The Senate could vote on legislation next week aimed at blocking demolition of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without congressional approval.

A draft bill has bipartisan backing from the top appropriators who oversee Kennedy Center funding: Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chair of the Interior-Environment Subcommittee, and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the panel’s ranking Democrat.

Merkley, the bill’s chief sponsor, is seeking to pass the measure Monday by unanimous consent. That procedure allows for expedited consideration of the legislation, but it could be rejected if a single senator objects.

Murkowski said Thursday that lawmakers authorized and funded “substantial work” needed to renovate the center, but “what was not authorized is a demolition of the Kennedy Center.”

“If a federal facility is going to be demolished, it cannot be without congressional oversight here,” she said. “So, we’ve got to be engaged in this.”

President Donald Trump has threatened to demolish the 55-year-old institution unless he can add his name to the building, a memorial to a slain president that Congress authorized in 1964 with bipartisan support. Trump, who took control of the center and serves as its chairman, said online last week that renovations of the center “will not take place” amid litigation over the name.

“For the Trump administration, for me, to get involved, and to take on long term, and to carry it, or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition,” he said this month. “Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close, it will end up being ripped down.”

The Kennedy Center is closed in the meantime. The Trump-appointed board of trustees voted for its temporary closure due to “safety reasons,” the president said after a chunk of the ceiling collapsed during a storm earlier this month.

Merkley’s bill would prohibit the demolition of the center and other memorials honoring presidents unless lawmakers authorize it. 

Appropriators push for details

Key appropriators in both chambers say they’re seeking answers about the status of changes at the Kennedy Center.   

Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, top Democrat on the House Interior-Environment subcommittee, said this week that her team is looking to hold a briefing “soon” with cooperation from funding chiefs in both chambers on the recent changes. 

She has also pushed for more oversight over the roughly $257 million approved for the Kennedy Center renovations as part of last year’s GOP reconciliation law. 

“We’re trying to get more information,” Murkowski also said Thursday, adding that appropriators are looking to do a “little bit of fact checking, more of an oversight here, in terms of where things really stand at the Kennedy Center.”

“Will we be able to have some kind of an oversight in November, December? I think that’s a possibility, but obviously nothing like that’s going to happen now.”

But she and others said it’s clear that the center is suffering “structurally some issues that we need to address,” pointing to years of “deferred maintenance.”

“If we’re going to do the upgrades, this is the time to make that happen, right?” she said. “But we got to know what we don’t currently know right now, which is, what are the real plans?”

And her House counterpart, Interior-Environment Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, echoed that view in an interview last month.

“We’re not going to tear down and bulldoze the Kennedy Center,” Simpson said. “That’s the reality, but we need to do the renovations.”