WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is asking Congress for around $80 billion, with the bulk of that money intended to pay for the ongoing U.S. war against Iran. The request adds to an already massive military spending push being sought by President Donald Trump.
While the White House Office of Management and Budget has not yet formally submitted the request to Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including on Monday evening. A senior deputy defense secretary briefed senators on the Iran funding request last week, according to two individuals who were familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the developments.
The push for this level of war funding is unfolding at a politically sensitive time. Many lawmakers are skeptical of the deal Trump reached with Iran to end the conflict, and uncertain about what comes next. The White House has also put forward a sweeping $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request — nearly 50% more than what is currently being spent in this fiscal year.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he anticipates a supplemental spending request from the administration related to the war, and when it comes, “we’ll work through it and see where the votes are.”
“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,” said Thune, R-S.D.
Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg spoke with multiple senators about the proposal through phone calls last week and notified congressional committees that the $80 billion request had been forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.
The funding package is expected to face significant resistance from lawmakers who opposed Trump’s decision to go to war in the first place and are reluctant to increase Pentagon spending while Americans continue to struggle with a high cost of living.
“You’re spending families’ hard-earned tax dollars on a war that many strongly oppose,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told Hegseth during a Senate hearing last month.
Beyond the Iran-related funding, Republicans are hoping to secure roughly $1.1 trillion through the standard appropriations process — which typically requires bipartisan support — and an additional $350 billion through a mostly party-line vote later this summer.
The $80 billion figure is significantly higher than the $29 billion war cost estimate Hegseth provided to Congress during his testimony last month. That earlier figure mostly covered replacing munitions and repairing equipment, along with operational costs for deployed forces, but did not account for repairing or rebuilding U.S. military facilities damaged in the region.
The figure is also well below the $200 billion the Pentagon initially floated as a cost estimate when the war began. An early projection put the price of just the first week of fighting at $11.3 billion.
Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a member of Democratic party leadership, said he believes the final price tag could end up being far greater than $80 billion. Schatz said he hasn’t polled fellow Democrats on whether there is appetite for an Iran-focused spending bill, “but I haven’t found anyone who wants to do this.”
Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana took a different view, saying, “To me it’s less about the war, it’s more about the stockpiles.” Banks added, “I would sell it to my state as an investment in our defense industrial base, reshoring defense production to Indiana.”
Sen. Jack Reed, the leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that any Iran war supplemental funding cannot be handled on its own. He said it needs to come after lawmakers from both parties agree on an overall spending level for both defense and non-defense programs — “then the rest of this would follow pretty quickly,” Reed said.
Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, who serves on the Appropriations subcommittee on Defense, said he has been working with the administration to expand the spending package to include disaster relief funds for California, Hawaii, and other states hit hard by wildfires and severe weather, as well as agricultural assistance for farmers. “I think that’s the kind of combination that could pass,” Hoeven said.
Hegseth declined to answer questions from reporters late Monday as he walked through the Capitol. However, during a Senate hearing last month, he responded to questions about war costs by asking rhetorically, “What is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon?” He acknowledged the president’s choice to confront the threat of a nuclear Iran “comes with cost — and we recognize that.”
