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\n

Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior Appropriations Committee Republican, questioned whether federal funds should be spent on construction of President Donald Trump\u2019s triumphal arch, which the president claimed over the weekend could be used for military purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a lot of things that we need the military funding for \u2014 in fact, we’re short on military funding right now,\u201d Simpson told reporters at the Capitol Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was my choice, I wouldn’t put any of that money into the arch,\u201d Simpson added, when pressed on whether Pentagon funding should be used at all.<\/p>\n

Simpson spoke a day after Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that the arch \u2014 which he wants to build less than a mile from the Pentagon, just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial \u2014 would be used to store and deploy drones and snipers.<\/p>\n

Given that rationale, Simpson said the arch is \u201csomething that needs to be debated\u201d and that other Defense Department needs should take priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope if they decide to do it, that they would come to Congress and ask for an appropriation for it if they’re going to use appropriated dollars to do it,\u201d Simpson said.<\/p>\n

Simpson also questioned Trump\u2019s ban of three news outlets over the weekend<\/u>, including Blue Light News, as well a recent comments from House Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) suggesting members of the media should be barred from the the Speakers Lobby, a space just off the House floor. He called any such media ban \u201cwrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because you don’t like what the press is reporting \u2014 or the fact that they wouldn’t call it the Gulf of America or something else like that \u2014 that’s not the reason to ban the press,\u201d he said. \u201cYou should never ban the press. The press is what keeps us honest. So I don’t like what they’re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior Appropriations Committee Republican, questioned whether federal funds should be spent on construction of President Donald Trump\u2019s triumphal arch, which the president claimed over the weekend could be used for military purposes. \u201cThere’s a lot of things that we need the military funding for \u2014 in fact, we’re short on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}