“President Obama, President Biden spent much more than $1 million on the reflecting lake... They spent, some people say, $200 million.”

Press gaggle at the White House ballroom construction site

The Obama-era reconstruction cost $34 million, not hundreds of millions. The Interior Department announced in August 2012 that the reflecting pool reconstruction, begun in November 2010, was made possible with $34 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. An independent account of the project gives the same figure for the 2010 to 2012 renovation. Twelve days before he said hundreds of millions, standing at the pool itself, he gave the figure as $38 million.

No document supports the larger numbers. No opened source records any Biden-era expenditure on the pool at all, so the gap between $34 million and $200 million rests on the absence of any such record rather than on a document putting the figure lower. At the same May event he also said the two administrations spent over $100 million, a third figure in one answer.