In the midst of a confrontation over censorship between pool reporters and the White House, the Obama administration Monday night disappeared a section of the president’s comments at a fundraiser in Chicago.

“One of the nice things about being home is actually that it’s a little bit like a time capsule,” the president said at an event Monday evening at the Windy City home of supporter Barbara Manilow. “Because Michelle and I and the kids, we left so quickly that there’s still junk on my desk, including some unpaid bills (laughter) — I think eventually they got paid — but they’re sort of stacked up. And messages, newspapers and all kinds of stuff.”

The president’s joke, transcribed by pool reporter Jennifer Epstein of Politico, appears to be an innocuous if lame attempt to position the man in control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as just a regular Joe like you and me. But it was a collection agency too far for the White House press office, which removed it from the White House transcript.

“​The White House’s transcript of tonight’s DNC fundraiser omits the president’s reference to unpaid bills being stacked up on his desk at home in Chicago,” Epstein wrote in a followup pool dispatch. “I included a partial quote in the pool report earlier, but in the interest of transparency, especially since this was a print pool only event, I’m sharing the full quote, as I transcribed and checked just now, and as it was in the transcript. Thanks to AP’s Josh Lederman for pointing out the discrepancy.”

In the official White House transcript, the president’s comment reads: “there’s still junk on my desk, including some — newspapers and all kinds of stuff.​”

The elision comes as the White House’s overbearing efforts to control the flow of information about the president have alienated a formerly friendly press corps. Pool reporters are bristling at White House demands for changes to pool reports, and a group of poolers are experimenting with other avenues of distribution for the reports, which now are distributed through a White House server.

In fact, Obama’s unpaid bills are considerably higher than could be contained in a few bills on a desk in Chicago. The federal government’s unfunded liabilities are estimated to be anywhere between $84 trillion and $220 trillion, while the Treasury Department estimates total federal debt outstanding at $17.9 trillion.