Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s decision to take the United States to war with Iran is fueling inflation “in a BIG way” and warned that the price pressure will keep building for at least another year. In a post on X, Jacobs argued that “Americans are paying the price for Trump’s bad judgement,” tying rising household costs directly to the administration’s handling of the six-month-old conflict.
Jacobs’s post, published at 9:10 a.m. on September 17, 2026, came in direct response to reporting from NBC News two days earlier detailing a new Congressional Budget Office analysis on the war’s economic toll. The CBO’s findings gave Jacobs, one of the war’s most consistent congressional critics, fresh ammunition for an argument she has been making since the fighting began in February: that the war is costing Americans money as well as lives.
Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran is driving up inflation in a BIG way – and will continue to do so at least through the next year. Americans are paying the price for Trump’s bad judgement.https://t.co/tuk5Ci5h2J
— Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (@RepSaraJacobs) September 17, 2026
What the CBO Report Found
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the war has been responsible for more than a third of the overall rise in inflation this year, with the impact even sharper in the second quarter of 2026, when the office attributed more than 40% of inflation to the conflict. Looking ahead, the CBO projected the war would add an estimated half a percentage point to inflation in the first quarter of 2027, meaning the price effects are expected to persist well past the one-year mark Jacobs referenced in her post.
The office, which is controlled by Congress and conducts independent analysis of the federal budget and economy, said the inflationary pressure is also pushing up borrowing costs. Interest rates are expected to keep climbing as the Federal Reserve works to contain inflation, a dynamic that has already made mortgages and other loans more expensive for American households.
Rising Costs at the Pump and in Home Loans
The report’s numbers illustrate how quickly costs have moved. The rate on a typical 30-year mortgage stood under 6% before the war began; as of this week it had climbed to 7.22%, according to Mortgage News Daily. Wall Street also expected the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate this week in an effort to tamp down inflation.
Fuel prices have moved just as sharply. The CBO identified the primary driver of the inflation increase as a reduction in oil and natural gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and disruptions to shipping through the Red Sea. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen 45% since the war started, reaching $4.32 this week. Diesel fuel — critical to farm equipment and commercial trucking — has jumped 66%, to a record $6.26 a gallon.
Munitions Shortfalls and Unaccounted Costs
The inflation report landed a day after a separate Pentagon watchdog finding that the war has produced a shortfall in U.S. munitions and “bottlenecks” in military supply chains. Taken together, the two reports paint a picture of a conflict straining both American household budgets and military readiness at the same time.
The CBO estimated it will take roughly five years for the Pentagon to fully replace the munitions expended during the war, which it valued at approximately $38 billion as of August 1. Notably, that figure does not include the cost of repairing what the CBO described as damage to hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in the Middle East inflicted by Iran — a cost the office said it could not calculate because the Defense Department has not shared information on the value of damaged or destroyed equipment and property, or on what repairs it plans to make.
The CBO also noted that the Pentagon did not cooperate with its requests for information while preparing the report, limiting how complete an accounting of the war’s total cost the office could provide to lawmakers.
White House and Democratic Reaction
The White House pushed back on the notion that the war has left the military unprepared. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump had taken decisive action against a threat that past presidents had lacked “the courage to address,” and said the U.S. military retains ample stockpiles to support the commander-in-chief’s goals.
Democrats offered a starkly different reading of the same numbers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for the war to end, describing its toll as “a one-two punch that’s burning a hole in Americans’ pockets” — hitting both household budgets and the military’s munitions supply at once, which she said was hurting overall military readiness.
The report put specific dollar figures on the military side of that equation: replacing missile defense interceptors alone is expected to cost $13.1 billion, part of an overall $21.7 billion needed to replace munitions used through August 1. Maintaining the war at its current pace is projected to cost an additional $2 billion to $3 billion per month going forward, with costs rising further if the conflict escalates.
A Long-Running Clash Over the War
Thursday’s post is the latest in a pattern for Jacobs, who represents California’s 51st District in San Diego — home to the country’s largest concentration of military personnel — and has opposed the war since its opening days. In February, after Trump launched the strikes that began the conflict, Jacobs released a statement predicting the decision would be remembered as “one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in American history,” arguing the administration was repeating pre-Iraq War justifications for military action.
In April, as American casualties and deployments mounted, Jacobs introduced a war powers resolution aimed at ending the conflict, telling colleagues that “every day this unnecessary, reckless war continues” put her deployed constituents at risk. The following month, she urged the House to back a related bipartisan war powers measure, framing her opposition around the burden placed on service members and their families.
More recently, Jacobs voted against this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, pairing her objection to the bill’s $1.15 trillion topline with the same economic argument she raised again Thursday — that “millions of Americans can’t afford gas and groceries to get through the week” even as defense spending continues to grow.
Where the War Stands Now
The conflict, which began February 28, 2026, was in its 201st day as of this week, with U.S. Central Command reporting continued friction with Iranian forces in the Gulf even as both sides avoid a full return to open combat. Oil markets have remained elevated throughout the war, with benchmark crude prices holding well above pre-war levels for months, a dynamic economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas have separately tied to the closure and disruption of Gulf shipping routes.
Federal Reserve officials have said they expect the inflation caused by the war to ease over time, projecting a return toward the central bank’s 2% target by 2028, but have acknowledged in their own public statements that higher fuel prices are likely to keep pushing costs up in the near term. For now, that near term is exactly what Jacobs and other war critics say American households are being asked to absorb — a burden the CBO’s own numbers suggest will not fully lift before next year.