Two of the Senate GOP’s most senior figures are openly questioning President Donald Trump’s massive new Pentagon funding push, throwing fresh doubt on his ambitious $1.5 trillion military budget goal, according to Punchbowl News.
Trump launched his latest funding blitz on Truth Social Wednesday night, demanding Republicans “IMMEDIATELY advance and pass” a $350 billion reconciliation package, which he called “Recon 3.0,” that he said is the only way to reach a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget. He framed the request as building the “ARSENAL OF FREEDOM” and demanded “no games, no delays, and no weak compromises.”
But the outlook for Trump’s plan is “bleak,” Punchbowl reported Thursday.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who chairs the Defense appropriations subcommittee, have openly raised concerns about the approach.
Punchbowl bluntly put it: “Trump wants his Golden Dome and Golden Fleet, but for GOP leaders, the vote counts may not be golden.”
The fight comes against the backdrop of Trump’s escalating Iran war, which has stretched past 100 days with no resolution. Trump threatened recently to “bomb the s— out of them” if Iran didn’t sign a peace deal soon.
The Pentagon push is also complicated by Trump’s previous demands for emergency war funding, requests that GOP leaders already balked at. The Pentagon’s $200 billion supplemental request has stalled in Congress amid bipartisan demands for cost transparency that the White House has yet to provide.
Punchbowl reported that the SAVE Act, the GOP voter ID bill Trump wants attached to the reconciliation package, cannot pass via reconciliation due to Senate parliamentary rules.
Even defense hawks who applaud the $1.5 trillion request face vote-counting problems in both chambers.
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