The Pentagon is seeking an additional $80 Billion from Congress to cover the cost of the Iran war, as US President Donald Trump's ratings fall and Americans face steeper economic pressure, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
While an official request by the White House Office of Management and Budget has yet to be made to Congress, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg have been lobbying senators for the funds.
Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg claimed in his conversations with several congressional committees that the funding request has been sent to the OMB.
The Associated Press reported that the $80 billion request comes on top of the White House's request to increase the Pentagon budget to $1.5 trillion, "a nearly 50% increase over the current fiscal year’s funding levels."
While the $80 billion request is far lower than the Pentagon's initial $200 billion estimate floated before the war started, it still exceeds the $29 billion estimate that Hegseth provided to Congress during last month's testimony.
The money, Hegseth said, would reportedly be directed toward "replacing munitions and repairing equipment, but also included operational costs to keep forces deployed," according to the report.
We need to replenish the military stockpile, but also consider the American family
Many legislators have provided a wide range of opinions on the matter, ranging from opposition to full support for the additional funding.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray (Washington) told Hegseth in a hearing last month, “You’re spending families’ hard-earned tax dollars on a war that many strongly oppose.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) doesn't buy the current supplement figure and expects the actual price tag could be much higher, the AP reported.
Alternatively, Senate Majority Leader John Thune anticipates that the funding request will move through Congress smoothly.
“We need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to replenish, resupply a lot our munitions that have been depleted, not only just with what’s happening with Iran, but prior to that."
Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana also said that he thinks that the stockpiles should be replenished.
“To me it’s less about the war, it’s more about the stockpiles. I would sell it to my state as an investment in our defense industrial base, reshoring defense production to Indiana.”
Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island) told the AP that funding for an Iran-related supplemental bill can’t move forward separately and needs to be part of a broader bipartisan deal on overall defense and non-defense spending.
Hegseth declined to answer questions from reporters as he walked through the Capitol, but has previously framed the cost of confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions as necessary, saying the real question is “what is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon,” while acknowledging that such a policy “comes with cost."