Latest Details of Monument to Congressional Waste

(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released an issue brief on the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) that coincides with the Architect of the Capitol (AoC) requesting another $36.9 million for “unforeseen cost increases associated with construction.”

“The CVC is a five-acre money pit right under Congress’s nose,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said.  “It is a classic example of a botched construction project that never should have been funded.  In approving the project, Congress ignored warnings of its ballooning costs and limited utility.”

The CAGW report notes that “Any other building project that went that far over budget would elicit the harshest scrutiny from Congress.  But the elimination of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, chaired in the last Congress by CVC critic Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), has apparently squelched the last source of internal dissent.  Any new hearings would be held at the full committee level, where Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) told CQ Today that he wants to ‘get to the middle’ of the project.  That apparently means no one will be getting to the bottom of the … CVC.”

Congress originally budgeted $265 million for the current iteration of the project.  However, more recent AoC estimates hovered around $454 million prior to the most recent $36.9 million request.  If approved, the architects’ request for more money likely signals the accuracy of the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) January 2005 report that the CVC’s final price tag will cost an exorbitant $559 million.

More than a decade in the making, the CVC was scheduled for completion in time for President George W. Bush’s January 20^th Inauguration.  It is now expected toward the end of 2006.  A pipe dream of some of the most self-promoting members of Congress, the CVC was consistently deemed frivolous in the past.

CAGW’s report notes:  “The troubling history of the CVC includes the abysmal failure to raise private funds, the misuse of security threats to gain congressional support, and the unbridled growth of this monument to government waste.  Congress has taken taxpayers for one wasteful ride, and the journey is far from over.”

The issue brief can be found on CAGW’s web site:  www.cagw.org. 

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.