NEVER CHANGE, BARACK: Obama Presidential Center deposits just $1M into $470M reserve fund aimed to protect taxpayers.

When the Obama Foundation snagged a sweetheart deal to build its beleaguered Obama Presidential Center on a Chicago public park, it pledged to create a $470 million reserve fund to spare taxpayers should the project ever go belly up.

But new tax filings show the foundation has only deposited $1 million into the fund and has not added to it in years, with critics saying the empty promise could potentially leave Chicagoans on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Under its agreement with the city, the foundation was required to create the fund, known as an endowment, in order to take control of the sprawling 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park — often described as Chicago’s Central Park equivalent — where the complex is now slowly rising.

The foundation ultimately secured the public land for just $10 in 2018, under a 99-year deal.

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.

Exit quote: “It comes as the Obama Foundation’s latest tax return shows its finances under strain with revenue swinging wildly year to year, fundraising shortfalls and unfulfilled donor pledges.”

Th Obama Foundation has spent about $600 million on the $350 million brutalist monument to the Anointed One’s ego — with a reported $250 million to go.

At last count, anyway.