✍️ What Else Could $104.6 Billion Do?
War spending shows what government can fund when it decides something is urgent.
More than $100 billion could fund years of early education, assistance for low-income schools, special education, college grants, bridge repairs, food assistance, or rental aid.
Instead, the national government has spent—or is being asked to spend—that amount on the war Trump chose to launch against Iran without congressional authorization.
Defense Secretary Hegseth recently told senators that the war has cost the Pentagon $37.5 billion so far. The Pentagon is asking for another $67.1 billion for the conflict, including continued military operations and replacing weapons already used.
Together, that comes to about $104.6 billion.
The figures raise a question larger than one congressional hearing or emergency spending request:
What could the national government accomplish if it treated the needs of people in the United States with the same urgency it brings to war?
What else could the money support?
More than $100 billion could repair bridges and water systems, improve public transit, support community hospitals and health centers, expand childcare, prepare communities for wildfires and other disasters, strengthen veterans’ services, and reduce costs that working families face for housing, education, transportation, and healthcare.
Those investments would benefit more than people enrolled in a particular assistance program. Reliable bridges, safe drinking water, functioning hospitals, affordable childcare, stronger public transportation, and disaster preparedness support workers, families, businesses, and entire communities.
The $104.6 billion would also be enough—separately, not simultaneously—to provide roughly:
Eight years of Head Start for young children and their families
Five and a half years of Title I aid for schools serving large numbers of children from low-income families
Seven years of major federal assistance for special education
Three and a half years of Pell Grants to help students from low- and moderate-income families pay for college and career training
Nineteen annual appropriations at the recent funding level for the federal program that helps states repair, replace, and preserve bridges
More than one year of food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Nearly three years of federal rental assistance
These are comparisons, not a proposal to divide the money among these programs. They show the scale of the spending and the range of public needs that more than $100 billion could address.
Money cannot simply be moved
Congress cannot simply slide money from a missile account into a housing-voucher account. And neither can the president.
Congress must appropriate federal money, and the president must administer it under the laws Congress enacts. Neither branch can simply redirect $104.6 billion into an assortment of defense or domestic programs without legislation, planning, and the capacity to use the money responsibly.
Government programs operate under different laws, appropriations, administrative systems, timelines, contracts, staffing needs, and eligibility rules. Some could use substantial additional funding quickly. Others would need time to expand responsibly.
A dollar spent on war does not automatically represent a dollar that had already been assigned to a classroom, clinic, bridge, or family.
But that does not make the comparison meaningless.
Federal budgets express choices. They reveal which shortages government treats as emergencies, whose needs get immediate attention, and which needs elected officials decide can wait.
When military leaders say weapons stocks are depleted, the shortage becomes urgent. But when schools lack teachers, families lack childcare, tenants cannot afford rent, or communities rely on failing infrastructure, urgency often dissolves into arguments about deficits, bureaucracy, and fiscal restraint.
But the spending question leads to a larger constitutional one.
Congress cannot fund the war and disown it
The Constitution does not assign Congress a ceremonial role in war.
It gives Congress the power to declare war, raise and support armies, maintain a navy, make rules governing the armed forces, and control federal spending.
The president is commander in chief. But the Constitution does not give a president unlimited authority to choose a war and then present Congress with the bill.
Trump launched the war against Iran without a declaration of war or a specific authorization from Congress. The administration may describe the additional money as an emergency request, but calling something an emergency does not erase Congress’s constitutional responsibilities.
Congress is now being asked to provide tens of billions of dollars to continue the fighting and replace the weapons already used.
Approving that money would not technically constitute a formal declaration of war. The War Powers Resolution says Congress does not authorize hostilities merely by funding them. The appropriation must specifically state that it authorizes the military action.
But Trump could—and likely would—claim that Congress approved the war by paying for it.
That would follow a familiar pattern. Since World War II, presidents of both parties have repeatedly started, expanded, or continued military operations while ignoring or minimizing Congress’s constitutional role. Congress has sometimes authorized those conflicts after military action began, sometimes financed them without clearly approving them, and sometimes failed to stop them.
The Vietnam War offers one of the clearest warnings.
Vietnam offers a warning. Congress never formally declared war, but President Lyndon Johnson relied on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution as authority to expand the conflict. That resolution explicitly authorized force, while an appropriation for the war in Iran might not.
Politically, however, Trump could make a similar argument: Congress knew what the money was for, voted to provide it, and therefore endorsed the war.
Congress should not give him that opening.
Members cannot knowingly provide the money required to continue the war and then insist that they have taken no position on its purpose.
Why would Congress fund such an expensive undertaking without first debating and deciding whether the undertaking itself is justified?
If Congress votes for the money, it will bear responsibility for what the money enables, even if it avoids the words authorization and declaration of war.
Decide whether the war should continue
Military leaders say depleted weapons stocks must be replenished. Congress should not consider that request apart from the war that depleted them.
Before authorizing another $67.1 billion, Congress should publicly examine the war’s purpose, constitutional authority, strategy, expected duration, human consequences, and likely total cost.
It should decide whether the war itself should continue, not merely whether the Pentagon has enough weapons to continue it.
The House and Senate have already considered resolutions asserting that continued military action against Iran requires congressional approval. On July 23, the House approved such a resolution, 214–208, while a similar Senate measure failed, 49–47.
Those votes do not settle the issue. Congress must also decide whether to supply the money that makes continued warfare possible.
The human consequences should remain central. Americans have been killed and injured. Iranian civilians and combatants have been killed and injured. People have been displaced, homes and infrastructure have been destroyed, and the conflict risks further escalation.
The federal government can mobilize tens of billions of dollars when its leaders decide that a need cannot wait.
Congress must now decide whether prolonging this war deserves that urgency—and why so many needs facing people in the U.S. are almost always expected to wait.
Citizens must also tell their senators and representatives to step up, speak out, and exercise their essential constitutional role in deciding whether this war continues and whether the country will pay for it.
Take action
Contact your members of Congress and urge them to exercise their constitutional authority over war and military spending.
Opposing war does not require approving of Iran’s government or its actions. Advocacy groups working on peace, arms control, international law, diplomacy, and democratic limits on military power offer ways to push for accountability and influence policy without launching or prolonging a war.
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