Cracks emerge in GOP over Iran war cost as administration floats more than $200B request to Congress

By Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, Annie Grayer, Lauren Fox, Zachary Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — Cracks are emerging among congressional Republicans over the Iran war with key lawmakers skeptical about spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prolong the conflict and several refusing to support any money without a clear White House strategy.

In the coming weeks, President Donald Trump could ask Congress to spend as much as $200 billion to fund the ongoing war. But it will be enormously difficult to pass. GOP leaders do not believe they have the votes to fund the war even in their own party without far more detailed plans from the White House, according to multiple people involved in those preliminary discussions.

Trump previewed the funding request on Thursday, saying he wants to ensure the military has “vast amounts of ammunition” but without offering specifics on what the Pentagon needed the funding for.

“We want to be in the best shape, the best shape we’ve ever been in,” Trump said from the Oval Office Thursday. “It’s a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy top.”

The Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a request to Congress for over $200 billion in additional military funding to fund the ongoing war, according to two sources familiar with the matter. It will likely be days, if not weeks, before that request comes to Congress. Yet already, many lawmakers – even some Republicans – appear skeptical of approving such a large sum, particularly since the Trump administration has yet to seek Capitol Hill’s approval for the war with Iran, which is about to enter its fourth week. The White House and Pentagon have yet to articulate a clear timeline for ending military operations, which is a major concern inside the Capitol, sources said.

The supplemental funding request would, in part, be used to help offset munitions expenditures and operations costs from the conflict — which totaled roughly $11 billion during just the first week of military strikes alone, the sources said. Some of the requested funding could also go toward other areas not directly associated with the Iran war, both sources added – an accounting maneuver the Pentagon has used before to fund defense projects.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday morning the figure could change because “it takes money to kill bad guys.” But he and other administration officials will need to make a hard sell to their own party about quickly approving that request.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a staunch Trump ally, told CNN she would not support more money for Iran under any circumstance.

“I am a no. I have already told leadership. I am a no on any war supplemental. I am so tired of spending money over there,” Boebert told CNN. “I have folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live. We need America first policies right now.”

So far, Boebert is an outlier in her party. But plenty more Republicans told CNN they are increasingly anxious about whether the US is being dragged into an “endless war” that Trump himself ran against. Several said they would only consider the Iran funding request if the White House better explains its plans — including the possibility of thousands of US troops being sent to the Middle East.

“What are we doing? We’re talking about boots on the ground. We’re talking about that kind of extended activity. Now we’re in a whole ‘nother zip code,” Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a fiscal hawk who has long scrutinized Pentagon spending, told CNN. “They got a whole lot more briefing and a whole lot more explaining to do on how we’re going to pay for it and what’s the mission here?”

Fellow fiscal hawk, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, added: “It begs the question, how long do they plan to be there? What are the goals? Is this the first $200 billion? Does this turn into a trillion?”

It’s not just the GOP’s hard-right wing with questions. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski — a centrist and top GOP spending leader in the Senate — said she won’t fund more money for the war until the White House outlines its plan to Congress.

“The people in Alaska are asking me how long is this going on? Are there going to be boots on the ground, how much is this going to cost?” Murkowski said Thursday. “The answer to most of this is I don’t know.”

GOP anxiety over boots on the ground

The question of ground troops, in particular, is rattling Republicans, with even Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress advising a quick exit. GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, told CNN he has specifically advised the administration against any boots on the ground: “I don’t want to see it.”

“I think we need to find an exit strategy as fast as possible,” added Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee. “I don’t want to put Americans on the ground out there in any shape, form or fashion.”

Congressional Republicans have so far avoided publicly entwining themselves in the Iran war. They’ve been briefed in secret. They’ve taken no formal votes authorizing the action. And they’ve chugged away on their own agenda.

As the Pentagon’s price tag increases, though, Congress will soon be in charge of what’s next. Behind the scenes, some Republicans have joined Democrats in pressing administration officials about the war’s costs, multiple sources told CNN. Only two cost assessments – both in the billions –have been shared with lawmakers to date, and both are incomplete.

Some Republicans are already laying out conditions for any more Pentagon money. Roy, Burchett and Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee told CNN they want the money offset.

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, meanwhile, told CNN he wants to pay for it by targeting the “boatload of waste, fraud and abuse through the federal government.”

Rep. Eric Burlison said the Pentagon should “pass an audit” before he could consider backing $200 billion in additional funds: “We’ve known that they haven’t passed an audit in many, many years, so I want to it’ll give me comfort to if they pass an audit, and then I’ll know that at least they’re keeping track of the dollars.”

Other fiscal hawks including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida said they want more details about the war funding request before weighing in on how they would vote.

“I don’t want to get too far over my skis on this, I’d like to see what they actually request,” Hawley said.

Meanwhile, anxiety is creeping up in the GOP about the possibility of a long-term conflict, with a critical election ahead and an already-skyrocketing national debt.

Privately, many lawmakers and operatives acknowledge the political reality in Washington: This GOP is simply no longer the hawkish party of decades past. In less than a decade, Republicans went from a party led by war hero Sen. John McCain to one led by Trump and MAGA with his “no more forever wars” mantra.

GOP leaders have maintained that it’s a short-term war, with Speaker Mike Johnson insisting on Thursday that the US mission will end “very soon,” while acknowledging that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz “is dragging it out a little bit.”

“It’s a limited operation, the mission is all but complete,” Johnson said.

Johnson, along with his Senate counterpart, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, were both noncommittal about whether Congress would fulfill the White House’s Iran funding request, the price tag of which the Washington Post first reported.

Thune said “it remains to be seen” if it could pass in the Senate where it would likely need several Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster.

“I think they’re going to have to show us how they want to use it,” Thune said. “For sure.”

But Republicans are concerned that a prolonged war, where gas prices continue to increase will hurt their chances in the midterms.

“We know that we are temporarily going to have higher gas and petroleum prices, but if those prices stayed high, if we continue to have problems with the Strait of Hormuz, if we continue to be involved in this, then it’s more of an issue,” GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew said.

Across Washington, most Democrats remain adamantly opposed to Trump’s war and even centrist, pro-Israel Democrats have told CNN they remain skeptical of funding the war under current conditions. That further complicates Trump’s push to pay for the operation — which would typically need at least some support from Senate Democrats to get any bill to his desk.

GOP leaders are already drawing up an alternative plan: Approving the war funds using the same budgetary tool they used to pass Trump’s tax cuts last year.

But that path would expose a massive divide in the GOP, with fiscal hawks eager to use the special powers to bypass a filibuster to tackle major overhauls of government programs — like the contentious Medicaid cuts. Republicans close to GOP leadership, however, have said that would be an enormous lift.

As Republicans await the formal funding request from the White House, many are hoping to see a major deescalation in the coming weeks.

GOP Rep. Mike Flood, who stood at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware earlier this month at the dignified transfer of six fallen soldiers who were killed in Kuwait, including a sergeant from his state, said he doesn’t “want families to go through that” and hopes the war is nearly over.

“Everybody wants this over,” Flood said.

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CNN’s Alison Main, Ted Barrett and Ellis Kim contributed to this report.