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Congress has told Trump to stop Iran war- why does it matter?
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Congress has told Trump to stop Iran war- why does it matter?
The White House has asked lawmakers to approve $87.6bn (£66.5bn), mostly for “urgent needs” connected with the US war on Iran, a day after Congress passed a resolution rebuking the military action.
The bulk of the funding – $67bn – is for the Defence Department, including $21bn for munitions, $17.3bn for operational costs and $12.1bn for classified programmes, said the White House.
The other money is for unrelated measures including $11bn for US farmers and $1.4bn to tackle the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.
But the proposal faces an uphill battle in Congress as the Iran conflict is unpopular with voters and midterm elections loom this November.
The White House Office of Management and Budget sent the formal request for the funds on Wednesday in a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.
“Most of this request will address urgent needs related to Operation Epic Fury (OEF),” says the letter, referring to the Iran war.
The request includes about $300m to bolster security at US embassies and diplomatic outposts in the Middle East and South Asia after some of them came under attack earlier in the war.
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Washington and Tehran are currently observing a ceasefire, but the White House budget office letter notes that the Pentagon needs to “rebuild stocks” after its military strikes.
It comes as Republicans in Congress have expressed scepticism about a peace plan that Trump agreed last week with Iran.
Earlier on Wednesday, the president held a tense meeting with Senate Republicans, after he abruptly called off a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill.
At the luncheon on Capitol Hill, he complained about Tuesday’s largely symbolic vote to restrict his war powers in the Republican-controlled Senate.
It was the first resolution of its kind to clear Congress instructing a president to end a military action.
Before Wednesday’s meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump had described the war powers vote as “poorly timed and meaningless”.
On social media, he labelled four Republican senators who voted along with Democrats as “losers”.
One of those Republicans, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, said he and the president had a shouting match at Wednesday’s closed-door luncheon.
“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on,'” he told journalists.
“This was supposed to last four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved.”
In a meeting earlier on Wednesday with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump again vented about the war powers vote.
“We had four Republican senators and all Democrats… they want to lose the war because they’re stupid,” he said.
Last month, the Pentagon’s chief financial officer Jules Hurst told a congressional panel the war had cost about $29bn so far.
But defence analysts and lawmakers say this estimate does not reflect the full scale of the conflict’s financial damage.
