The Trump Administration is asking for an extra $200 billion for its operations in Iran. That number is in addition to the $1 trillion defense department budget already authorized. The request also comes as the evidence seems to indicate that the Administration is seriously thinking about sending ground troops into the battle.
Regardless of how one defines the threats to US national security, it seems clear that the US already spends an incredible amount of money on the ability to wage war. It is hard to assess how realistic this sum is given that the US and its allies already spend significantly more than their primary opponents.
More importantly, Trump is asking for 20% more to prosecute a war that has not been approved by Congress, despite the Constitution’s clear delegation of the power to declare war to the Congress.
The Congress should refuse to authorize the money.
Trump claims that he the power to wage war because his authority as Commander in Chief gives him the right to do so in the face of an “imminent” threat, which assumes that the Congress might not have the necessary time to declare war.
That claim is nonsense. Israel and the US had been panning this war for months before the first bomb was dropped. The plans to attack Iran were not created suddenly in 2026. They were built on years of contingency planning, sharpened by the June 2025 war, and finalized in the months leading up to February 2026 as diplomacy collapsed. Moreover, the “imminence” the asserted Iranian attack was based upon Trump’s assertion that Iran was “weeks” away from developing a bomb. According to FactCheck:
“A week before the recent military operation, on Feb. 21, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was more definitive in describing a time frame for Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Witkoff said in a Fox News interview that while Iran says that its nuclear capability is “about their civil program … they’ve been enriching well beyond the number that you need for civil nuclear. It’s up to 60%. They are probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material, and that’s really dangerous.” But experts told us it would likely take months for Iran to enrich uranium to that level and then much longer before the “bomb-making material” could be made into a weapon.
“Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization that provides analysis on arms control and national security issues, told us that “it is clear that it would take Iran years to fully rebuild its enrichment plants” that were bombed in June 2025. ‘It is possible that Iran may have a very small number of operational centrifuges somewhere undisclosed,’ Kimball said. ‘But it would still take months for a smaller number of centrifuges to accomplish what thousands of centrifuges at these major facilities could’ve done,’ which would be to enrich small amounts of uranium to weapons-grade level and then turn it into metal to be used for a weapon. ‘It would take longer to fashion a nuclear explosive device.’”
Trump has no authority to wage war under these circumstances, and Congress should assert its Constitutional role. It runs the risk of implicitly declaring war by passing this supplemental budget which is targeted toward military operations against Iran. In the same way, President Lyndon Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to justify the war in Vietnam, even in the absence of a Declaration of War.
If the supplemental budget is not approved, the Republicans will argue that the action will jeopardize the safety of American troops. That argument is ridiculous. We can put the budget request in context with other states:
First, the Department of Defense has a budget of over a trillion dollars.
Current forecasts put the US Defence Spending for 2024-25 somewhere between $895 billion and $1.04 trillion.
The likely range dwarfs anything else by a margin most people still find surprising. Take the figures below, which come from the same set of Congressional projections.
China: $224 billion.
Russia: $109 billion.
India: $73 billion.
United Kingdom: $71 billion.
When one averages these numbers, US outlays alone account for roughly 40 per cent of all defence money spent around the planet.
It is hard to believe that the Defense Department is bankrupt, particularly since it is notorious for never passing an audit of its expenditures in its entire history. If one wants to see how the DoD spends money foolishly, one should check out this information provided by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
Second, the Congress should demand greater clarity on the purposes of the invasion and the conditions for ending the war. We have been treated to a variety of explanations for the war. Additionally, the Congress should outline what cuts it is willing to make in the current budget so that the American people will know how their money is being spent. Specifically, the supplemental request should be framed in the context of domestic programs that have been cut. For example, the recent cuts to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) totaled approximately $92 billion in ACA subsidies–half of the supplemental budget request. Plenty of money to kill people; limited money to heal them.
Third, opponents of the war should advance a simple peace plan: revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which all analysts regarded as an effective check to Iranian nuclear ambitions. If Iran agrees to rejoin the plan, then the US should lift all sanctions on Iran. Plenty of problems remain in the US-Iran relationship, but at least the “imminent” threat will be defanged.
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