THIS IS HUGE: Senator Elissa Slotkin just led nearly the entire Senate Democratic caucus in demanding Pete Hegseth come clean on the true cost of the Iran war, and she’s not letting the Pentagon hide behind vague numbers.
Slotkin, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, brought 45 of her colleagues together, practically the whole Democratic caucus, to send a letter to the Secretary of Defense demanding a full accounting of what this war is actually costing American families.
The numbers Slotkin is putting on the table are staggering.
Trump said this war would last six weeks. We’re now more than six months in. Eighteen American servicemembers have been killed. More than 820 wounded. Over 50,000 troops remain deployed across the Middle East, with deployments for the USS Lincoln and the 82nd Airborne repeatedly extended.
Slotkin made clear this isn’t abstract for her either. Her letter notes that her own office has heard directly from military families worried about loved ones serving in this conflict.
And she’s connecting it straight to people’s wallets.
American taxpayers have already paid an extra $100 billion out of pocket for higher gas and diesel prices alone, plus at least another $60 billion in higher costs for groceries, mortgages, and plane tickets, all tied directly to this war.
Slotkin is also calling out the secrecy head on. Hegseth has briefed Congress only seven times in six months, and held just eight Pentagon press briefings since the war began, compared to more than 70 in the first month of the Iraq War alone.
Now Hegseth is asking for tens of billions more, without providing basic information on how the money has been spent or will be spent.
As Slotkin and her colleagues put it, that’s the bare minimum any American would expect when balancing their own household budget.
Thank you, Senator Slotkin, for demanding the transparency American families and our troops deserve.
