Hegseth’s Defense Spending Pitch Leaves House GOP Without Clear Path

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and House Republicans walked out of their meeting Wednesday with no clear path forward for the party to pass the administration’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon spending request.

Hegseth’s classified briefing for the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of House conservatives, was an attempt to unify the defense and fiscal hawks behind a defense funding surge that includes more than $1 trillion through regular spending bills, $350 billion through the Republican-only reconciliation process and nearly $80 billion in supplemental spending for the Iran war and more.

There appeared to be little movement toward gaining the votes Hegseth and Trump officials need to pass the measures. Instead, several lawmakers made clear what they needed to see from the administration before pledging their support.Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) said he backed the Pentagon’s push to increase defense spending, but would not vote for a defense-heavy reconciliation bill until there’s a plan to replace 5,000 troops Hegseth pulled back from Eastern Europe.“He made an effective case down there, and I support it,” Bacon said of Hegseth. “That said, there are other things that we’re looking for too. … If you want my vote, you’d better replace that brigade in Poland.”

Each piece of the funding package faces distinct political hurdles. Democrats are unlikely to provide the Senate votes needed to pass an Iran-related supplemental, while a third reconciliation bill — a party-line measure that senior Republicans say isn’t likely to come together — would require near-total unity from House Republicans, a caucus with a narrow majority and deep divisions over how deeply to cut domestic programs to pay for increased Pentagon spending.

“I want to see the package first, and the pay-fors,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), referring to the non-defense cuts to offset new defense spending.

The politics of cutting safety-net programs popular with many voters are treacherous for front-line Republicans, especially moderates, ahead of November’s midterm elections. But not all Republicans demanded deep cuts before committing to the Pentagon funding.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez — a Republican from Florida, home to 5.2 million Medicaid recipients — appeared sensitive to making deep cuts to programs and said he wants what he called “easy” reductions to “things that are non-essential and are wasteful spending.”

Cuts, he added, were not a prerequisite for new defense spending. “The security of the United States is foremost in my mind, and we have to spend what we have to spend in order to secure the United States,” he told NOTUS.

With the bipartisan unpopularity of the Iran war as a backdrop, Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent from California who caucuses with House Republicans, told reporters reconciliation wasn’t a prudent avenue for achieving the defense spending goals.

“Especially when we are talking about issues of national security and defense, we’ll get better policy if we do it in a bipartisan way,” Kiley said.

For all the talk of roadblocks and hurdles, at least one Republican lawmaker says the short-term noise is likely to give way to voting success down the line.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), a conservative fiscal hawk who said he had questions about the Pentagon’s plans to pass an audit, predicted to NOTUS after the briefing that fellow Republicans will acquiesce after Hegseth was “persuasive.”

“They’re gonna talk tough,” Burchett said of the party’s holdouts on Iran funding. “But most of them are going to roll. They’re already on board.”