{"id":33,"date":"2026-05-16T19:36:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T19:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2026-05-16T19:36:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T19:36:48","slug":"hegseth-asks-for-more-money-as-iran-war-costs-skyrocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth Asks for More Money as Iran War Costs Skyrocket"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Despite a ceasefire<\/span> that has been in effect for more than a month, the cost of the U.S. war with Iran keeps spiking higher, a senior Pentagon official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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Two weeks ago, the Pentagon claimed the war had cost $25 billion, a figure that analysts said was likely a gross undercount. In testimony before the\u00a0House Appropriations defense subcommittee, the Department of War\u2019s comptroller, Jay Hurst, said the cost of the war has risen \u201ccloser\u201d to $29 billion because of the \u201crepair and replacement of equipment\u201d and \u201cgeneral operational costs\u201d of keeping troops in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Experts also expressed skepticism at this revised count.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe costs of this war are still growing, and the Pentagon is still not being straight with taxpayers or lawmakers about the numbers. If the numbers being thrown around in committee hearings were complete, why would the Pentagon continue withholding a comprehensive, itemized cost assessment from Congress?\u201d said Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog advocating for an end to wasteful spending. \u201cTaxpayers deserve answers, and lawmakers need them in order to craft a responsible budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurst, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are on Capitol Hill to discuss the Pentagon\u2019s $1.5 trillion budget request for 2027 before House and Senate appropriations subcommittees on Tuesday. Hegseth said the massive sum \u2014 the largest request in history \u2014 \u201creflects the urgency of the moment\u201d and would address both the \u201cdeferment of long-standing problems as well as position our forces for the current and future fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murphy called the dramatic 45 percent increase a negotiating tactic. \u201cThey\u2019re seeking $350 billion through reconciliation and $1.15 trillion in the base budget, but they know reconciliation is a long shot. It\u2019s all about trying to make a $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget seem reasonable in comparison,\u201d said Murphy. \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing reasonable about it. It\u2019s a roughly $150 billion increase over last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Americans, Murphy said, deserve an explanation for the runaway military budget. \u201cIf they can\u2019t defend the nation with a trillion dollars, they\u2019re doing it wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump said Monday that the ceasefire with Iran \u2014 which went into effect on April 8 \u2014 is \u201con life support\u201d after Iran\u2019s response to the latest U.S. peace proposal. Reuters, citing Iranian state media, reported that Iran\u2019s proposal included war reparations from the United States, lifting sanctions on Tehran, and recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Trump rejected Iran\u2019s reply as \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d and called it a \u201cpiece of garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hegseth said the Pentagon was prepared to reignite hostilities with Iran. \u201cWe have a plan to escalate, if necessary; we have a plan to retrograde if necessary. We have a plan to shift assets,\u201d the secretary testified, declining to say more in the public hearing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An analysis by The Intercept found that Trump has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars during his five-plus years in the White House.\u00a0The expenses of this wide-ranging war on the world\u00a0are rising across the globe.<\/p>\n

The Intercept was, for example, the first outlet to reveal that the U.S. military\u2019s intervention in Venezuela and attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific \u2014 Operations Absolute Resolve and Operation Southern Spear, respectively \u2014 have already cost taxpayers at least $4.7 billion, according to an exceptionally cautious estimate from Brown University\u2019s Costs of War Project.<\/p>\n

The ultimate price tag of Americas wars in Latin America will further balloon in the decades ahead, saddling future Americans with soaring costs, according to the report. \u201cWar is financed by debt, adding interest costs to the public budget,\u201d wrote authors Hanna Homestead, a research analyst with the National Priorities Project, and Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a nonpartisan research group. \u201cFurthermore, the federal government undertakes an obligation to pay veterans benefits for decades into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce and currently a public policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, told The Intercept that the\u00a0already-excessive expense\u00a0of the Iran war would likely be pushed into the\u00a0trillions of dollars\u00a0by such long-term costs like\u00a0veterans benefits\u00a0and interest on the debt to pay for the war.<\/p>\n

Read more Another Assassination Attempt, More Fertilizer for Conspiracy Theories<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

War Secretary Pete Hegseth was on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the Pentagon\u2019s $1.5 trillion budget request.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}