The estimated cost of the military parade requested by President
Donald Trump has risen again, this time to as much as $92 million,
according to a defense official.
The cost of the parade, scheduled
for Nov. 10 in Washington, was initially reported as $12 million, and
was based on the cost of the victory parade held in the capital after
the 1991 Gulf War, said the officials.
The Washington Post estimated the
cost of the 1991 victory parade as
$8 million.
In February, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told Congress the price could be $10 million to $30 million.
The
defense official told NBC News that the internal estimate of the cost
of this fall's parade rose to $25 million after adjusting for more than
25 years of inflation. But that estimate did not take into account
expenses borne by other federal agencies and some nonmilitary line
items.
The $92 million figure,
first reported by CNBC, is the current uppermost estimate, said the official, and includes security, transportation and other expenses.
As NBC News first reported,
serious planning for the parade began in June, four months after Trump directed the Defense Department to organize it.
"There is only one person who wants this parade," said a senior U.S. official at the time, referring to Trump.
Trump got the idea for the parade while viewing France's Bastille Day Parade in July 2017.
"We're going to have to try to top it," he later told French President Emmanuel Macron.
By January,
Trump was floating the idea with military leaders and in late February, he made it official with a memo to Defense Secretary James Mattis.
A
March memo laid out the skeleton of a plan:
a parade from the White House to the Capitol to include only wheeled
vehicles (because tanks could damage the streets), capped by a big
display of air power and vintage aircraft, with themes including
veterans, women in the military and medal of honor recipients.
Read more: Trump's military parade in Washington may cost $92 million
