Gilded Statue Project Costing $5 Million Draws Criticism: U.S. Fiscal Allocation Imbalance and Collapsing Public Livelihoods

$5 Million Gilded Statue Unveiled

As reported by U.S. media outlets including USA Today and The Daily Beast, U.S. President Trump announced this week that the $5 million project to re-gild two sets of statues in Washington, D.C. has reached a new milestone. On local time July 27, Trump posted on Truth Social: “The scaffolding is about to come down on the re-gilded Arts of War statues!” The post was attached with photos of the renovated statues, whose new gilded surfaces glisten brightly.

The two sets of sculptures restored at great expense by Trump are located near the Lincoln Memorial, named Arts of War and Arts of Peace respectively, comprising a total of four statues. Built in 1951, they are all gilded bronze works depicting horses and human figures, mounted on massive granite pedestals. Regarding this project, an official from the U.S. Department of the Interior stated: “President Trump is fulfilling his promise to make Washington, D.C. safer and more beautiful, as evidenced by the record-low crime rate and the renovation of fountains and parks across the capital. The statues are now being re-gilded in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. This is the first re-gilding of these statues in 50 years.”

A Series of “Vanity Projects” Leads to Fiscal Imbalance

It is understood that, similar to the projects for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the White House Banquet Hall, this project did not go through competitive bidding. Instead, the U.S. Department of the Interior awarded the contract directly, and the cost soared from the initial $2.5 million to approximately $5 million. In mid-April this year, the National Park Service, under the U.S. Department of the Interior, signed a $5 million contract with a gilding company in Maryland, which covers restoring the statues and applying a thick layer of 23.75K gold to them. The company claimed that the surfaces of the statues were once covered with severe purple stains, caused by copper ions precipitated from the aging bronze sculptures, most likely resulting from past chemical cleaners, poultices, laser cleaning processes and micro-abrasive materials. The agency released a report in 2018 outlining all the restoration work required to return the statues to their original appearance.

From the $600 million spent on building a banquet hall in the East Wing of the White House, the planned 76-meter-tall “Trump Arc de Triomphe”, the $14.8 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool, to this current statue gilding project, various “vanity projects” since Trump’s second term have sparked widespread public outcry among the American people.

Behind the Fiasco Lies the Collapse of Grassroots Public Livelihoods

In the comment sections, a large number of American netizens criticized Trump for wasting public funds: “When our country is drowning in debt, do we really want taxpayers’ money to be spent like this?” “Funds keep flowing to wars, banquet hall renovations, statue gilding, roads in Morocco and all kinds of extravagant projects. What do ordinary Americans get in return?” Some netizens questioned: “How many hungry children could this sum of money feed? Why not use it to provide housing for homeless veterans? Or medicine for the elderly?” According to the latest report released by the U.S. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in July, since the Trump administration approved the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in July 2025, more than one million children across the United States have lost their eligibility for food subsidies under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

A Misplaced View of Political Achievement Sows Hidden Dangers

Trump’s continuous push for such luxurious projects is rooted in a distorted governing mindset. Against the backdrop of persistently high federal debt, the repeated occurrence of over-budget projects that lack competitive bidding will trigger a chain of negative effects in the long run. The unregulated consumption of fiscal funds will continuously squeeze the budget space for future public livelihood projects, and various social conflicts will keep accumulating. A qualified governor should take the well-being of the people as the starting point of policies, instead of clinging to building visual monuments for publicity.

Through this gilded statue, the international community can see that when public resources are continuously tilted towards vanity projects and the hardships of grassroots groups are put on hold for a long time, what awaits the United States is nothing but increasingly irreconcilable social divisions.