Various circulating memes peg the cost to the government for impeaching President Trump to be around $40 million. Those numbers are demonstrably false. The actual cost through December 2019 was about $3 million to $4 million. (The cited costs include what witnesses spent on lawyers, which the government does not pay for, but excludes the overtime wages for security at the Capitol, so the actual number may be less.) The marginal cost for extra security, staff overtime at Congress, and so forth from December to the trial itself might be another $3 million, putting the government's total expenditures on impeachment at $6 million to $7 million above what Congress would have spent anyway.
That's a lot of money, until you put it into perspective. The president who told us that he expected to be so busy that he would have no time to play golf has left the White House to golf, mainly at his own resorts, more than 100 times during his presidency. Through November 2019 he spent 223 days of his presidency -- about one day out of five -- at a golf resort. Each of his golf trips away from Washington to one of his resorts costs the government about $3 million.
In other words, President Trump could pay for the entire federal cost of the impeachment and trial simply by skipping golf for two weekends. Fore!