Republicans’ midterm defeat is crushing any remaining hopes that Congress would approve President Donald Trump’s unprecedented $1.5 trillion defence budget request amid an unpopular war in the Middle East.
Democrats, who won solid majorities of both chambers of Congress on Tuesday, were already largely opposed to the 44% increase from the previous fiscal year and are now signalling they will block any efforts to push it forward. Meanwhile, the US military has announced it will create a 20-member task force to find ways to disrupt land routes into Iran that it says are used for shipments of weapons and illicit materials.
IRGC said US’s latest bid “will fail” and will not bring about economic collapse in Iran. Bloomberg
At the same time, Republican lawmakers returning to the lame-duck session before the new Congress is seated in Jan may not be able to muster the support or political will to ram through the massive defence spending package, especially amid Pentagon’s unpopular war against Iran that cost many of them their jobs.
“We must push for the development of a more realistic and sustainable approach to our national security – one that does not require a defense budget in excess of $1 trillion or one paid for with draconian cuts to critical domestic programs,” Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the incoming chairman of House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement after the election. “It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement,” CNN cited Trump as saying in a phone interview. “The answer is, highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary.”
The Democratic resistance risks imperilling some of Trump’s splashiest defence ambitions, including Golden Dome missile shield and his Trump-class battleship plan, and bodes poorly for defence contractors – some of which also face the prospect of congressional scrutiny over alleged conflicts of interest with the Trump administration. Trump on Sunday said he was highly unlikely to order fresh attacks on Iran as long as talks to end the conflict progress, CNN reported.