While American families struggled with high inflation and rising costs under President Biden, his administration quietly used millions of taxpayer dollars to improve luxury features like swimming pools at U.S. embassies in places like Iraq and Russia.
A report from Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, showed that the Biden administration’s State Department approved more than $1.2 million for upgrades to swimming pools at U.S. embassies and diplomat homes. Many of these were in countries dealing with war or extreme poverty. The investigation found at least 14 separate projects in seven nations, including Russia, even after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“The Biden State Department threw a big summer pool party using your money,” Ernst said in a statement. “Government officials might think wasting millions is just a small thing, but I am sick and tired of taxpayers getting hit hard by Washington. I will keep working with the Trump administration to end the wasteful spending from the Biden years.”
Ernst explained that most of the money went toward fixing up existing pools, not building new ones. But these projects still cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The State Department approved work on two pools in Haiti, five in Iraq, three in Sudan, and one each in Russia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana, adding up to over $1.2 million.
At the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the government spent at least $41,259 in 2022 to replace a swimming pool sewer pump. This happened just months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started in February of that year.
As Americans faced economic challenges at home, the Biden administration sent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for upgrades to facilities abroad. In Baghdad, $444,000 was used to improve the indoor dehumidification system at the large U.S. Embassy, which had already cost more than $750 million to build. At the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, over $10,000 went toward mechanical fixes for its swimming pool. In 2021, $24,000 was spent on installing a pool deck at the embassy in Sudan, even though the country has a “do not travel” warning due to violence, and embassy operations in Khartoum have been suspended since 2023.
