U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., took to X on Tuesday to accuse President Donald Trump of pouring billions of dollars into what he called an “illegal war of choice” with Iran while leaving American families to absorb rising costs for healthcare, housing and everyday essentials on their own. The post came hours after new reporting revealed the Iran war’s price tag to U.S. taxpayers has climbed to $43.6 billion, with the Pentagon projecting the conflict will continue costing more than $3 billion per month.
Hickenlooper’s post, published at 3:26 p.m. on September 22, 2026, read in full:
“Billions for an illegal war of choice. Nothing for healthcare, lowering costs, or housing.”
The senator’s message was a direct response to reporting on a new U.S. Central Command estimate showing the war’s cost had grown substantially since the last major accounting. According to figures obtained by The Associated Press and first reported by Bloomberg, the Iran war — launched by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026 — has cost the U.S. military $43.6 billion as of September 3. That figure builds on a Congressional Budget Office report released the same day, which found the conflict had already cost $38 billion through August 1 and continues to run up expenses of roughly $3 billion a month depending on the intensity of operations.
Weapons expenditures accounted for the bulk of the increase, jumping by more than $6 billion in just over a month — from $21.7 billion in the CBO’s earlier report to $28.1 billion in CENTCOM’s newer estimate. The Pentagon’s breakdown attributed much of that spending to defensive missile interceptors, including those fired by the Army’s Patriot and THAAD systems, which have been in heavy demand throughout the conflict.
Hickenlooper’s Tuesday post is the latest in a monthslong campaign the senator has waged against the war and its economic fallout. Just one week earlier, on September 15, he posted on X noting that the conflict Trump once predicted would last “4-5 weeks” had instead stretched toward its seventh month, writing that the president “has no endgame, no strategy, and not a care in the world about his outrageous cost-of-living emergency.”
The senator has repeatedly tied the war directly to the affordability pressures facing Colorado families. In a video statement released earlier this year, Hickenlooper said mortgage rates had climbed from just above 6% before the war to above 7% afterward, adding roughly $280 a month, nearly $4,000 a year and more than $100,000 over the life of a 30-year mortgage for the average Colorado homebuyer. “That’s real money that could be going toward groceries, child care, or college,” he said, noting that the Senate had voted more than a dozen times to end the war, only to be blocked by Republicans each time.
The senator has also pointed to healthcare as a central casualty of the administration’s priorities. In a March floor speech, Hickenlooper said tens of millions of Americans are “paying DOUBLE for their health care” after Congress passed legislation he said would cause 15 million people to lose coverage altogether, and noted that in 85 of the country’s largest metro areas, child care for two children now costs more than rent. He argued that “every strike, every military escalation, every headline is a distraction” from the affordability crisis at home.
Reports from the Joint Economic Committee Minority, which Hickenlooper’s office has repeatedly cited, have quantified those pressures in dollar terms. One report found Colorado families had spent $4,000 more on goods and services since Trump took office, including $496 more on housing costs such as rent and mortgage payments, and that monthly Affordable Care Act premiums had risen more than 50% on average in 2026 compared with the previous year, with deductibles increasing by more than $1,000. “As I travel across Colorado this month, we keep hearing the same thing: everyday essentials cost too much,” Hickenlooper said of the findings. “Colorado is facing a cost-of-living emergency made worse by President Trump’s illegal war, tariffs, and massive healthcare cuts.”
A separate JEC report found that Coloradans have spent more than $1 billion collectively on gas since the war began, averaging $584 more per family, while grocery prices have risen 4% since Trump returned to office. Nationally, the average American household has spent more than $3,500 in additional costs during the same period, according to the committee’s findings — a figure other Democratic senators, including Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, and Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, have cited in similar reports documenting cost increases of $2,600 to more than $4,500 in their own states.
The Pentagon’s spending request has continued to grow even as those cost-of-living figures circulate on Capitol Hill. The Trump administration is pushing for a historic $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year, along with a separate $95 billion package intended to help fund the Iran war and other defense priorities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the proposal in a speech last week in Austin, Texas, telling an audience at drone manufacturer Saronic Technologies that “we’re asking for $1.5 trillion in the current budget to make generational investments to keep our country strong and sustain good, high-paying jobs for American manufacturers like Saronic.”
Democratic senators have pushed back on the administration’s transparency around those costs. In a recent letter to Hegseth, more than 40 senators — including Hickenlooper, Colorado colleague Michael Bennet and Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin — criticized the Pentagon for withholding basic budget information from Congress and the public even as American casualties and taxpayer costs continue to climb.
The human toll of the conflict has climbed alongside its financial one. According to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, 18 American service members have died and more than 830 have been wounded since the war began. A Pentagon inspector general report released this week found that Iranian ballistic missile and drone strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases across Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan — damage not reflected in the $43.6 billion cost estimate.
The strain has extended beyond U.S. borders. NATO and European defense officials have told the Associated Press that the alliance is facing a “beyond critical” shortage of missile interceptors as stockpiles are depleted by the war’s demands. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has turned to regional and Western allies for help replenishing its own interceptor supply amid its ongoing standoff with Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Hickenlooper, a former two-term Colorado governor and Denver mayor first elected to the Senate in 2020, has said his current term — which he is seeking to extend after winning the Democratic primary this past June — will be his last. He has built his 2026 campaign in part around the cost-of-living message reflected in Tuesday’s post, framing the war’s mounting price tag as emblematic of an administration he says has misplaced priorities heading into the November midterms.
The financial cost of the war is expected to remain a flashpoint in Washington as Congress weighs the administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request alongside the separate $95 billion war funding package. With the CBO projecting continued costs of roughly $3 billion a month, the total price tag is likely to keep rising well before lawmakers reach any resolution on funding priorities for healthcare, housing and other domestic programs that Hickenlooper and other Democrats say have been left behind.