Congress Can Halt the Iran War by Doing Nothing. It Should.
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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants $200 billion for the Trump administration's illegal, ill-advised, undeclared war on Iran.
Well, maybe. "That number could move," he says, to get "properly funded for what's been done, for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition is refilled, and not just refilled, but above and beyond."
You won't need two guesses to guess which direction "that number" will likely move in.
Will Whiskey Pete get his requested allowance bump? According to the Washington Post, unnamed "White House officials" think he's aiming too high, and some members of Congress seem to agree.
The correct congressional response --- if you think it will help, by all means pass the recommendation on to "your" "representatives" --- is a big fat goose-egg, for at least two reasons above and beyond the war being stupid and evil.
The first reason, of course, is that the war is illegal. Since Congress hasn't declared war, the executive branch has no authority to wage war. Congress shouldn't fund something that only Congress has the power to approve when it hasn't exercised that power.
The second reason is that the Pentagon's coffers are already full beyond comprehension.
The FY 2026 "National Defense Authorization Act," signed into law by US president Donald Trump last December, provided about $900 billion in taxpayer dollars to the US armed forces. And that's not even the entire military budget. Non-NDAA spending brings the check to more than $1 trillion.
That's a lot of money. It's a lot more money than any other regime on the planet spends on "defense," and it's being spent to "defend" a country that faces no credible threat of invasion and whose rulers have to constantly drum up arguments in order to pretend that it has any substantial "enemies" at all.
Only one other regime on the planet --- China's --- spends as much per year on "defense" as the EXTRA money Hegseth's panhandling for.
After more than four years of all-out war, the Russian and Ukrainian regimes are spending, respectively, about 3/4 as much and about 1/3 as much on their war machines as Hegseth's request for MORE.
The beauty of the situation is that all Congress has to do to take control of the situation is the same thing it's been doing: Sit on its hands, with one of those hands gripping the budgetary wallet tight.
They don't even have to say "no." They just have to NOT say "yes."
We should be in, if not done with, the "trial" phase of the Constitution's impeachment/removal protocols by now, but so far all we've seen is a bunch of hand-wringing and a couple of failed attempts to exercise sub-constitutional control with "war powers resolutions."
If Congress doesn't even possess the testicular fortitude to refrain from shelling out billions every time Hegseth sticks his hand out, what is Congress even good for?
The question kind of answers itself. I predict that Congress will fall all over itself showering your money on the nation's most famous DUI hire.