White House seeks extra funds for Iran war as part of $87.6bn request

The White House has requested Congress approve $87.6bn in new funding, much of which would go towards the costs of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, but a top Democrat has signaled the party will not support paying for an unpopular conflict that lawmakers never authorized. The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request released on Wednesday comes amid a logjam in US Congress sparked by the president’s demand that the Senate pass a measure to impose sweeping new restrictions on voting nationwide. The standoff intensified this week, when Trump refused to sign a major housing bill approved with bipartisan majorities until the voting bill advances, after previously linking its passage to renewal of a key foreign surveillance law. In a letter outlining the Iran war funding request, the White House office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, wrote that $67.1bn of the funds would be used to cover costs related to the conflict with Iran, and would include $21bn for munitions procurement and the defense industrial base. The request also contains $1.4bn to respond to the outbreak of Ebola in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and $11.1bn for US farmers, who have been struggling with economic shocks related to the Trump administration’s tariff regime, as well as prices for fertilizer and diesel driven higher by the conflict with Iran. …