The Pentagon confirmed Friday that it accepted an anonymous $130 million donation to help offset the cost of troops’ salaries and benefits during the shutdown.
The Defense Department accepted the donation under its “general gift acceptance authority” on Thursday, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.
“The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits. We are grateful for this donor’s assistance after Democrats opted to withhold pay from troops,” Parnell said.
Trump had announced the donation in remarks at the White House Thursday, saying a “patriot” and “friend of mine” whose name he withheld said he would like to contribute to any shortfall in funds caused by the shutdown.
“He called us the other day and he said, ‘I’d like to contribute any shortfall you have because of the Democrat shutdown. I’d like to contribute, personally contribute, any shortfall you have with the military, because I love the military and I love the country.’ ... And today, he sent us a check for $130 million,” Trump said.
A spokesman for Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Defense, said the anonymous nature of the donation raised concerns.
"Using anonymous donations to fund our military raises troubling questions of whether our own troops are at risk of literally being bought and paid for by foreign powers," the spokesman said.
The $130 million donation, however, will hardly make a dent in the billions of dollars the government spends every two weeks to cover troops’ pay and benefits.
Basic pay and allowance for the troops amounts to about $6.5 billion per cycle, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Todd Harrison previously told NBC News.
The Senate on Thursday failed to advance a GOP bill to pay active-duty service members and other federal workers deemed essential amid the shutdown. Democrats offered an alternative to pay all federal workers affected by the shutdown, but that, too, failed.
As the shutdown continues with no end in sight, where the other $6.37 billion required to pay the troops every two weeks would come from is not immediately clear. President Donald Trump on Oct. 11 ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use $8 billion of unobligated funds from the Pentagon’s research and development account to pay troops in mid-October.
