War Costs and Federal Troops at Polls

War Costs and Federal Troops at Polls

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Mr. Secretary, the war in Iran has not only cost 13 American service member lives, it is also costing American taxpayers dearly. Tens of billions of dollars and counting, and that’s money that could be helping people perhaps get healthcare. But instead we’re paying for bombs dropped in a war that American people overwhelmingly oppose.

Now, earlier this morning, I know that your team testified Trump’s war with Iran cost 29 billion so far. That is $29 billion blown on a war of choice, and that’s what it would have cost actually to save the ACA tax credits. But as my colleagues have already stated, what is concerning as well as it seems quite clear that that cost estimate is suspiciously low.

Now, your acting comptroller suggested that damage to US facilities was not factored into that figure. It is clear that there has been extensive damage to American military assets, new reporting from the Washington Post and others indicates that Iran has hit at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at US military sites. Can you tell us what the cost of damage done to US facilities is because of this war? Well, I think Jay covered pretty clearly what we can or cannot share, but I would simply respond that, and I think it’s important point considering what the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon and the fact that this president’s been willing to make a historic and courageous choice to confront that.

It comes with cost and we recognize that. I understand what your judgment is. We have a judgment as well.

And I’m asking if you can tell us, and at what point you can tell us what the cost of damage done to US facilities is because of this war? Yeah, ma’am. Thanks for the question. So for future posture in the Middle East, we don’t know what that’s going to look like.

We don’t know how we’re going to design these bases. The damage to date, you do not have any cost estimate on it at all? For the military construction, I don’t have a cost estimate to provide you at this time. Well, when will we get that? Again, it depends on what the future posture is, how we decide to construct those bases.

To date. You know what has happened to date. We can’t get that number.

And that is a real concern to us. Our job is to appropriate dollars and we’re just told it’s coming, it’s coming, and we don’t get it, so it’s very hard to do our budgets. And right now, Mr. Secretary, people are paying four or five, even six, seven dollars for gas.

And American taxpayers are now on the hook as well for paying for this disastrous war. You’re spending families’ hard-earned tax dollars on a war that many strongly oppose. And you’re forcing people to pay more at the pump, and yet you’re not even providing a real breakdown for the cost of this war so far.

We have no real details. You have indicated that. And yet now you want Congress to send you one and a half trillion dollars more.

To me, that is unacceptable. And I hope our Republican colleagues will join us in not only rejecting that absurd request, but in insisting that the American people get the actual answers on how much money, their money, we are spending on this. Now, let me turn and say, Secretary Hicks, the President has called Medicaid, Medicare, and child care little scams.

And said, quote, we’re fighting wars. We cannot take care of daycare. I’m just trying to understand that.

Is it your position, since you’re asking taxpayers for another half a trillion dollars for the war, that American families should be forced to give up child care and health coverage so that you can have one and a half trillion dollars for this budget? Senator, that’s not my department. I certainly support this. And I also support the President’s efforts to find and remove fraud wherever possible, in a general sense.

And we do that in our department as well. I’m not talking about fraud. I actually asked whether an American family should lose their health care or their child care to pay for this budget.

That is literally what the President suggested. The President has proposed a historic $1.5 trillion budget that will defend the nation and confront threats like Iran, which previous presidents allowed to happen, as Senator Graham pointed out. Previous administrations said they wanted to take care of this problem, and they did not.

And he’s doing it. The question in front of this committee, the question in front of the American people, is what are they being asked to give up for this one and a half trillion dollars? That’s where I was talking about. And lastly, Mr. Secretary, your budget request cuts through Trump’s ramblings and really, to me, makes the truth clear that you and the President don’t value families as much as you value defense contractors.

You want to increase the war budget. I mean, every family at Dover. Okay.

Don’t tell me we don’t care about families. We sure do. And we take care of them in every way we possibly can.

I’m asking you about taxpayer dollars that everybody has. So when we’ve been to war before, we have asked people to do victory gardens. We’ve asked them to pay more.

You are not doing that. You are asking for $1.5 trillion, which means something else has to be given up. That is what this committee is looking at.

You want to increase the war budget for the next year by half a trillion dollars. That is taxpayer money that could be used to feed families or build new affordable homes or wipe out some diseases completely or increase child investments 20 times over. But you are asking us to blow it all on war.

And that’s not even counting the money that you have spent bombing Iran or that you may still request in a separate supplemental. And to me, this budget wasn’t even strategically crafted. $1.5 trillion.

It’s like the President decided that was the number and you all filled in the blanks. So what I’m here today to say is you asked for a massive laundry list of unnecessary spending. It’s a huge payday for defense contractors and you still don’t even ask to give DOD civilian workers a pay raise.

And to me, this is absurd. I know you do not care what I have to say. So let me quote you someone you might actually listen to, President Eisenhower.

He said, every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

That is what this budget proposal is asking. It’s going to leave Americans cold and hungry to fund Trump’s war and make defense contractors a fortune. So that is why I hope this committee throws that in the trash and comes together with a budget that works for all American families.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. The federal government has never put the uniformed military at our polls during World War Two, right after 9-11. We’ve never had to do that.

So Secretary Hegseth, if the president, who regrets not signing that executive order to the then SECDEF in 2020, asks you to seize ballots or voting machines in states during the 2026 election, will you stand up for the Constitution and say no? Or will you salute and do his bidding? Senator, I didn’t get a chance to answer the front part of your question, which, you know, there was a lot of deferred maintenance under the Biden administration that needed to be addressed because the world was in chaos when President Trump was elected. Just address the election issue, please. Well, again, that’s the most important thing.

It’s what’s happening. It’s yet another gotcha hypothetical, which is your specialty. It’s not.

We had an executive order from Europe that your predecessor had to hold. It’s not a hypothetical. I refuse to accept you give that answer all the time.

You and I have done this dance before. Get over it. OK, in 2020, he’s the president.

Your boss, the guy you’re performing for right now, told the journalists this year that he wished he signed that executive order to your predecessor. And your predecessor said publicly, thank God we didn’t actually go forward with it. What are you going to do? You’re the guy here in the seat.

It’s not hypothetical. Tell the American people, will you deploy the uniformed military to our polls to collect voter rolls or machines? Are you accusing me of performing because you’re performing for cable news right now? But we have it’s a hypothetical. By the way, in 2024, under the Biden administration, 15 states did deploy under their governor’s authority when their governors asked.

What did Joe Biden say about that? Fundamentally, I don’t think anything because he needed them for cybersecurity and for covid. Trump did it, too. Under Trump.

But it was not the federal decision. It was those governors of the states under their authorities. OK, it’s never been done in our history.

Please stand up for the Constitution. Do not send uniformed military to our polls. Do you have a response to that portion of the question, Mr. Secretary? I’ve never been ordered to do anything illegal, and I won’t.

That goes without saying. Even before you get to the realities of the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, we already saw Donald Trump try to stay in office in 2020 as thousands of people literally ransacked the Capitol. Like I mean, that happened on live television.

We saw it. And yet millions of people put him back in office in this go around. You know, the Supreme Court just basically gutted the voting rights act.

This latest Supreme Court decision is bullshit. One swoop. They rolled back 60 years of civil rights.

But keep listening, because you can make a difference with nothing but your voice. The court gutted one of the last real protections of the Voting Rights Act. The impact is massive.

Republicans could lock in up to 19 extra House seats. Hundreds of districts representing black and Latino communities could disappear because of what the Supreme Court just allowed. Now, this didn’t happen in a vacuum.

Trump pushed for it. Some states refused. So the Supreme Court stepped in and cleared the way.

This is how power gets locked in, not earned. So now the fight moves everywhere. And you can join just by picking up a phone or shooting one email.

Because states like New York, Massachusetts and Maryland must act now. In Maryland, that means contacting Democrat Bill Ferguson, the state Senate president who controls what legislation moves and let him know he needs to act now. But it doesn’t stop there.

The next time Democrats take power, they are ready to act immediately. That means banning partisan gerrymandering nationwide and reforming this radical court. Because if they don’t act now, this gets locked in for a generation and we owe all of them and all of us to stand up right now.