The Trump administration on Wednesday formally sent an $87.6 billion supplemental funding request to replenish stockpiles and otherwise cover the costs of the war with Iran to Congress.

The official notification came in a letter from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought on behalf of President Donald Trump to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), which was subsequently forwarded to Senate GOP leadership offices. 

The defense supplemental request includes $67 billion for the Department of Defense to resupply munitions stocks and prevent the cost of the U.S. troop deployment to the Middle East during Operation Epic Fury, the operation conducted last summer against Iran, from cutting into the Pentagon’s budget.

The bill also requests some additional funding for the State Department and Coast Guard related to the operations.

Administration estimates for the cost of the war have fluctuated significantly: initial reports indicated the Pentagon wanted to ask Congress for $200 billion for the war alone, while officials testified that the munitions costs of the war were between $20 billion and $30 billion. Reconstruction costs for the U.S. bases damaged or destroyed during the war have not yet been accounted for.

Democrats, and some Republicans skeptical of the war effort, have indicated that they’re hesitant if not outright opposed to voting for additional funding for the war, meaning that the legislation might struggle to clear the 60-vote threshold necessary for passage in the Senate.

In addition to the Iran war funding, the supplemental includes a variety of other requests relating to a smorgasbord of other subjects from the Ebola outbreak to supporting farmers, construction projects in Washington, D.C., and New York’s Penn Station and others.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released a statement expressing his full support for the supplemental request.

“I fully support the defense supplemental request submitted to Congress today and look forward to working with my colleagues to move it forward legislatively as soon as possible. We must ensure our service members have everything they need to face an increasingly dangerous world,” Wicker said in a statement. “This supplemental funding is essential in the near term to maintain readiness through training and military pay.”

He added that the “request would also accelerate immediate production of key capabilities, from exquisite munitions to low-cost hypersonics, strike weapons, and drones.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told reporters that he supports the supplemental.

“I think there should be a lot of support for it — you don’t have to agree with the president’s decisions in Iran to understand we need to modernize, we need more munitions, we have some catching up to do in terms of our weapons systems,” Cramer said. “I, frankly, thought it was pretty modest.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Jewish Insider that she hasn’t had a chance to review the request yet, but that the committee plans to hold a public hearing about it.

Collins said “I have no idea, I really don’t” as to whether Republicans will be able to secure the Democratic support that will be necessary to pass the bill, but she was skeptical.

“I haven’t looked at it, and it also depends on whether they’re going to play politics,” Collins added. “I was also not encouraged by Vice Chair [Patty] Murray’s comments.” 

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who lost the Republican primary contest for his reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger last month and has since become one of the Senate’s leading swing votes, told JI that he will need to review the supplemental before deciding whether to support it.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee, told JI he was skeptical of the request.

“I’m still reviewing it. My initial reaction is I’m opposed to the supplemental as it is,” Coons said. “I’m open to finding ways to provide the resources that our war fighters need and that will defend our country, but I’m not open to billions of dollars for things like the Golden Fleet or the Golden Dome.”

Coons said that “it’s hard for me to get too excited about a supplemental when we don’t yet have clarity about if reconciliation 3.0 is the only supplemental and, frankly most importantly, what’s the status of the war. I’m not going to vote for a backdoor authorization for the war in Iran.”

The Delaware senator told JI that he has “pressed in every conversation” with the Trump administration “the importance of funding for Ukraine and securing cutting-edge drone interceptor capability to defend the United States.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, released a statement late Wednesday criticizing the president for launching “a reckless and costly war with Iran — without authorization from Congress or the support of the American people — that he should never have started, and now, instead of doing anything to help families get by, he is asking taxpayers to pick up the tab and give him billions more to wage wars overseas.”

Murray noted that the president “is making this request for more funding as the Pentagon already has a historic annual budget and sits on over $100 billion in unspent funding Republicans provided in their Big Ugly Bill.” 

She also argued that the Trump administration “has failed to answer basic questions about its aims and justification for the Iran war and failed to provide the most basic information about its costs.”

And the Washington senator said that the bill is “an attempt to secure tens of billions of additional dollars for unrelated Pentagon priorities that should rightly be considered through the annual appropriations process.”

Murray did not explicitly commit to voting against the supplemental request. She instead vowed to “closely review” it and said she would “ensure we take care of our servicemembers,” though she warned that, “I will not rubber-stamp tens of billions more for this disastrous war of choice.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth briefed some House Republicans in a classified setting on the supplemental, and the White House’s request for a $350 billion reconciliation bill to provide additional Pentagon funding, at the Capitol on Wednesday. Some Senate Republicans have said the reconciliation bill is a nonstarter.

The meeting took place a few hours before Vought’s letter to Johnson, which was sent earlier in the day, was made public and came ahead of an expected fight over the funding request to replenish stockpiles and otherwise pay for the war in Iran.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) emphasized after the meeting that the supplemental is necessary to restock the munitions the U.S. needs to counter its adversaries, and to take care of servicemembers.

He also offered support for the larger $350 billion request, which he said is just a first step toward bringing the U.S.’ defense budget in line with where it needs to be to ensure the country’s global status and take care of troops.

He also praised Hegseth’s discussion of the U.S. memorandum of understanding with Iran. Bacon said he has not always been impressed by Hegseth, but found that he was “more prepared” and had a “good grasp” of the details.

Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), the chair of the Republican Study Committee, the GOP caucus that organized the briefing, also made the case for the reconciliation bill, arguing that we “have a once in a lifetime opportunity to have a generational impact on our military,” and argued that it’s going to be up to Republicans “to make sure the future generations have the resources, have the weapons systems, are trained and are outfitted to make sure that they defend this country.”

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) said that Hegseth argued to lawmakers that, before the Iran war, the Iranians were not negotiating in good faith, and “now they are,” which is a sign of progress.

“So you could say they accomplished that mission. I think it wasn’t good enough at all. I think we could have had an unconditional surrender,” McCormick said, arguing that the U.S. should have struck Iran’s oil facilities and set back Iran’s economy by decades, and could have ended the war by now on its own terms.

“I just don’t see how they had any negotiation power at all,” McCormick said. He said that if Iran doesn’t make a deal, he expects a return to war.

He also argued that, even prior to the supplemental, the U.S. has sufficient munitions to “obliterate all of Iran, easily, and then some.”