Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent denied that Americans would foot the bill on Sunday as the Pentagon prepares to push Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to continue the war in Iran.
Bessent appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday as the war with Iran pushed into its fourth week, and claimed that the administration would not seek a tax increase to pay for the Pentagon’s reported $200 billion funding request.
Calling a question from NBC’s Kristen Welker “terrible framing,” Bessent simultaneously claimed that the armed forces’ $1 trillion budget was sufficient — while adding that the administration’s supplemental request would help “build out the military.”
“Why would we [raise taxes]? We have plenty. We have a trillion dollars in this year’s budget for the military. And President Trump, even before the conflict started, had said that he would like to further build out the military,” the secretary said.
“And actually now we have plenty of money to fund this war. What we are doing is — this is supplemental,” said Bessent. “President Trump has built up the military, as he did in his first term, as he is now doing in his second term. And he wants to make sure that the military is well supplied going forward.”
He did not, however, explain clearly where the additional money would come from. The administration has used tariff revenue in the past as a catch-all explanation for the funding of various projects, but that possibility dried up to some extent with the Supreme Court’s decision to limit the president’s ability to levy tariffs unilaterally.
Global oil prices have surged amid the war as Iranian forces have blocked the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil travels. That economic pain has hit Americans hard as they’ve watched gas prices spike by nearly a dollar per gallon in less than a month.
Congress is expected to face a political battle in both chambers over the funding request, as both Democrats and Republicans have expressed skepticism to outright hostility over the prospect of funding a major conflict in the Middle East.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who typically sides with the president but is often honest about the limitations of his party’s 53-seat majority, did not sound confident about the Senate’s chances of passing the legislation when asked by a reporter this past week.
“It remains to be seen,” he told CNN of the bill’s chance of passage. “And obviously we haven’t seen any of the specifics around it yet. Saw the aggregate number they’re proposing, but we’re going to need to, obviously, take a look at it.”
White House and other Trumpworld officials have characterized the funding as necessary to achieve the U.S.’s military objectives, even as their allies on Capitol Hill and around Washington publicly and privately plead with them to end the war in the near future.
Administration officials have offered shifting goalposts for the U.S.’s objectives. Explanations have ranged from degrading Iran’s ballistic missile capacity to ending its nuclear weapons development and replacing the Iranian regime entirely.
Trump himself continues to insist that the war is won, even as the U.S. continues to clash with Iranian forces over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. On Saturday, the president threatened to target Iranian power plants if the Strait was not reopened within 48 hours.
As the war continues, the president and his team increasingly find themselves accused of not having a plan or clear objectives for the war, which has now claimed the lives of 13 American service members.
Trump’s efforts to recruit a multinational coaltion to escort ships and keep the Strait of Hormuz clear largely fell flat. His blustery demand for the Strait to be re-opened comes as his previous efforts to force the resumption of shipping traffic have been unsuccessful, leading to speculation that the U.S. may attempt to invade with a ground force. He and his allies have resorted to lobbing personal insults at European leaders and countries including Sir Keir Starmer, the U.K’s Prime Minister.
Trump denied last week that he was considering a ground force, while cautioning that he wouldn’t speak about those plans to the media before triggering an invasion.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth made clear at a press conference last week that the $200bn number is the floor of what the agency could end up asking Congress to pass.
“It takes money to kill bad guys,” he quipped to members of the media.
