I assume most of the troops won’t actually know that Trump’s Christmas present is actually just a check (no doubt with Trump’s name on it) using money already allocated by the Congress for housing supplements. In other words, they aen’t getting anything they weren’t already getting.
It would be nice if they could be informed that he’s just scamming them but I don’t know if that will actually happen:
President Donald Trump’s $1,776 checks for more than a million troops, announced Wednesday, come from Congressionally-allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members, a senior administration official confirmed.
During a prime-time TV address, Trump said he was “proud to announce” that “1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call ‘warrior dividend,’ before Christmas.” He added that to honor the nation’s founding, “we are sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that. And the checks are already on the way.”
The senior administration official told Defense One in an emailed statement late Wednesday evening that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon to “disburse $2.6 billion as a one-time basic allowance for housing supplement” to all eligible service members ranks 0-6 and below.
“Congress appropriated $2.9 billion to the Department of War to supplement the Basic Allowance for Housing entitlement within The One Big Beautiful Bill,” the senior official said. “Approximately 1.28 million active component military members and 174,000 Reserve component military members will receive this supplement.”
The GOP Congress will be fine with this even though it contravenes their appropriations by law. They’re fine with letting Trump spend money however he wants to. That way they don’t have to take responsibility for anything which is their raison d’etre.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!