Wartime Budgets Are an X-Ray of Presidential Priorities |
Pete Hegseth confirmed earlier this month that the Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a supplemental request of more than $200 billion to fund the war in Iran. (That figure, he added, “could move.”) President Donald Trump has not yet signed off on the amount, but as military operations in Iran enter their fifth week, the Pentagon shows no signs of pulling back.
The request comes after Congress passed a sweeping budget bill last summer that gutted the social safety net, and after the so-called Department of Government Efficiency slashed funding for programs that millions of Americans depend on. Meanwhile, as oil prices are surging, the administration is signaling that it is prepared to spend more on this war than most countries spend on defense in a year. For all the talk of “America First,” Trump is choosing guns overseas—in a war of choice—rather than butter at home to help ease the pressures of affordability.
Pete Hegseth confirmed earlier this month that the Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a supplemental request of more than $200 billion to fund the war in Iran. (That figure, he added, “could move.”) President Donald Trump has not yet signed off on the amount, but as military operations in Iran enter their fifth week, the Pentagon shows no signs of pulling back.
The request comes after Congress passed a sweeping budget bill last summer that gutted the social safety net, and after the so-called Department of Government Efficiency slashed funding for programs that millions of Americans depend on. Meanwhile, as oil prices are surging, the administration is signaling that it is prepared to spend more on this war than most countries spend on defense in a year. For all the talk of “America First,” Trump is choosing guns overseas—in a war of choice—rather than butter at home to help ease the pressures of affordability.
Budget requests have a way of exposing military ambitions that dwarf what a president says in public. Vietnam is the clearest precedent: As Lyndon Johnson escalated through the mid-1960s, the ballooning costs of the war, which he tried to keep hidden, told the story his rhetoric wouldn’t. Hard numbers, not words, are the most reliable guide to where a war might actually be headed.
Before 1965, most Americans paid little attention to U.S. involvement in the conflict between North and South Vietnam. President John F. Kennedy had already deployed special forces and military advisors into Southeast Asia to support South Vietnam, but the operation remained limited.
Amid his reelection campaign against Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, Johnson asked Congress to pass a resolution granting him broad authority to use military force. It did so overwhelmingly on Aug. 7, 1964, not knowing that his request was based on misleading and false intelligence regarding alleged attacks on U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
During the fall campaign, however, Johnson reassured voters that he was the candidate who would preserve peace, portraying Goldwater as a dangerous........