Report: Taxpayers Could End Up Footing the Bill for Obama Presidential Library
Lowell Cauffiel 27 Sep 2025
Chicago taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars for the costly Obama Presidential Center after new tax filings show the Obama Foundation has only deposited $1 million into its promised $470 million reserve fund.
That’s the conclusion of an in-depth report by Fox News as it looked at what it described as a “sweetheart deal” to create the reserve fund “to spare taxpayers should the project ever go belly up.”
The center will serve as Obama’s presidential library.
According to the report:
Under its agreement with the city, the [Obama] foundation was required to create the fund, known as an endowment, to take control of a sprawling 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park — often described as Chicago’s Central Park equivalent — where the complex is now slowly rising.
…
But when former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama turned the sod at the site in September 2021, just $1 million — or 0.21% of the pledged funds — had been deposited into the endowment, and that figure has remained unchanged ever since.
An endowment is typically a large sum of of money meant to earn enough interest each year to cover operating costs without touching the principle in order to avoid needing funding from other sources.
Also according to Fox News’s report, the “use agreement” hands over “exclusive control” of the land to the Obama Foundation “for nearly a century in exchange for $10.”
more
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/09/27/report-taxpayers-could-end-up-footing-bill-obama-presidential-library/
