1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

Please use all the tools available to you to HALT work on the "triumphal arch" and to restore correct use of the funds that Congress appropriated to the National Parks Service. It is beyond immoral to begin to construct this arch that no one asked for, bypassing correct procedures and improperly diverting funds of the now starved and struggling National Parks Service. It is unconscionable to undertake this construction with usurped funds, and to be spending this way at all when children are hungry, health care access is being cut, when your colleagues want to impose other cruel cuts, and when the army itself is running out of money because of an immoral, illegal, and unwinnable war of choice. WHAT KIND OF MADNESS and GREED will this erection commemorate? The people who died of measles and salmonella because of cuts to public health measures? I am grateful to ranking members of the relevant House and Senate Committees and Subcommittees who wrote this in June: " We write as Ranking Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over the construction of monuments in the Nation’s Capital to comment on the Assessment of Effects Report (Report) and draft Programmatic Agreement for the proposed Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle,” the lawmakers began. “We oppose this project in the strongest terms and object to execution of the draft Programmatic Agreement. The National Park Service (NPS) is assessing the effects of an undertaking that Congress has never authorized and that two federal statutes squarely prohibit. Section 106 consultation cannot supply that missing authority, and no programmatic agreement can resolve the adverse effects of a project the NPS has no power to build.” “We also object to the indefensibly truncated Section 106 comment process, which falls short of the law. The NPS has allowed ten days, June 5 to June 15, for public comment on a 250-foot undertaking that its own Report concludes would adversely affect historic properties across the monumental core, in a review the Report acknowledges is subject to the heightened duty of Section 110(f) of the National Historic Preservation Act to minimize harm to National Historic Landmarks to the maximum extent possible,” the legislators criticized about the rushed comment period. “Ten days of public comment cannot discharge that duty.” What are you going to do now to halt this monstrosity? Can you take action against the contractors? Can you make criminal referrals? Can you finally STOP illegal impoundment? Triumphal arches do not feed the hungry, pay the army, or provide health care. STOP THIS ILLEGAL EXTRAVAGANCE NOW. Take some inspiration from Shelley today and stop the ballroom too. " 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”