Congressional Republicans are confronting serious doubts they can pass Iran war funding on their own, especially as the potential price tag balloons into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The alternative — relying on a handful of Democrats to push it through the Senate — doesn’t look any more likely as Middle East hostilities expand, energy prices rise and more Democratic lawmakers dig in against an unpopular war.
In recent weeks, some in the GOP floated using the party-line budget reconciliation process to give the Pentagon a slug of new money without needing to gather 60 votes in the Senate. But the revelation that a war funding request could reach $200 billion has quickly cooled those hopes, given the political complications of finding offsets for the spending and the procedural gyrations it would require.
“It’s such a contortion to make things fit in reconciliation that there’s probably a preference for regular order,” Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in an interview.
The fresh doubts come on top of long-running warnings from at-risk Republican lawmakers that pursuing another party-line bill could force them into a politically painful position in the months ahead of the midterms. Spending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars on the war could lead Republicans to further slash safety-net programs as they did in last year’s “big, beautiful bill” — creating a messaging bonanza for Democrats.
“It’s not going to happen,” one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said of a second reconciliation bill. “Certain people have to talk about it as a possibility and keep the issue alive.”
But many House Republicans argue that a party-line bill is the only viable option to deliver the war funding President Donald Trump wants.
As they quietly consider whether to send more U.S. troops to the Middle East, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth each declined Thursday to dispute reports that the Pentagon is seeking a $200 billion request after it was first reported by the Washington Post.
“It’s a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy-top,” the president said in the Oval Office, adding that the military needs “vast amounts of ammunition” to fulfill its mission in Iran and elsewhere around the globe.
House GOP leaders and committee chairs discussed the possibility of adding military funding to a potential party-line bill during a closed-door meeting at their policy retreat in Florida last week.
“Can we accomplish his priorities in regular order in appropriations? I think it would be unlikely, because I don’t think Democrats are interested in supporting military spending right now,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), a longtime reconciliation cheerleader, said in an interview this week.
At the moment, “unlikely” is underselling the depth of Democrats’ aversion to funding the war. Even those senators who aren’t summarily ruling out support for an emergency funding bill say they would not possibly entertain it under the current circumstances.
“I’ve got to see the details,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. “To be honest, it’s going to be hard for me to support it because I think this war was a mistake, wasn’t justified, hasn’t been supported by the Congress.”
The sky-high $200 billion figure — which exceeds the Pentagon funding in last year’s GOP reconciliation bill and is higher than any supplemental funding bill enacted in the post-9/11 era — has some Republican hard-liners eager to pursue another budget reconciliation bill. Many argue it would pave the way for big cuts to domestic spending they oppose, including potentially Medicaid and other social programs.
“It would be very difficult to pass a very large supplemental without it being paid for,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus. “There are hundreds of billions of dollars we can still save in fraud, waste and abuse in reconciliation.”
Senate GOP appropriators are hoping to build bipartisan buy-in for Pentagon funding and see disaster aid and farm assistance as potential sweeteners for Democrats. Others are now floating attaching Ukraine aid, something with broad Democratic support and uneven GOP buy-in.
Still others, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), simply want to dare Democrats to vote against funding the military. “I’d hate to be the senator who denied the request … because you’ve got troops in harm’s way,” he said.
So far, most Democrats do not appear to be cowed by the threats or interested in horse-trading.
“Look, pinning us against our own interests isn’t something I’ll support,” said Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), a strong advocate for Ukraine aid.
House GOP leaders declined to tip their hand Thursday as they awaited a formal request from the White House, as well as Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget plan. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said war funding would be a matter of “negotiation” at some point, “but it hasn’t started yet.”
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) cautioned that the discussions are “all speculative” for the time being while acknowledging reconciliation “might be the only way” to get Pentagon money through the Senate.
Across the Capitol, top Senate Republicans aren’t yet seriously considering trying to pass war funding on party lines — underscoring the longstanding split between House and Senate GOP leaders over how far they should go to pursue an election-year reconciliation bill.
The reticence among some Senate Republicans, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private thinking, is that there isn’t yet a clear proposal that could get 50 GOP votes. Conservatives, they say, are floating an array of proposals that don’t have broader buy-in and could run afoul of the Senate’s strict reconciliation guidelines. And they expect a second bill would reopen the party’s old wounds over offsetting spending cuts.
“I’ll try and insist that we pay for it,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), one of the party’s loudest deficit hawks.
But without a party-line package, Senate Republicans will have to convince enough Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold, and they appear to be nowhere close.
“This administration needs to tell Congress definitely what they’re doing and how long this is going to take,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Appropriations Democrat. “We’re not going to write them a blank check.”
Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
