Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said it would take certain things for him to consider voting to fund military action against Iran during a Tuesday stop by CNN, despite calling the operation “dumb” just one day earlier.
While the Democrat said it wasn’t in America’s “best interest” to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money on an unpopular “war of choice,” he told host Kaitlan Collins that he wasn’t entirely opposed to providing the Pentagon more financial support if the U.S. wasn’t footing the entire bill for the conflict.
“In my opinion, I want to see at least 50% of that money has to come from the gulf states and from Israel,” Gallego said. “We’re using our stockpile. We’re using our taxpayer money to protect those countries. At the same time, we’re cutting Medicaid, we’re cutting food stamps.”
Calling it unjustifiable for the country to cover the bulk of the military expenses while the cost of living crisis in the U.S. remains unaddressed, the Southwestern senator said, “People are hurting, you know, we cannot keep doing this.”
Also citing the human cost of the war, which has killed six U.S. servicemembers since its Saturday start, Gallego said, “We’re using our men to protect these countries” and that our allies “need to throw in and have skin in the game too.”
His pragmatic assessment came on the heels of a Monday appearance on MS NOW, where he argued that there were “a lot of ways” the U.S. can support Israel in its efforts against Iran but that the nation has no need to go all-in on war on its behalf.
“Especially when it’s a dumb war,” the Democrat added.
CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to clarify Gallego’s comments.