WASHINGTON -- Republicans might make new cuts to health care and food programs to pay for President Donald Trump's war in Iran, as the party's lawmakers search for ways to offset potentially $200 billion in war costs in an upcoming budget bill.
Slashing aid to struggling Americans to pay for a foreign war would be contrary to Trump's "America First" campaign message, but some Republicans seem oblivious to the contradiction -- even as MAGA influencers raise alarms about the squandering of Trump's political coalition.
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) has been talking about cutting more social programs the way Republicans cut $1 trillion from food assistance and Medicaid last year.
"We have a war on a nuclear Iran that could be paid for by the president's war on fraud," Arrington said Monday on Fox Business.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have used the word "fraud" to denote health and nutrition spending that wasn't actually fraudulent, but that they believed went to people who didn't deserve help -- namely people who didn't have jobs or who might struggle to fill out paperwork reflecting their employment status.
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which used the welfare cuts to offset part of the cost of tax cuts, was so unpopular that Republicans wound up giving it a new name: the "Working Families Tax Cut." It's hard to see how using the cuts to pay for a generally unpopular foreign war would make them any more popular.
"It is ludicrous politics to go in and say, we're going to take away your health care to pay for an unpopular, unjust, immoral war," Bobby Kogan, a budget expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, told HuffPost.
Democrats this week have seized on Republicans' nascent budget plans. In a statement on Monday, Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on Arrington's committee, noted that around 2 million Americans have already lost health insurance after Republicans refused to extend health insurance premium subsidies. Another several million will lose it as Medicaid cuts go into effect.
"Now, Republicans in Washington want to rip health care away from even more people to fund Trump's reckless war in the Middle East. It's shameful," Boyle said on social media.
"More money for war. More money for ICE. Less money for health care," quipped Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Republicans are embarking on their next budget bill amid an impasse over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Their plan is to fund the department using a special "reconciliation" process that sidesteps the Senate filibuster, so Democrats won't be able to stop it. Republicans envision the bill as a catchall for various priorities, including war funding and maybe even voter fraud reforms.
"The purpose of the second reconciliation bill is to make sure there is adequate funding to secure our homeland and to support our men and women in the military who are fighting so bravely," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement last week. "More funding will mean they can complete the task assigned and keep America safe -- which is money well spent."
But unifying the Republican conference around a bill they can all support will be easier said than done. Some GOP senators have voiced concerns about the scope of the package, preferring it be more narrowly focused on addressing issues affecting voters at home, like the ballooning cost of living.
"We should try to address costs across the board," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told HuffPost. "Whether it's gas, premiums, out-of-pocket expenses, those are just surging ... if we're gonna do reconciliation, we ought to make affordability issues our No. 1 focus for middle-class people."
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) also threw cold water on the idea of including major voting changes in a reconciliation package, such as the SAVE America Act, because Senate rules likely wouldn't allow it.
"It'll be a miracle for them to put this thing together," Marshall told conservative podcaster Vince Coglianese on Tuesday. "How are we going to put the SAVE Act into a reconciliation bill?"