Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee pressed U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine on Tuesday, as the pair requested nearly $70 billion to fund the Iran war.
Democrats and some Republicans on the panel expressed skepticism about the conflict, with Democrats accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of blundering into a war of choice without congressional authorization.
“We have no outcome—at least no realistic outcome—in sight,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hegseth said that Trump should be praised for “having the courage to ensure that crazy Islamists can’t have a nuclear weapon” and blamed the Biden administration for appeasing Iran.
“Your fallback to the Biden administration is just a very obvious excuse for what I think is probably, as you have described so often, gross negligence,” Reed replied.
“You did not fully inform the president that you would be in a situation where the Strait of Hormuz could be effectively closed, oil prices could surge and, effectively, the Iranians could maintain their ability to strike back as they are right now,” he said.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed in recent days in Iranian attacks around the Middle East, including two who were killed in an Iranian attack on a U.S. base in Jordan and a third who was killed in Iraq during the controlled demolition of an Iranian drone.
Another unidentified service member is missing in action in the conflict in which 18 American troops have been killed so far.
Republicans on the committee focused largely on whether the supplemental funding request, including $67 billion for the Pentagon, was sufficient to defeat Iran and the consequences of potentially withdrawing American forces.
“We haven’t finished the job,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “Is this enough money to get the job done, or is this going to just get us far enough until we’ve got to come back in here?”
“This is as serious as four heart attacks and a stroke,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.
The House and the Senate have both passed non-binding resolutions expressing disapproval of the conflict under the War Powers Act but have so far declined to legally restrict Trump’s powers.
One of the Republicans who voted for the Senate version of the war powers resolution, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), asked Hegseth about the president’s legal authority to conduct the war beyond the 60-day limit envisioned by the War Powers Act.
“I’m concerned about this sequence, because you have a situation where the claim essentially allows the president to extinguish the war powers clock just at the moment that it becomes legally inconvenient through a declaration of temporary ceasefire, then it’s reset, avoiding the congressional authorization that the Constitution requires and the War Powers Act intends,” she said.
Polling suggests that the war against Iran is deeply unpopular among the American electorate. In a Washington Post/Ipsos survey from July 8-13, 68% of Americans said that the war was “not worth fighting,” against just 28% who said that it was.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Democratic senators repeatedly asked Hegseth about claims that he and Trump had made declaring “victory” over Iran and claiming that the Islamic Republic had been defeated just days into a conflict that has continued for months.
“You will not answer whether your statement made on the 14th day of the war—that Iran’s military had been ‘destroyed and made combat ineffective’—was a truthful statement to the American people, as you sit here and ask for tens of billions more for the conflict,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said.
“It has been a historic and effective campaign against the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth frequently responded to hostile questions flatly or with a smile, but erupted at Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), when Peters described the war effort as a failure.
“Shame on you and others who call this a quagmire and a failure, and then you want to turn around and say you support the war fighter,” Hegseth said. “When will you show some leadership and stand up to your fellow Democrats, who won’t fund the troops, who can play partisan politics while you won’t give us the money?”
“You won’t show any political courage to actually fund our department, because you have Trump derangement syndrome and can’t actually commit to anything meaningful,” he said.
“You, sir, are the failure, not the men and women who are on that front line,” Peters replied. “It’s not a question of money. It’s a question of leadership and understanding what it takes to actually win.”
“Political cowardice of Democrats who won’t fund the troops,” Hegseth said in response, in his final remark of the hearing.
