GOP Senators Split With Trump Over Iran Funding Request

What Trump's "total control" of the Straight of Hormuz looks like. (The Hill)

By Alexander Bolton, reposted from The Hill, August 13, 2026

Republican senators are criticizing the Trump administration’s handling of an emergency request for $70 billion in defense spending to cover the costs of the Iran conflict and warning that the Pentagon will need to do a better job explaining its war plan to get the money.

GOP senators emerged from a briefing with Vice President Vance last week, underwhelmed by the insights they got into the conflict and complaining that the status of U.S. missile reserves remains murky at best.

The Republican senators, who requested anonymity to discuss Vance’s briefing in the Senate’s Mansfield Room, said the administration has sent “mixed messages” about whether it’s facing a critical shortage of long-range missiles and missile interceptors.

Vance told senators last week that claims of a severe missile and munitions shortage are a “misdirection” and an inaccurate description of the strength of U.S. reserves. But some Republican senators are not buying that claim, according to multiple GOP lawmakers who attended the meeting.

One GOP senator who attended the meeting with Vance said the vice president assured lawmakers that the Pentagon has the weapons it needs to sustain an intense military offensive against Iran, despite reports that weapons shortages have persuaded President Trump to hold back on escalating attacks.

“He was very bold that there was a misdirection and an unfortunate misdirection that emboldens the enemy,” said the lawmaker. “It emboldens the enemy if they think we’re out of ammunition.”

But other senators say that Pentagon officials have told lawmakers in briefings that they’re facing a shortage of Tomahawk, Patriot and other long-range missiles that could take years to replenish, given the cost and complexity of those weapons.

“There’s a mixed message there,” a second GOP senator said, referring to the conflicting accounts of U.S. missile reserves.

Vance’s claims behind closed doors conflicted with a bombshell Reuters report that revealed the U.S. Army has used up much of its global stockpile of accurate long-range missiles during the war with Iran.

NBC News reported last week that Trump vented his frustration over the shortage of missiles in an angry call to Steve Feinberg, the deputy Defense secretary, which prompted Feinberg to convene an emergency meeting with senior officials to address the issue.

Trump later denied that report, posting on Truth Social: “The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types.”

The president said that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.”

GOP lawmakers also say they have not yet received from the administration a clear plan for ending the war — something they hoped would give more momentum to the emergency defense funding request that has stalled in the Senate.

“I need to know what the strategy is. Congress needs to be involved in the strategy,” said a Republican senator after meeting with Vance.

More broadly, GOP lawmakers are frustrated that a war that Trump said would last “four to five weeks” has instead dragged on for more than five months.

“I don’t think anybody is satisfied with where things stand with Iran,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

The Hill reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

GOP senators say that internal polls show independent voters strongly opposed to the Iran war and Republican voters quickly losing enthusiasm for continuing the conflict.

And they warn that using the budget reconciliation process to circumvent Democratic opposition to providing more money to the Pentagon will be a difficult task in a post-election lame-duck session.

John Ullyot, a Marine Corps veteran and former deputy assistant to Trump who served as Senate Armed Services Committee spokesperson from 2003 to 2007, said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has failed to get Republicans on Capitol Hill to coalesce behind the administration’s strategy.

“After barely getting confirmed as secretary 18 months ago, instead of seeking to build bridges with lawmakers, Hegseth has gone out of his way to alienate those very Republicans in the Senate whose votes President Trump now needs to pass important spending increases and replenish our depleted weapons stockpiles,” Ullyot said.

“Hegseth’s sanctimonious, preening and pugilistic style of performance art self-promotion, together with his firing highly effective and well-liked generals and delivering mixed messages on weapons shortfalls has won him no friends in the Senate,” he added.

GOP lawmakers are divided over how much to allocate to the war effort and whether to pay for it with other spending cuts.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that Republican senators haven’t yet agreed on how much money to provide for defense through a budget reconciliation package.

“To say we’ve reached a consensus, would be premature,” Wicker told The Hill.

Defense hawks want Trump to ramp up the attacks to “finish the job.”

“Iran’s revolutionary fanatics are never going to make the kind of deal we could accept. It’s time to finish the job and prevent Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on social media Tuesday.

Meanwhile, fiscal conservatives including GOP Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Bill Cassidy (La.) say that any budget reconciliation package that increases defense spending would have to include other spending cuts to limit the impact on the deficit.

Paul on Thursday noted that the U.S. budget deficit in July surged to its highest level since March of 2021.

“Instead of using Republican only votes to expand the size of the federal government, Congress should eliminate welfare for refugees, illegal immigrants, and legal immigrants AND put teeth in laws to end the massive fraud,” the senator posted on social platform X.

Republicans say that Hegseth’s and other senior administration officials’ approaches of talking primarily to Republicans to build support for more war funding could backfire in a major way if a budget reconciliation package fails to advance.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that Pentagon briefings on the war “are better served when they’re bipartisan” because Democratic votes would be needed to advance funding if the budget reconciliation route doesn’t materialize.

“If this is particularly in the defense of our country, let’s all understand” why the funding is needed, she said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has said for weeks that he would prefer Congress pass the $70 billion the White House has requested to help pay for the war through the regular appropriations process.

A senior GOP aide said it was difficult to justify circumventing the Appropriations Committee once again by using the arduous budget reconciliation process to approve a relatively modest defense funding request.

Thune has repeatedly warned that he doesn’t see the 50 votes needed in the Senate GOP conference to advance a budget resolution and a follow-up reconciliation package.

Alexander Bolton Senior staff writer have covered the daily operations of the United States Senate since the start of the Obama administration in 2009. Before then, I wrote about both branches of Congress and specialized in writing enterprise stories about politics, congressional ethics, campaign finance and the budget and appropriations process.

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