The White House has requested Congress pass a supplemental spending bill for $87.6 billion, roughly $67 billion of which would go to the Pentagon to cover the cost of the Iran war.
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Wednesday detailing the request, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Of the $67.1 billion intended for the Department of Defense, $21 billion will be for munitions — it did not specify how much of that would go to which specific munitions — $12.1 billion for classified programs, $17.3 billion for operational costs, $5.1 billion for cybersecurity and autonomy, $4 billion for airborne moving target indication and space data network backbone, $2.4 billion for drones, and $1.5 billion for fuel costs.
The supplemental also includes a $1.2 billion request for “administration priorities,” but did not provide any context.
Notably, there was no specific dollar amount listed for U.S. military base repairs after several installations in the Middle East were damaged during the war.
Beyond the Pentagon, the supplemental requests about $2 billion for the Coast Guard because the service “fill[ed] in the gaps where DOW assets are not available to support Western Hemisphere operations” due to the Iran war and The National Nuclear Security Agency, which is housed under the Department of Energy, would get $768 million “for complete and verifiable termination of Iran’s ability to develop or acquire a nuclear weapon, including the disposition of proliferation sensitive material, technology, equipment, and infrastructure.”
There is also money in the request that would aid farmers, disaster relief, and the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak.
“Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, the United States executed a successful operation to deter the threat of a nuclear armed Iranian regime and massively degrade the regime’s ability to project power in the region,” Vought wrote to Johnson.
House appropriations committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) and defense subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert (R-CA) issued a joint statement supportive of the request.
“Congress has a constitutional obligation to provide for the common defense, and we must always sustain our military with the tools and capabilities needed to defend America in full force against all threats. Delivering a decisive blow against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror was not without cause or operational cost. Our forces performed their mission with extraordinary precision and professionalism, and we must now ensure they have the resources necessary to replenish critical munitions, sustain readiness, and reinforce the capacity of our military that made such success possible,” they said.
Similarly, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said, “I fully support the defense supplemental request submitted to Congress today and look forward to working with my colleagues to move it forward legislatively as soon as possible. We must ensure our service members have everything they need to face an increasingly dangerous world.”
Comparatively, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the Senate appropriations committee, expressed more skepticism of the request, saying she “will closely review this request in its entirety and ensure we take care of our servicemembers, but I will not rubberstamp tens of billions more for this disastrous war of choice.”
HEGSETH SELLS RECONCILIATION AND SUPPLEMENTAL TO REPUBLICANS AS NECESSARY FOR DEFENSE SECURITY
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed Republicans during a closed-door lunch hosted by the Republican Study Committee on Wednesday. He did not answer questions from reporters on his way out of the briefing, though he was later seen entering Johnson’s office.
The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 defense budget is roughly $1 trillion, but with the supplemental and the administration’s push for a $350 billion reconciliation bill, the total budget could be $1.5 trillion.
Mabinty Quarshie contributed to this story.