Getting Congress To Pay For The Iran War Won't Be An Easy Sell

The war in Iran is tearing through the Pentagon’s budget at nearly $1 billion a day, but lawmakers are in no rush to approve more money for the Trump administration’s expanding Middle East conflict.

Top Republicans say the White House hasn’t made the case that it’s facing any financial difficulties with the war, so don’t feel pressure to boost the Pentagon’s $1 trillion budget. And Democrats are unlikely to support the plan at all, which would make securing the votes to pass a supplemental package an uphill climb.

That leaves the White House with a difficult task, particularly in a fraught midterm election year. Administration officials will have to spend significant time and political capital to push through a hugely expensive supplemental spending bill — for a war that's largely unpopular with the American people — even as the administration tries to burnish its affordability bona fides. And the sluggish timetable means any extra Iran war money likely runs into the president's plans to supersize the defense budget next year.

“I don’t think there is any urgency at this moment,” said Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel. “The urgency is in starting to educate Congress as to why we need a supplemental at all. Once we do that, it'll make passing it easier.”

Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said the supplemental package “is still coming together” and won’t arrive on Capitol Hill until the end of the month at the earliest.

But Congress won’t act on it right away, he said. And key appropriators said it could take weeks — or months — to get the funding request passed.

Fellow appropriator Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said he is anxious to get lawmakers reviewing the supplemental request, but predicted that passage “will not happen quickly.”

He pointed to the Pentagon’s massive funding package approved last year as evidence that the military won’t face financial problems anytime soon. “Even if the department doesn’t need the money right away, it would be good for Congress to have oversight on how it is being spent there,” Moran said.

Acting Pentagon budget chief Jay Hurst said Thursday that $11 billion is a “ballpark number” for just the first week of the military campaign against Iran.

Once Congress does begin to weigh the proposal, Senate Democrats have a veto of their own on the legislation — if they can stick together. At least seven Democratic senators are needed to reach the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to advance major bills, meaning a unified caucus can block additional funding.

And at least one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said he would oppose any Iran supplemental. He said he is hearing from farmers in his state impacted by rising oil costs that stem from the war — and thinks Congress should be focused on domestic issues.

“I'm against borrowing money from China to finance the war in the Middle East,” Paul said. “We've got a lot of problems in our country that we need to fix.”

Paul’s opposition means Senate Majority Leader John Thune would need at least eight Democrats to cross party lines on the issue. But most Democrats say they’re not going to endorse more money for a war they oppose, particularly after the Pentagon received an extra $150 billion last year as part of the GOP-passed budget reconciliation measure.

“There will be broad resistance in the Democratic Caucus to allowing a supplemental to serve as a back door authorization of war, because the president has still never given an address to the nation explaining this conflict,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat on the panel that controls Pentagon spending.

But time may not be on the administration’s side. Recent polls show Americans are skeptical of the war. President Donald Trump’s MAGA base is concerned about taking the focus off domestic issues. And the costs are mounting at a blistering pace as American forces use high-priced munitions and engage in thousands of hours of strikes with gas-guzzling aircraft.

Senate Armed Services ranking member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said the chances for passing a multibillion-dollar supplemental depend on the war’s economic impact and battlefield success at the time of the vote.

“A lot of it depends upon the environment,” he said. “If we're still seeing incredible increases in gas prices and we're seeing the conflict getting more costly, particularly in terms of casualties, I think people will be very reluctant.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) acknowledged the potential for a political fight, but also said Congress can’t simply push a supplemental bill for Iran off indefinitely.

“We're there, and we have to sustain it,” he said. “The last thing we want to do is not have the resources to keep the region as settled as possible when you have 40,000 personnel there on a full-time basis."