Republicans in Congress who have so far refused to call top Trump administration officials to testify about the war in Iran have scheduled a budget hearing with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for late April, his first public testimony since the start of the attacks.
The April 29 hearing, which is to include Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, falls exactly 60 days after President Trump began the offensive, the end of the period during which the law allows a president to deploy forces into hostilities without congressional authorization.
The session before the House Armed Services Committee serves as the annual budget hearing for the Pentagon, according to a congressional aide with knowledge of it, a routine affair during which a cabinet secretary lays out his department’s budget needs for the upcoming year. But with Democrats in both chambers demanding public testimony on the war for weeks now and the G.O.P. so far declining to schedule any oversight hearings, lawmakers and aides expect it to center on the combat operations in the Middle East, whose costs are skyrocketing.
Democrats on the Armed Services Committee warned in recent days that failing to call Mr. Hegseth to testify on the war was unacceptable.
“Given the complexity and gravity of this conflict, it is imperative that it receive its own hearing, separate and apart” from the annual budget hearing, 27 Democrats wrote in a letter on Friday to Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the committee. They cited the “ever-shifting strategic and operational objectives of the conflict and lack of clarity” on whether the president would deploy ground troops.
Republicans have robustly supported the attacks as necessary and legal, but some have suggested they would expect the administration to seek congressional authorization if the war dragged past the 60-day mark.
For weeks, Republicans have ignored calls from their Democratic counterparts for senior members of the Trump administration to testify under oath on the combat operations. Democrats have accused Mr. Trump and his advisers of haphazard war planning and keeping lawmakers in the dark about the timeline and costs of the campaign, whether ground troops will be needed and what the plan is to draw the conflict to a close.
A handful of Republicans, including Mr. Rogers, signaled last week that they too are growing concerned with Congress being sidelined as the war dragged into its second month.
But Mr. Rogers, who as chairman has the authority to call Mr. Hegseth to testify at any time on the war, has not done so, nor has Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who chairs his chamber’s Armed Services Committee.
Republican leaders have repeatedly said budget hearings would be the venue for Democrats to question members of the cabinet on the war, and shown no willingness to call Mr. Hegseth or Secretary of State Marco Rubio to testify any sooner or in any other format.
Mr. Trump has said he wants to raise the Pentagon’s budget by more than half in 2027, increasing military spending to $1.5 trillion. But members of Congress still have no clear understanding of how the war will impact that spending goal.
Some Republican lawmakers who visited the Pentagon last week to meet with department officials on their budget request and asked for an official accounting of how much money was being spent on the war each day said they could not obtain one.
“I wish I did,” Representative Jodey Arrington of Texas, the chairman of the Budget Committee, said in an interview. “I know it exists.”
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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