Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sounded the alarm recently when meeting with Senate Republicans over the Pentagon’s dwindling supply of funding for weapons — and the details were shared Friday by a GOP senator spurned by President Donald Trump.
“[The Pentagon is] running short on funding they need in order to acquire the weapons and missiles and things like that that they need to protect the nation,” Hegseth reportedly told Senate Republicans, as paraphrased by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and relayed to the New York Times.
Cornyn lost his re-election bid after Trump endorsed his GOP primary opponent last month. He joined a growing list of GOP “apostates” who’ve become well-positioned to undercut the president’s agenda. Unlike other Republican lawmakers who’ve been ousted by Trump, Cornyn has yet to directly attack the president, though he may still prove to be a liability for the administration.
Regarding Hegseth’s pleas to Senate Republicans, the Defense secretary has been attempting to tee up support for a $350 billion “special budget bill” for military spending, but has faced “resistance” from both “Republicans and Democrats,” the Times reported.
“Some Republicans have taken exception to the idea, openly saying that they do not think their party will be able to muster the near-unanimous support that would be needed to muscle through the measure,” the Times’s Catie Edmondson wrote. “The reluctance to push through the spending legislation Mr. Trump has insisted upon represents something of a departure from business as usual on Capitol Hill.”