Hegseth defends Trump’s request for $67B to fund Iran conflict

By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

Trump administration officials are working to convince U.S. lawmakers to support the White House’s request for $88 billion in new spending, mostly to finance the Iran conflict.

Yet Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and top military officer John Caine encountered a chilly reception Tuesday from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who questioned why lawmakers should authorize billions for military operations that Congress has legally ordered the Pentagon to halt.

“My Democratic colleagues and I will do absolutely everything to ensure that we do take care of our servicemembers and keep our country safe,” said committee Vice Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “But my colleagues and I cannot and will not support rubber-stamping a request to bankroll this war … The American people want to see a quick and strategic end to this war, not $70 billion of their tax dollars sent to keep it going.”

The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request includes roughly $67 billion to reimburse the costs of the ongoing Iran conflict and boost military capacity in general. Hegseth told the committee that the Pentagon’s most recent estimate of the conflict’s price tag is $37.5 billion.

“This request is an urgent, necessary injection of resources to address the immediate needs of the Department,” Hegseth told the committee. Without the supplemental funds, we will face critical shortfalls that threaten our ability to pay our Service members, replenish some of the equipment and munitions consumed during contingency operations, and sustain vital global operations without disruption.

“This is our last chance. If we don’t make critical investments in tech, computing, AI, and space, our adversaries, who are already making these investments, will outpace us on an exponential path,” he added. “We must adapt to be more flexible in the near term to meet emerging threats – necessitating this supplemental request.”

Several committee Democrats asked why the Pentagon is requesting additional funding when its proposed fiscal year 2027 budget is a historic $1.5 trillion and the department already received a substantial boost from Republicans’ 2025 budget reconciliation bill.

“You’ve told this committee that you’ve barely spent half of the $150 billion in reconciliation funding,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., asked Hegseth. “If you still have $75 billion available, why are you asking the American people to absorb the cost of a war they don’t support, instead of asking for transfer authority for unspent reconciliation funding?”

Hegseth said that the department is “implementing long-overdue changes” due to “underfunding” of the Pentagon during the previous Biden administration. Caine added that rapidly evolving technologies like AI have introduced “unprecedented strategic vulnerabilities,” necessitating “predictable and consistent funding” from Congress.

The committee hearing took place just days after the deaths of at least three more U.S. servicemembers in the Middle East, as well as hundreds of servicemembers wounded, as reported by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

Congress never authorized the initial U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in February, nor any of the administration’s military actions that followed.

President Donald Trump initially invoked the War Powers Act of 1973, which gives the president 60 days to conduct military operations without congressional approval. When that date passed, Trump declared a temporary ceasefire – which he argued reset the clock – despite continued military hostilities.

By the time the U.S. and Iran signed the 60-day peace framework in mid-June, enough Republicans in both chambers of Congress voted to pass a War Powers Resolution, a measure meant to prevent the president from further unauthorized military action.

With the ceasefire having collapsed, the Trump administration restarted military assaults and again used the argument that it is legally able to do so under the War Powers Act despite a legal order from Congress not to continue.

“I know that there’s a longstanding legal debate on this particular topic, but we certainly as a department share the position of the White House that we have all of the authorities necessary at this moment,” Hegseth told the committee.

Besides Pentagon funding, the administration’s war supplemental also asks Congress to authorize year-round E15 gasoline sales, loosen restrictions on hemp-derived cannabinoid products, and fund pensions for employees of a failed automotive company, among other measures.