One Billion Problems, and a Ballroom Could Be One

Hey folks. A note from my team on my work this week. Enjoy your weekend! – MRW

Happy Friday from the Warner press office. It was a busy, busy week for Sen. Warner, who was hard at work securing better benefits for miners, pressing the Trump administration on their cuts to veteran health care, and fighting back against Trump’s demand for $1 billion in funding for his ballroom.

Let’s get into it:

HOW BIG IS A BILLION?

How big is one billion? Its sheer size is sometimes obscured by how often we say it, but it’s a truly massive, almost incomprehensibly large number. One billion seconds is 32 years. One billion pennies stacked on top of each other would make a tower 870 miles high… which is the full width of Virginia… twice.

One billion dollar bills, laid end to end, would wrap around the Earth nearly four times.

And Trump is asking for that much money to… build a ballroom.

It’s unfathomably large, and a total insult to taxpayers.

So this week, Sen. Warner crunched the numbers, and identified exactly how far $1 billion could go for Virginians instead. Here are the facts:

Health Care:

• $1 billion could pay for Medicaid coverage for a full year for over 25% of the Virginians who lost it due to Trump and Washington Republicans’ cuts in their 2025 budget megabill.

• $1 billion could have extended the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credit for most of the year for nearly two-thirds of the Virginians who relied on it last year.

Food:

• $1 billion could restore SNAP benefits for nearly five years for every Virginian who was kicked off this food assistance program due to Trump and Washington Republicans’ cuts in their 2025 budget megabill.

• $1 billion could fund Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) benefits for all Virginians in the program for over 15 years.

• $1 billion could cover groceries for 118,119 Virginia families for a full year.

Housing:

• $1 billion could cover the average yearly rent for 46,399 Virginia households.

• $1 billion could pay for a year of average electricity costs for half a million Virginia households.

• $1 billion could pay for the construction or preservation of between 2,000-4,000 affordable homes across Virginia.

Child Care & more:

• $1 billion could pay for child care for 59,537 infants.

• $1 billion could cover 12,500,000 America the Beautiful passes for Americans to visit National Parks across the country, including Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park.

• $1 billion could fund a year of transportation costs for 74,732 households in Virginia.

Since this is Police Week, Sen. Warner also appropriately highlighted the many ways this funding could go towards supporting law enforcement and public safety:

• $1 billion could fund nearly four years of the COPS Hiring Program.

• $1 billion could fully fund four years of the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program.

• $1 billion could fund a full year of the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants.

He also teamed up with Sen. Kaine to make a video highlighting the math. You can watch it here.

The senators said, “It’s absurd that Senate Republicans are asking for $1 billion dollars to fund Trump’s ballroom after making historic cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, and refusing to extend healthcare tax credits. To make matters worse, Trump’s war of choice is causing costs on groceries, gas, and consumer goods to soar. While Americans are struggling to make ends meet, Trump and Senate Republicans are focused on using tax dollars to build a ballroom.”

Next week in the Senate, Republicans are going to try and ram through an unpopular spending bill that will give even more funding to Trump’s out-of-control ICE agents and fund this ballroom, too.

Rest assured, Sen. Warner will be fighting, voting, and advocating against this bill. Stay tuned.

AD-VA-CATING

Veterans make enormous sacrifices to defend our values and protect our nation. They deserve quality, accessible health care in return.

Unfortunately, this administration is making that harder.

Virginia’s vibrant and sizable veteran population – one of the largest and most rapidly growing in the country – has been deeply impacted by staffing shortages at VA medical centers. In the final few months of 2025, more than 1,700 vacant positions were eliminated across Virginia, including of more than 700 at the Hampton VAMC, 300 at the Richmond VAMC, 200 at the Salem VAMC, and several hundred more at community clinics and other facilities.

Sen. Warner, who has spent his career fighting to make sure veterans receive the top-quality health care they have earned – from passing the historic PACT Act to helping several new VA facilities open across Virginia – is fighting back.

This week, he and Sen. Kaine pressed VA Secretary Doug Collins directly on what he’s doing to ensure that veterans continue to have access to quality care.

They wrote, “These roles span the workforce – positions including social workers, technicians, chaplains, and security officers. Adding to the concern, is that based on a review of the data, more than half of the eliminated vacancies in Virginia appear to have been for roles with a direct clinical nexus to patients – physicians, nurses, specialists, therapists, pharmacists, among others. No matter the role – and as we have argued in response to your Department’s assertion that earlier hiring freezes were not impacting patient care – the workforce at VA facilities is meant to function as a team; dramatic cuts to any position therefore necessitates that the remaining personnel shoulder increasingly more responsibility.”

They also requested robust data on these eliminated vacancies and pressed the VA for follow-up, accountability, and improvement.

Sen. Warner isn’t going to lose sight of this important issue – he’s proven time and time again that he’s in it for the long haul to improve veteran care, from getting clinics built to making sure they are appropriately staffed. We will keep you posted as this important work continues.

BE MINE-R

For as long as he’s been in elected office in Virginia, Sen. Warner has made fighting for miners a top priority. Miners powered our nation for generations, often at great and direct risk to their health and wellbeing. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.

Sen. Warner hears from a black lung doctor while in Saint Paul, Virginia.

Year in and year out, Sen. Warner travels to Southwest Virginia to meet with mining families, hear directly about the challenges they face, and learn how the government can do more to protect the benefits they have earned. He then comes back to DC ready to put that feedback into action.

A little while back, Sen. Warner pressed directly on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate whether black lung benefits are adequately meeting the income and health care needs of disabled miners and their families.

This week, Sen. Warner and his colleagues released the results of that report, which was put together following extensive focus groups with miners from Virginia and across coal country.

The GAO found that miners often face major barriers when trying to access benefits, particularly when those benefits are administered by mine operators. The GAO recommended that the Department of Labor (DOL) collect information on and monitor the extent to which mine operators are providing medical benefits they are required to cover. The DOL agreed and said it will add questions about medical benefits to its miner surveys – meaning stronger oversight, greater accountability, and better support for miners and their families!

Sen. Warner welcomed the progress, but made clear that the fight is far from over. Alongside his colleagues, he said,

“For years we have heard from coal miners and their families about how hard it is to secure federal black lung benefits and how it’s often not enough to support their families. As miners in central Appalachia get sicker and at younger ages, we are grateful GAO accepted our request to examine the benefits they receive once they do get sick. GAO also confirmed what we have heard for years: miners face drawn-out, years-long fights to secure black lung benefits, the spouses and families left behind often struggle to access the survivor benefits they’re owed, and benefit amounts are too low for many families to make ends meet. Although we’re glad the Department of Labor agreed to provide more oversight of the medical benefits that mine operators provide, Congress must still enact legislation to ensure miners receive the benefits they need to support themselves and their families once they’re too sick to continue working in the mines.”

GRAB BAG

USS FORD: Ahead of the USS Ford’s return home to Hampton Roads, Sen. Warner released a statement recognizing the crew’s record-breaking deployment and thanking them for their service.

STANDING UP FOR SCIENCE: Sen. Warner joined colleagues in introducing legislation to protect public scientific research and reports from the influence of political and special interests.

FIGHTING FOR HEALTH CARE: Sen. Warner reintroduced a resolution affirming that the abortion medication mifepristone is safe and effective, and underscoring that law and policy related to the medication must be equitable, transparent, and based on the best available peer-reviewed evidence-based science.

HAPPY TRAILS: Sen. Warner reintroduced the bipartisan, bicameral Washington’s Trail — 1753 National Historic Trail Feasibility Study Act to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a feasibility test to designate Washington’s Trail as a national historic trail.

DIGITAL ASSETS: Sen. Warner released a statement on his committee vote against market structure legislation.

STOP WARS-H: Sen. Warner released a statement after he voted against Kevin Warsh’s nomination to the Federal Reserve.

CHINA: Sen. Warner released a statement ahead of President Trump’s visit to Beijing.

CATCH FLIGHTS NOT FEELINGS: Sen. Warner announced over $21 million in funding for Virginia airports.

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Senate will be in session next week. Sen. Warner will be voting on nominations and legislation.

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