Iran War Costs Exceed All DOGE Savings in Two Weeks
At $11 billion per week, the Iran war cost $11.6B in its first days — exceeding the entire $9.4B in DOGE spending cuts passed by Congress. The Pentagon requested $200B in supplemental war funding. GOP lacked votes to fund it.
By March 11, 2026, the Iran war was costing approximately $11 billion per week. Total war spending of $11.6 billion in just the first days had already exceeded the $9.4 billion in government spending cuts DOGE had achieved through Congress — the entirety of DOGE's legislative accomplishments wiped out by less than two weeks of war.
The Pentagon requested $200 billion in supplemental war funding from Congress — a staggering sum against a $1 trillion military budget. Cracks emerged in the Republican caucus, with the GOP lacking votes to fund the war even within their own party.
The irony was compounded by DOGE's own damage to war readiness:
- The FBI's counterintelligence unit monitoring Iranian threats was gutted when Kash Patel fired a dozen agents just days before military operations began
- DHS cyber personnel cuts reduced information-sharing with critical infrastructure firms about Iranian hacking threats
- NOAA cuts degraded weather forecasting capabilities in the theater of operations
The administration that promised to eliminate government waste had started a war whose first two weeks cost more than all of its spending cuts combined.