1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

Congress gave the Pentagon $150 billion last July through the reconciliation bill. A year later, $75 billion of that, half of it, still hasn't been spent. Hegseth's own team says the remainder will be obligated by September. Before that money is even out the door, the administration is asking for $95 billion more, $60 billion of it for the Iran war, on top of the $100+ billion the war has already cost. There's a reason to slow down beyond timing. The Department of Defense just failed its financial audit for the eighth year in a row, with 26 material weaknesses in how it tracks its own money. It's the only one of the government's 24 major agencies that has never passed an audit since Congress required them in 2018, and the Pentagon itself doesn't expect a clean one until 2028 at the earliest. An agency that can't account for the budget it already has is now asking for the largest one in its history, $1.15 trillion for next year alone, before touching emergency war funding. For scale: the US spent about $954 billion on its military in 2025, more than the next nine or ten countries combined, and close to three times what China spent. The next request would push that past a trillion dollars a year while Medicaid and SNAP absorb real cuts. I'm not asking you to take a position on every detail of the war. I'm asking for something more basic: an agency should have to show where the last dollar went before Congress hands over the next one. Please vote no on the $95 billion emergency package, oppose any additional Iran war funding riding along with it, and refuse to move the FY2027 defense topline forward until the Pentagon can account for the $75 billion it hasn't spent and explain why it needs more before it does.