Trump administration officials recently proposed more construction projects for the White House. One plan replaces the Greek columns framing the main entrance with a more imperial version. Another suggests building a grand underground security center to screen visitors. These projects add to the ballroom replacing the East Wing, the renovation of the Lincoln Bathroom in marble and gold and the Rose Garden’s conversion into a stone patio featuring café-style umbrellas.
Critics have zeroed in on the many procedural violations — bypassing required commission approvals and soliciting private donors to bankroll construction while sidestepping federal oversight of national landmarks. President Donald Trump sees it differently, boasting on social media: “Just inspected the site of the new Ballroom that will be built, compliments of a man known as Donald J. Trump, at the White House.” At a White House ceremony last year, he added: “They’ve wanted a ballroom for 150 years, and I’m giving that honor to this wonderful place.” Process and vanity aside, the clear problem is that his real estate instincts are off. He’s renovating the wrong building.
Trump should expand the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue — the U.S. Capitol. While a vast visitor center opened at the Capitol in 2008, the chambers of the House and Senate haven’t grown since the 1850s. The number of House members hasn’t grown in about a century. And yet, joint sessions — such as the State of the Union address or the counting of electoral college votes — have long strained the chamber’s seating capacity, packing in members shoulder-to-shoulder. It can barely fit the Congress it has and is far too small for the Congress the country requires.
Trump’s time tinkering with the executive mansion would be better spent expanding the legislature’s chambers; the United States doesn’t need a 1,000-person ballroom — it needs a Capitol with a 1,000-member Congress.
Trump cites Andrew Jackson as his presidential inspiration, and the comparison is instructive. Jackson believed his 1824 election loss was rigged, expanded presidential authority following his 1828 win, purged 10 percent of the federal workforce and installed the North Portico columns that are now at risk of removal. But Jacksonian democracy had some institutional substance, tripling the number of voting White men by removing tax and property requirements . His common folk supporters were so ecstatic after his first inauguration that they surged into the White House, spilling alcohol and breaking china — forcing the new president to flee while a congressman and his wife escaped through a window.
Trump’s populism runs in the other direction. Jackson’s mob stormed the people’s house to celebrate the result; Trump’s stormed Congress to overturn it. Jackson renovated the very building where his supporters had run amok; Trump has yet to show the Capitol the same respect.
It wouldn’t be easy. The president cannot expand the Capitol unilaterally. It requires congressional authorization and coalition-building, forcing the president to govern and lobby. But it wouldn’t be impossible — only a simple majority is technically required to approve such construction, and with Republicans controlling Congress, Trump’s window to act is open. A Capitol expansion would require Congress to vote for it, giving it a democratic legitimacy his ballroom will never have. And whereas the next president can reconsider Trump’s White House changes via executive order, Capitol renovations are written into law.
Changes — to the structure and to its membership — are long overdue. Congress grew alongside the country after its founding. But the Reapportionment Act of 1929 permanently capped the House at 435 voting seats. At the time, that meant about 280,000 constituents in each congressional district — today, that number is upward of 780,000.
Scholars, such as political theorist Danielle Allen, have argued that enlarging the House is required to make the body more responsive to the people and representatives closer to their constituents. Allen has explored how renovating the existing structure could seat a 1,000-member Congress, a number the nation has been building toward for more than a century.
Expanding to relieve overcrowding and in anticipation of further growth has deep precedent. When new states flooded the union in the 1850s, Congress grew into the Capitol grounds while the need was still arriving. The Dirksen Senate Office Building in 1958 and the acquisition of the Ford House Office Building in 1975 were both larger than needed at their opening, correctly understanding that more space would be necessary as the nation grew. Congressional leaders tried to expand the Capitol nearly 50 years ago due to the House chamber’s cramped quarters, but it died in committee after a dozen years of attempts.
Capitol expansion has all the incentives Trump needs: an opportunity to make history, to succeed where others have failed and to put his mark on the institution forever, with a pliant Congress to pave the way. But one thing a renovated Capitol doesn’t offer that a 1,000-person ballroom does is the chance for Trump to be the room’s center of attention as president. Giving that up would require him to build something bigger than himself, and that seems to be the one deal he can’t close.
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