Trump asks Congress for $87.6B in war funding as Pentagon faces years to restock weapons
The White House sent Congress a request Wednesday for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding, most of it to cover the cost of the Iran war, while a new analysis warns the US military will need years to replenish the weapons it has burned through in the conflict.
The numbers tell a stark story. The administration wants $67.15 billion for the Defense Department alone. Within that, $21 billion goes to munitions, $17.3 billion to operational costs, and $12.1 billion to classified programs. Another $11.1 billion is earmarked for American farmers hit by trade disruptions, and $1.4 billion for the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.
The request lands as the Iran war enters its fourth month and the Pentagon faces a hard truth: the United States has fired more munitions than its industrial base can quickly replace.
A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that the Tomahawk cruise missile stockpile, a weapon used heavily to strike targets deep inside Iran, will not be fully replenished until 2030. Raytheon currently produces fewer than 200 Tomahawks a year because of small past orders. The company aims to ramp up to more than 1,000 per year, but the CSIS report is blunt: “The problem today is not money; it is time.”
The same applies to Patriot and THAAD interceptor missiles, which have been used extensively to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. The report, provided to the Associated Press, warns that depleted inventories have “created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict,” the conflict with China that Pentagon planners have long worried about.
President Trump has urged defense contractors to speed up production. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers last month that military spending under Trump would help manufacturers double or even triple their capacities. The administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal for 2027 accelerates spending on high-end munitions that began under the Biden administration.
But as the CSIS report notes, “it takes time to expand production capacity and to build these complex systems.”
The $87.6 billion request now faces a difficult path in Congress. Democrats immediately condemned it. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said the administration “has failed to answer basic questions about its aims and justification for the Iran war” and called the request “an attempt to secure tens of billions of additional dollars for unrelated Pentagon priorities.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was sharper. “After dragging America into a reckless war, he now wants Congress to hand him tens of billions more to paper over the damage while families are still paying higher prices,” he said.
The bill likely cannot pass the Senate without 60 votes, and Democrats are united in opposition. Some Republicans have also shown war fatigue. Eight GOP senators helped push through a war powers resolution this month that directs the president to remove armed forces from hostilities with Iran unless Congress declares war or authorizes force.
Senator Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee, called the funding “essential” and said it would “accelerate immediate production of key capabilities, from exquisite munitions to low-cost hypersonics, strike weapons and drones.”
The supplemental request also includes a $1 billion line item for the “final design and construction of a modernized Penn Station in New York City,” a project with no connection to the Iran war.
The broader picture is uncomfortable for the administration. The US has demonstrated that it can fight a sustained campaign against Iran, but the price tag is enormous and the industrial capacity to sustain it is not yet in place. The munitions consumed in three months of strikes against Iranian targets have created a gap that Chinese military planners in Beijing are watching closely.
The administration is asking Congress to write a blank check for a war that Congress never declared, for weapons that cannot be replaced before 2030, at a time when a potential confrontation with China looms in the Pacific. The question of whether America can fight two wars at once is no longer theoretical.