美国总统川普兑现了竞选诺言之一，把他今年第一季度的工资捐给了国家公园管理局。
白宫发言人斯派塞星期一在白宫例行记者会上向内政部长津克递交了一张数额为78,333.32美元的支票。
由亿万富商当选为总统的川普曾许下诺言说，他不拿总统工资。按照法律，他必须领取薪水，所以他如今把钱捐了出去。美国纳税人可以用这类捐赠抵税，有可能减少个人所得税。
这笔捐款也许是一种讲和礼。国家公园管理局的推特曾引起川普不满。那些推特照片把参加川普总统就职典礼的人群跟当年参加奥巴马总统就职典礼的人群进行了对照，让川普的观礼人数相形见绌。
国家公园管理局由内政部领导。按照川普的预算方案，内政部经费将被砍掉10亿多美元。
这笔慈善捐款并没有让川普环境政策的批评者开心。环保组织塞拉俱乐部称这是“做戏”。
塞拉俱乐部说：“如果唐纳德·川普真的有意帮助我们的公园，他应该试图停止把它们的经费大砍到历史最低水平。”
不过，内政部长津克说，总统的捐款决定让他感到“兴奋”。他说，他会用这笔钱来帮助支付国家公园25处战场遗址长期推迟的维修工作。在这些遗址，那些尚未解决的维修项目的费用大约总计2亿2千9百万美元。
U.S. President Donald Trump has followed up on one of his campaign promises and donated his salary for the first quarter of the year to the National Park Service.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Monday presented Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke with a check for $78,333,32, during a press briefing at the White House.
A billionaire businessman turned president, Trump had promised to forgo his presidential salary. By law he must be paid, so he is donating the money. U.S. taxpayers can write off such donations, potentially lowering their income taxes.
The gift may be a peace offering of sorts. Trump has tangled with the parks agency over its tweets, which unfavorably compared the size of his inauguration crowd with that of Barack Obama’s.
The National Park Service is part of the Department of the Interior, whose budget Trump has proposed cutting by more than $1 billion.
The charitable action did not appease the critics of Trump’s environmental policies. The Sierra Club environmental group called it a “stunt.”
“If Donald Trump is actually interested in helping our parks, he should stop trying to slash their budgets to historically low levels,” it said.
But Zinke said he’s “thrilled” at the president’s decision to give money to an Interior agency. He said he will use the money to help pay for long-deferred maintenance projects on the nation’s 25 battlefields. Outstanding maintenance projects on those sites amount to about $229 million.