Fact Check: Did Obama and Biden spend ‘hundreds of millions’ fixing Lincoln Reflecting Pool?

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump once again sparked online debate after criticizing the Biden and Obama administrations over government spending during a Cabinet meeting on May 27. Trump claimed the two administrations spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool project, only for it to fail.

The remarks came weeks after Trump announced plans to revamp the reflecting pool as part of his broader “Safe and Beautiful” campaign focused on Washington landmarks. Let’s fact check the claim.

Claim: Trump says Obama and Biden wasted ‘hundreds of millions’ on reflecting pool repairs

In April, President Donald Trump announced plans to revamp the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool by hiring a contractor to coat its massive granite basin, a project he said would cost around $1.5 million. During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, May 27, Trump criticized the efforts made under the administrations of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, claiming they had spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” trying to fix the site without success.

“You take a look. The Lincoln Memorial -- it was built, I guess, a little after the Lincoln Memorial. It's embarrassing. It was so horrible. It was filthy dirty. It was Biden,” Trump said.

He further added, “The Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work, and they failed. And we’ll be spending, you’ll give me a number, but I think it’s a very low number. It’s like in the number that we originally talked about.”

The reflecting pool, which stretches more than 2,000 feet, was originally built in the 1920s. Located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, it remains one of Washington’s most recognizable landmarks. The site is also historically significant as the location where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

Fact Check: Federal records do not support Trump’s spending claim

The claim made by President Donald Trump criticizing the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden over spending on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is false. The Obama administration spent at least $34 million on a major two-year reconstruction project completed in 2012, while no major repair work on the pool was carried out during the Biden administration.

Although Trump estimated the current restoration project would cost between $1.5 million and $2 million, federal records show contracts worth at least $14.8 million have already been awarded for the work so far.

The repairs completed during the Obama administration addressed several long-standing issues, including stagnant water, leakage, and the pool gradually sinking into the land dredged from the Potomac River during its original construction. The project redesigned the pool with a new circulation and filtration system using river water from the nearby Tidal Basin instead of city drinking water.

Officials also made the pool shallower to conserve water and tinted the bottom gray to create darker, more reflective water that better mirrored the Washington Monument. In addition, paved walkways were added around the site.

Federal spending records also show the government awarded at least $1.3 million in additional contracts connected to the project. However, the renovation efforts were not entirely successful, as the reflecting pool continued to experience leakage and significant algae growth in the years that followed.

Chuck Sams, who served as director of the National Park Service for most of the Biden administration, told the Associated Press that plans for a “full rehabilitation” of the pool were abandoned after cost estimates exceeded $100 million. He added that the pool was cleaned annually during Biden’s presidency to control algae buildup.