The Army has canceled a controversial plan to spend $600,000 on art for a bus terminal at a new military facility near Washington D.C.
The proposal to purchase two murals and a huge toad and fairy sculpture for the Mark Center terminal came under fire from Congress and local activists after Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley opened up an investigation into it, U.S. News and World Report reported.
The army official initially defended the project saying it would cost just “0.1 percent of the cost” of the new facility, but told Grassley in a second response this week, “Plans for procuring sculpture are being dropped,” the magazine reported.
“The Army was ready to spend $600,000 on three pieces of questionable art, just when the country is up to its eyeballs in red ink. With a national debt of more than $14 trillion, we’ve got to make sure spending is in line with the national interest,” Grassley told U.S. News and World Report.
The Mark Center is part of the Base Realignment and Closure plan which is shifting thousands of Department of Defense workers around Virginia and Maryland and is also criticized by some as being wasteful.
