Feds Want $2.5 Billion For Lavish Marble Palace As Americans Can’t Afford Homes

The Federal Reserve website has a freshly updated page explaining the current renovations to two buildings, in the interest of transparency.

The page neglects to mention the cost of renovations.

The price of the project amounts to $ 2.5 billion, according to the director of the Management and Budget Office (OMB) Russell Vought. This represents a modest proposal of $ 1.9 billion at the start, according to Chairman of the Tim Scott senatorial banking committee from South Carolina.

President Jerome Powell has greatly managed the Fed.

While continuing to manage a deficit since exercise 23 (the first time in the history of the Fed), the Fed is of course the renovation budget of its head office.

Now, up to $ 2.5 billion, around $ 700 million compared to its initial cost.… pic.twitter.com/lhk4cwlavf

– Russ Vought (@Russvought) July 10, 2025

“”At a time when the Fed directs an exploitation deficit, maintains high interest rates and receives a significant public examination, it is necessary to ask whether the so-called “ Taj Mahal, near the national project of the shopping center ” is in the best interest of the board of directors and the public, “questionedLes Ames Blair, Deputy Chief of the White House. (Related: Alan Rechtschaffen: Trump is right. It is time for a common sense commission to rethink the Fed)

Blair’s instinct is correct, if it is too generous with a mile. The reconstruction of the Taj Mahal today would only work between $ 400 and $ 650 million, estimates the Times of India.

For a non -hypothetical construction cost, consider the Capitol Visitor Center. The project was completed at the end of 2008 with a budget of $ 621 million.

Consult the media inherited for an overview of the excuses of the Fed. Prices. Change of contracts with construction companies. Bad soil. Inflation – A particularly fun scapegoat for chief inflation producers.

The Fed digital path tells another story. As early as 2021, four years after the renovations were approved by the Council of Governors, the office of the Inspector General (OIG) sounded the alarm on project management.

“The Board of Directors can improve the management of its renovation projects,” reads the OIG audit entitled in an optimistic way. The audit cites failures to “establish the governance of projects” for “key planning decisions”.

In the middle a lot of corporate jargon, the audit offers this insight: “A senior civil servant said that the project team had not developed all aspects of a project plan because it could not determine certain planning information … before allocating the [architectural and engineering] contract and did not have much time to plan. »»

The time has enabled the Fed to plan some common sense equipment in their final renovation examination of 2021 provided to the National Capital Planning Commission.

Among those presented in the document: a large atrium with “high -performance high performance frozen light”, an outdoor soup terrace, a roof terrace, renovations in private dining rooms and an extension that accompanies it to a private elevator. According to the Fed website, certain features, such as the new outdoor water fountains, have been chopped in the intermediate years.

President Donald Trump visited the construction site Thursday when he was accompanied by the president of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell.

President Donald J. Trump visits the renovation and new construction of the federal reserve building 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/wlw8srnqnt

– The White House (@Whitehouse) July 24, 2025

“I see a very luxurious situation that takes place, let’s say it that way,” said Trump.

Indeed. The sumptuous renovations of the Fed are sure to arouse an instinctive disgust among the Americans who feel definitively buying a single, modest house. (Related: the housing market half as affordable as only three years ago)

The median age of house buyers for the first time slipped 29 years in 1981 to 38 years in 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The overall number of house buyers for the first time was a historic hollow in 2024, with an annual share of only 24%.

But what is a house for it if it is not equipped with high performance wells and a private elevator?

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @Natsandovaldc