WASHINGTON — Top lawmakers began weighing the potential need for an emergency defense spending package as they returned to Washington on Monday for a briefing on the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters that the need for supplemental funding for munitions was “brought up in discussion” following a “Gang of Eight” briefing with Trump officials, as well as top lawmakers on the Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees.

“There are more details to be determined, of course, how long the operation goes and what the need is,” he said after the closed-door meeting.

While Congress will focus this week on war powers resolutions in both chambers that would bar additional military action in Iran without congressional authorization, the odds of enacting a binding measure of that sort appear scant.

But an appropriations bill for additional military weaponry would give Democrats leverage that could affect the scope of future combat in Iran. Bipartisan support would be needed in the Senate to pass supplemental funding, and many Democrats have decried the war as illegal and unnecessary.

It’s not yet clear whether enough Republicans are prepared to pursue a supplemental bill for what could be a prolonged war.

“I don’t know the answer to that, at least at this point,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday, when asked about the need for a supplemental spending bill. He pointed to a “cushion” of Pentagon funding provided in last year’s budget reconciliation package.

“One of the reasons we funded defense last summer in the reconciliation bill is for this reason,” he said.

As part of the reconciliation package, lawmakers approved $153.3 billion in funding for defense, bringing the defense budget to $1 trillion for the current fiscal year. The funding was made available to spend through fiscal 2029, but the Pentagon said in a summary of its plans last month that it would work to “accelerate execution into FY 2026 if that can be done without sacrificing effectiveness.”

President Donald Trump has said the war could stretch beyond a month, and on Monday added that the nation “has capability to go far longer than that.”

The longer the war continues, the greater the risk that an arsenal of key weapons would face shortfalls. Those could include Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, Patriot anti-missile systems, and the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile defense system, known as THAAD.

Democratic resistance

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that Americans “don’t want a war that leads to lost American lives and that costs billions and billions of taxpayer dollars.”

Democratic senators on Monday offered mixed views of a supplemental bill that ranged from cautious non-committal to outright opposition.

Retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a senior appropriator, said it was “too early to know what the outlook looks like.” But Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, declared his opposition on X, formerly Twitter.

“When the bill comes to pay for the replenishment of interceptors and munitions, the middle eastern countries that we have been protecting need to pay for it,” he wrote. “We aren’t cutting more Medicaid, food stamps for protecting these countries in a war of choice and not in our interest.”

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, another senior appropriator and the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “Our major concern would be the protection of U.S. servicemembers.” And Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, meanwhile, laughed when asked by reporters about whether he could support a supplemental bill, waving off the suggestion.

The talk of a supplemental comes amid a partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans say the escalation with Iran should prompt Democrats to give up their demands for changes at DHS after fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minnesota in January.

But there was no sign that the Iran war would weaken Democratic resolve to pursue an immigration enforcement overhaul. Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, top Democrat on his chamber’s Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, emphasized that the war doesn’t factor into that debate.

“I’ve heard Republicans suggest that we should fund ICE because they started an illegal war with Iran. That’s ridiculous,” Murphy said. “The American public wants ICE to stop murdering people, and they also don’t want us at war with Iran.”

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—Savannah Behrmann contributed to this report.

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