Just two months after the promise of a Bastille Day parade sent Donald Trump’s aides scrambling to organize a last-minute trip to Paris, the president welcomed Emmanuel Macron at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. As he marveled at the French president’s show of “military might,” Trump made what seemed like an outlandish promise: “We’re going to have to try and top it.”

At the time, that promise was easy enough to write off—Trump, after all, is not known for his follow-through. But as The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, Trump was not exaggerating his commitment. “The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity, recounting a January 18 meeting between Trump and Pentagon leaders. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”

As the country with the most heavily armed—and most expensive—military in the world, America tends not to flaunt its sizable arsenal, instead discreetly dispatching ships to hover off the coasts of belligerent nations, or executing the occasional military intervention via drone strike. But with the notoriously self-congratulatory Trump as president, anything goes, and hours after the Post published its story, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed it. “President Trump is incredibly supportive of America’s great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe,” Sanders said. “He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation.” (The Pentagon, for what it is worth, is reportedly attempting to mitigate the parade’s political nature by suggesting it be held on Veterans Day—not Memorial Day or Independence Day, as the Trump administration has suggested—so that it coincides with the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I, a decidedly apolitical event. “That’s what everyone is hoping,” the military official added to the Post.)

If it occurs, the parade itself would be an obvious nod to Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, which a year into his presidency have not diminished. (“Can we call that treason? Why not?” he recently asked of Democratic lawmakers who did not applaud his State of the Union address.) But the bigger factor is cost. Experts told the Post that such a spectacle could run up a bill in the millions, and military officials told the outlet that it’s “unclear” where the money would come from. (America’s last military parade, which was held in 1991 to celebrate the end of the Gulf War, was funded largely by private donations.)

With the federal government’s budget currently locked in a continuing-resolution holding pattern, Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin warned that a parade may be impossible. “The continuing resolutions are absolutely not the way to go, especially as it relates to funding the Department of Defense. Cost would be a factor,” he told CNN on Tuesday, adding that he doesn’t “believe that we should have tanks and nuclear weapons going down Pennsylvania Avenue.” Edward King, president and founder of Defense Priorities, concurred, telling CNBC, “Given budget realities, the opportunity cost of a parade is too high to justify . . . math still applies to superpowers.”

In recent weeks, however, Trump’s Republican colleagues seem to have sidestepped that fact, pushing the national deficit to nearly $20 trillion dollars with budgetary demands for military and domestic spending. Congress’s current proposal would raise budget caps by about $300 billion over the next two years—“more than the three previous budget deals combined,” according to Politico. In other words, if the president wants to slip in a few extra million for some tanks, now seems like the opportune moment.