WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $95 billion budget resolution to provide tens of billions in Iran war funding Wednesday, with the support of all Texas Republicans and no Texas Democrats.
The vote comes as GOP House leadership attempts to pair money for the war with a handful of other measures, including farm aid and elements of a voting restrictions bill prioritized by President Donald Trump.
More than three-quarters of the spending package — $73 billion — is for the Iran war and other national security costs, including troop pay and intelligence programs. An additional $12 billion is for farm assistance, and $10 billion for potential elections spending that aim to pass elements of the SAVE America Act, a voting restrictions bill championed by Trump.
The measure passed the lower chamber by a razor-thin 216 to 214 margin, with all 211 Democrats voting against. GOP Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky joined the opposition, along with Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, who changed his affiliation from Republican to independent earlier this year.
The spending is not offset by other spending cuts or new sources of revenue, a point seized on by Democrats who have banded together to oppose the resolution for increasing the deficit to finance an unpopular war. In a June survey by the Texas Politics Project, 47% of Texans said they disapproved of U.S. military action against Iran, outweighing the 41% who voiced approval.
The budget process has been spearheaded by Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, a longtime fiscal hawk who chairs the House Budget Committee. Arrington has proposed a separate bill that goes after healthcare fraud as a potential revenue-generating measure and defended the spending measure’s lack of offsetting cuts or revenue, saying the war funding is necessary.
“We can debate where we are, why we’re there,” Arrington said at the committee’s markup of the budget resolution. “You can’t debate supporting our sons and daughters in uniform who salute the commander in chief and risk their lives for our freedom, for our security, for our ideals, for our interests anywhere, anytime. This is a defense supplemental. It should be bipartisan.”
He referred to the resolution as “just baseline battlefield readiness — bullets and bombs to finish the job and to come home safely and victoriously” during floor debate Wednesday.
Democrats have heavily critiqued the Iran War since its onset as costly and reckless, while arguing it was illegally set off without approval from Congress.
Republicans are hoping to pass the bill through the Senate through the budget reconciliation process, a legislative tool that allows the majority to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for bills that deal exclusively with spending, revenue and debt. The same mechanism was used to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, the centerpiece of Trump’s domestic agenda.
The fate of this week’s spending package was wobbly leading up to Wednesday’s House vote, with some Republicans upset that the new spending is not offset, and others concerned about continuing to fund a war that polls poorly with voters ahead of a critical midterm election. It could face difficult odds in the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, has pledged to prioritize a government funding stopgap and where numerous Senate Republicans face competitive reelection campaigns.
Texas members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, who are traditionally deficit hawks, ultimately voted for the bill, despite concerns about the deepening deficit.
Wednesday’s vote — and subsequent measures on the reconciliation bill — could play heavily in midterm election advertising. In Texas, Democrats are only targeting one incumbent Republican — Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who voted for the bill.
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, who is in a competitive race for his Trump-leaning seat, said Republicans will need to defend their vote on the campaign trail.
“The war is not very popular,” he said. “So that ought to tell you the percentage of people that are upset across the country. So they’re going to have to go back to their districts and explain.”
The House on Wednesday also passed a politically contentious bill that paired a ban on members of Congress trading stocks with new voter ID requirements backed by Trump. Gonzalez and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, the GOP’s top targets in Texas this November, broke with their party to vote for the bill.
The Stop Insider Trading Act would bar members and their families from buying most individual stocks and require public notice before sales, an idea that has gained steam amid scrutiny of lawmakers — most prominently former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — whose portfolios have significantly outperformed the S&P 500.
Additionally, the bill borrowed heavily from Trump’s SAVE America Act with an unrelated provision requiring voters to show photo identification when voting in federal elections, which has effectively frozen the House floor the last few months as Trump-aligned conservatives refused to advance any bill that does not enforce it, including must-pass measures like the Pentagon’s defense authorization bill that funds the Pentagon, until it narrowly passed Wednesday in a 216-212 vote.
Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, blasted the combined bill as “unserious,” pointing to how the bill only focuses on banning future purchases, but still allows lawmakers to hold and sell their existing portfolios.
“Republicans aren’t trying to be serious about a stock trading ban. They didn’t apply it across the board. They didn’t prohibit members from having it,” Johnson told the Texas Tribune. “All they’re doing is trying to wrap it up into a voter suppression bill, and it’s ridiculous.”
This story previously appeared in the Texas Tribune.
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