Can Dems harness Iran war anger to sink Trump’s military budget?

Congress returned to Washington DC this week after its July 4 recess. With President Donald Trump having recently declared the memorandum of understanding with Iran “over” and with the two countries exchanging attacks, the war has predictably taken center stage.

Congressional Democrats have been mostly unified against the war, but this week has presented opportunities for members to use new vehicles to express their opposition via the power of the purse. On Tuesday, every present Democratic Senator voted to block debate over the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes the appropriation of Pentagon funds. The bill, which needed 60 votes to advance, failed by a 50-46 tally.

The NDAA typically proceeds in a relatively bipartisan manner, but the warning signs were apparent in June when nine Democrats voted against advancing the bill out of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Several Democrats framed their opposition as, in part, a rejection of the war in Iran.

In advance of the vote, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), said the bill would “effectively green light Trump's illegal Iran war.” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who noted that he typically votes in favor of the NDAA, said he would oppose it given that the legislature had not “even had an up or down vote to authorize this war in the first place.” Republicans charged Democrats with playing politics over the national security bill, with SASC chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss. ) calling it a “new low.”

There were other considerations at play as well, including the Trump administration’s ask for a $1.5 trillion defense budget and the lack of transparency surrounding the cost of the war with Iran. On Tuesday, Jules Hurst, testifying to become the Pentagon comptroller, told SASC members that he did not have an update on the $29 billion price tag for the war, since he had not been performing the role since May 20, when his term as acting comptroller came to an end.

Sources said that Republicans’ approach to funding bills has created conditions in which Democrats may stall or even stop defense appropriations legislation.

With Democrats seemingly dug in on blocking the NDAA until the questions surrounding an Iran war authorization are settled, the must-pass bill’s future appears murky. “The Trump administration has not meaningfully consulted Congress on the Iran conflict or engaged Democrats on broader budget strategy, leaving its budget plans and legislative priorities stalled,” a senior congressional aide told RS. “Republicans now face the possibility of flat funding for the Department of Defense under a continuing resolution, or potentially an extended shutdown.”

In addition, a group of Senators, led by Van Hollen and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), raised concerns about an amendment to the NDAA that would more deeply integrate U.S. and Israeli intelligence. They sent a letter to their colleagues last week urging them to block the legislation until they could hold further discussion regarding those measures.

But congressional sources said that the timing of the vote — shortly after Trump’s announcement that the agreement with Iran was dead — contributed to Democrats voting unanimously against the NDAA. Supporters of ending the war with Iran interpreted the vote as a signal that the war was increasingly unpopular and that Congress should keep up political pressure on the president.

“The war with Iran is incredibly unpopular with the American people and Democrats were right to pick up on that and use this opportunity to vote accordingly,” one senior Democratic Senate staffer told RS. In order to keep up pressure on the administration, the staffer argued, Democrats “should announce publicly that they won’t support any measure to advance the NDAA until Trump resumes negotiations with Iran and gets a deal done.”

National Iranian American Council president Jamal Abdi wrote a statement that urged members to not advance any “other major national legislation (...) as long as this unauthorized war continues without an explicit prohibition on funding it.”

That major legislation may include the administration’s roughly $88 billion DoD supplemental funding request, much of which is intended to fund the Iran war. The administration made the request late last month, though its future on the floor remains unclear as Republican members remain frustrated by a lack of information from the Pentagon regarding the request’s details. As the Stimson Center’s Julia Gledhill told RS in June, “the supplemental doesn’t even detail what weapons the Pentagon wants to buy.”

Up until this point, Democratic opposition has primarily been registered through a string of votes on war powers resolutions. Both the House and the Senate passed concurrent resolutions in June to push Trump to wind down the war absent authorization from the legislature. Congressional Democrats are reportedly considering taking the issue to the courts to compel the administration to comply. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has said that he will introduce a new War Powers Resolution this week.

The administration, for its part, informed Congress of the restarting of the war on July 10, which it says should also restart the 60-day war powers clock, though legal experts widely say that this is an incorrect interpretation.