WASHINGTON – Congress failed to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to conduct war on Iran this week, but it will have another chance to try to influence the course of those escalating military strikes.
The “big beautiful” bill Congress approved last summer boosted the Pentagon’s budget to nearly $1 trillion. However, the Defense Department is burning through its stocks of precision weapons at a record clip in a war that some defense industry analysts say is costing $1 billion a day.
So, the White House is expected to soon ask Congress for another $50 billion or so to continue to prosecute the war. And that might cost Trump some concessions – or at the very least require the White House to inform lawmakers of the strategy, goals and duration of the war.
“We have the power of the purse,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, D-4th District, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. “And maybe by the power of the purse we could get to the negotiating table.”
The need for more money to conduct the war is likely the only way Congress can have any influence over the Iran war. Attempts in the U.S. House and Senate to approve resolutions that would rein in Trump’s authority to carry out the war failed this week, largely along party lines.
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But to pass any new military funding measure through the Senate, the support of at least seven Democrats will be needed to overcome the filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that Americans “don’t want a war that leads to lost American lives and that costs billions and billions of taxpayer dollars.”
The request for more war funds could also run into trouble in the closely divided U.S. House.
Procuring additional funds for an escalating war effort, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday could last eight weeks, would require cuts in other sections of the federal budget.
“(The war) is going to affect every single person in this country, it will affect economic security as well as national security,” McCollum predicted.
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