Let's Cut Some Spending: Schumer's $1.5 Million Museum Door
- ForAmerica
- Aug 6
- 2 min read
In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica chronicles the many ways Washington wastes YOUR tax dollars.
Today's offering: $1.5 million of your tax dollars for a new door, at a museum that already has $5.8 billion in the bank.
Every year, the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste publishes the Congressional Pig Book, and every year it hands out an award for the single most absurd item it finds. This year's "Taxpayer's Nightmare at the Museum Award" went to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for securing a $1.5 million earmark for a new entrance door at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The catch: the Met isn't exactly hurting for cash. According to its own 2025 financial disclosures, the museum held $5.8 billion in net assets -- more than the annual GDP of some small countries. It's one of the best-funded cultural institutions on Earth, with a members' program, a gift shop, and millions of paying visitors every year. And yet a member of Senate leadership decided your federal tax dollars were the right source of funding for its front door.
"Earmarks continue to be the most corrupt, costly, and inequitable practice in the history of Congress."
That's CAGW's own verdict on the practice as a whole. Schumer's door is just one item buried inside a much bigger FY 2026 earmark haul -- but it's exactly the kind of line item that makes plain how disconnected these decisions are from anything an ordinary taxpayer would ever choose to fund with their own paycheck.
A $5.8 billion museum didn't need a taxpayer-funded door. Your paycheck did not sign up to cover it either. Let's cut some spending.
Source: Citizens Against Government Waste, 2026 Congressional Pig Book
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