As the Trump administration eyes a $200 billion funding request for the war in Iran, Republicans on Capitol Hill are already signaling the path to passage won’t exactly be easy.
With most Democrats firmly opposed to a supplemental — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the proposal “preposterous” — Republicans would likely need to advance any spending package on their own, setting up a politically fraught test of the party’s alignment with President Donald Trump.
And at least one Republican is already a firm “no.”
“I’m not for the war, and so I’m not for funding more of the war,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a noted critic of the Trump administration and the Iran war. “I think we should end the war as soon as possible.”
At the heart of the GOP divide over a supplemental are conservative lawmakers. They are insisting that any new spending must be offset with cuts elsewhere — a demand that could complicate leadership’s plans.
“They want to get it? Find a pay-for,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., told MS NOW. Last week, the Colorado Republican emphatically told reporters she wouldn’t vote for a supplemental.
“I am a ‘no’ on any war supplementals,” she added last week. “I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard-earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live.”
That’s a stance echoed across the House Freedom Caucus.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the HFC’s chairman, said the package would “have to be paid for,” while Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., said he was “happy” to support a supplemental, “as long as we offset it with cuts.”
Asked whether the package had to be offset, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., another member of the Freedom Caucus, was blunt.
“Of course,” he said.
But it’s not just House Republicans. This week, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told reporters he now wants offsets for every bit of new spending.
“We’ve got $39 trillion worth of debt,” Scott said. “We’re over a trillion dollars a year in interest. We have got to stop increasing our debt.”
The demand for offsets come as top Republicans say they’re looking to pass a war supplemental through budget reconciliation, a process that would allow the party to bypass Democratic opposition, but one that comes with strict rules and guidelines that could take months to complete
“The first job of the federal government is to protect the people, but Democrats, I don’t think we can count on their votes to do the simple, basic responsibility of Congress,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said this week, adding that a supplemental would “probably” be part of reconciliation.
That approach, however, comes with some political risk, with Republicans then assuming responsibility for passage of the package — and blame if it goes down or is unpopular with Americans.
Last year’s reconciliation bill, which extended tax cuts and provided billions more for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, was partially offset with more than a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and Affordable Care Act programs. Those choices have polled poorly, hurt the health care industry, and are projected to add nearly $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Now, as Republicans prepare for another round of reconciliation, lawmakers are starting to ask where new cuts would come from.
At the moment, Republicans are pointing to a favorite target: “waste, fraud and abuse.” The problem with going after that three-headed GOP bogeyman, however, is that there may not be nearly enough savings for a $200 billion price tag.
Asked where he’d like to see Republicans extract cuts, Steube said there are a plethora of options.
“There’s $200 billion in the whole scheme of, what was it, $3.5 trillion a year? It shouldn’t be too hard to find,” he said.
Harris similarly argued there’s “hundreds of billions of fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government,” though he didn’t name a specific target.
Other lawmakers are floating more unconventional ideas.
“Iran should pay for it,” Perry said. “We’re ending a 45-year war and they got plenty of oil, so giddy up.”
Despite the tough talk about deficit spending, there’s plenty of reason to doubt that Republicans would actually hold the fiscal line on a war supplemental — particularly if Trump pressures lawmakers to support the package.
Paul, for one, predicted that Republicans wouldn’t offset a supplemental.
“And I think the biggest threat to our national security is not Iran; I think it’s our national debt,” he said.
For another, Republicans have relented before on reconciliation.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a former Freedom Caucus chair who’s now running for governor, told MS NOW he would like offsets for a supplemental — “I would really, really, really like to see a pay-for,” he said — but he refused to say it was a “red line.”
“I don’t want to use the word ‘red line’ because I don’t — I need to see what the whole package is supposed to look like,” Biggs said.
As conversations get underway about how to pass a supplemental for Iran, lawmakers are still waiting for the official request from the administration. The Pentagon has not yet sent the request to Congress, and lawmakers are unsure when it may hit Capitol Hill.
“I’d like to see it,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told MS NOW. And asked when it would be delivered, he said he didn’t even know how much the administration was going to ask for yet — “much less any pay-fors.”
Until then, many Republicans are holding off on taking any firm positions.
As Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Miss., said, “Let’s see what they send over.”
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