a lame duck issue — and that he would push to wrap it up before the 119th Congress concludes.
When asked by Blue Light News when the House will hold a floor vote on the legislation, Johnson said, “We’re working on that” and pivoted to ding the Senate, saying the upper chamber “hasn’t made any movement towards it at all.”
But he added that the House is trying to work with the Senate and “hopefully it’s an exercise we get done in a lame duck.”
“I think that’s what everybody expects at this point, but we’ll have to see,” Johnson said.
“It is a big priority for us, there’s some great policy in there, and we’re gonna work aggressively to get it done” this year, he added.
The legislation, also known as the highway bill, authorizes funding for roads, bridges and transit. Both the House Transportation and Energy and Commerce committees in May approved their portions of the legislation. The current bill, the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, lapses Sept. 30.
The House is poised to clear a Senate-passed extension of the existing surface authorities later Tuesday, kicking the deadline from the end of September to Dec. 11. That gives Capitol Hill more time to attempt to pass a full reauthorization.
But lawmakers face numerous obstacles. The House Ways and Means Committee’s plans remain unclear. That panel has jurisdiction over the federal gas tax, which flows into the ailing Highway Trust Fund. The Senate, meanwhile, has yet to release text.
Passing the surface bill is a big priority for retiring House Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.).
Asked Tuesday about the timing of a full House vote, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Blue Light News that it’s dependent on what the tax-writing committee ends up doing.
“It’s still a negotiation and before the Ways and Means Committee,” he said. “There’s one final step before it goes to the floor, that’s Ways and Means. As soon as that’s over, then we will talk to the chairman, talk to our members and bring it forward.”
Scalise said he would like to hold a House floor vote on the legislation before year’s end.
“But again, we have to get it through the committee process,” he said.
A Ways and Means spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, though Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in July that his panel was discussing the bill “pretty much daily.”
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