Six days after the Trump administration went to war with Iran, the Pentagon reported it had already spent $11.3 billion on the offensive. At the time of writing, spending on the war had continued at an estimated rate of $1 billion a day, and the United States had already burned through more than $23 billion. By the time you read this, the sum is probably already significantly more. Recent reporting suggests that the additional funding request may even go higher than $200 billion.
Giant sums like these are hard to wrap one’s head around. What if we compared the cost of war to investments to help Americans that our government could make instead? Here’s a rundown of some of the major programs that the United States could have financed with the money the president has proposed spending on a reckless war.
These programs would make Americans healthier, happier, and richer, and make life more affordable. Yet rather than funding these efforts, the Trump administration has repeatedly sided against working families. From cutting health care and food assistance to funnel trillions into unpopular tax cuts skewed toward the very rich, to imposing harsh tariffs, to impulsively entering a war with no serious plans to end it in sight, the president has repeatedly used the power of the purse to pursue his own agenda, not the one he was elected to enact.
Here’s what $200 billion could pay for:
Cancel all medical debt in the United States.
An estimated 100 million Americans owe an estimated $194 billion in medical debt, and medical bills are often filled with errors, causing people to pay or be harassed by debt collectors for debt they may not even owe. States like North Carolina have been able to eliminate medical debt for millions of their residents by purchasing the debt for pennies on the dollar. The $200 billion could be used to purchase and cancel all medical debt nationwide.
Provide free school lunch to all American children.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government briefly provided free school lunches to all American children, through the National School Lunch Program. The policy was a smashing success at reducing hunger (millions of American kids are food insecure), but Senate leadership stopped its extension on the grounds of it being, at $11 billion a year, too expensive. The $200 billion could pay for over eighteen years of free school lunches under the program.
Provide tariff refunds to every household in America.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump did not have the legal authority to issue tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Economists estimate that approximately $175 billion was improperly collected by the Treasury under this authority. Members of Congress and attorneys general across the country have been demanding that the Trump administration provide refunds to the millions of Americans who saw their prices rise as a result of the tariffs. The $200 billion could be used to issue refunds to Americans for every dollar paid in illegal tariffs.
Make health care more affordable for millions of Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that maintaining expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would cost the government $350 billion over a decade and increase the number of insured Americans by 3.8 million. Last fall, bitter Congressional opposition to these expenditures led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Now, after making cuts that will result in 7.5 million fewer Americans getting subsidies for health coverage in 2026, that same Congress is standing by as the military tears through a sum of money—in a few weeks—that could fund months of subsidies for millions of Americans. The $200 billion could fund the subsidies for nearly six years. (Reminder: ensuring health coverage for all Americans could save an estimated 68,000 lives per year.)
Provide credit card interest rebates to millions of cardholders.
Americans currently collectively owe $1.27 trillion in credit card debt, and 40 percent—about 111 million Americans—cannot afford to pay off their balances each month. As a result, millions of people are exposed to, on average, 22 percent interest—nearly double the rate charged a decade ago. Before taking office last year, President Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, and his failure to do so has cost Americans $240.7 billion in credit card interest charges since he took office. Rather than spending an additional $200 billion for war with Iran, President Trump could keep his promise to cap rates at 10 percent, and issue rebates to the millions of Americans who have paid sky high interest rates over the past year.
Discharge student debt for over a million struggling borrowers.
The student loan crisis is massive: Total U.S. student debt tops $1.8 trillion. Nearly one in four student loan borrowers is delinquent on their loans, and nearly 9 million are in default. The problem obviously can’t be solved with $200 billion, but that sum could cover loan discharges for over a million struggling borrowers. And there are distinct cohorts of borrowers who are most in need of help, such as portions of the 6.7 million who had subscribed to the SAVE repayment plan that Trump repealed last year. Millions of those borrowers had $0 monthly obligations under SAVE and are now at heightened risk of default.
Fully fund educational services for millions of students with disabilities for the first time ever.
It’s been more than fifty years since Congress passed the historic Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). As The Century Foundation has previously reported, millions of disabled students (some 15 percent of the public school population) have received individualized education services under IDEA every year. Yet many students have also missed out on the promise of IDEA, because Congress has routinely failed to fully fund the legislation. In 2024–25, there was a $38.7 billion shortfall in IDEA funding. The $200 billion would fill that gap for years—so that children with disabilities get the education they deserve.
Delay Medicaid coverage loss for millions of people.
Among the drastic cuts to the social safety net in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is a new, mandatory work requirement for Medicaid enrollees that is projected to reduce spending by $326 billion over ten years starting in 2027 by bouncing people out of the program; the full cuts to Medicaid spending during that period are a staggering $911 billion. Rather than denying people health care, the $200 billion could delay work requirements for six years, helping to prevent Medicaid coverage loss for up to 5.2 million people according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Send millions of low-income Americans to college.
The $200 billion would fully cover annual tuition for 5 million community college students per year for ten years. It would go even further if it were invested as part of a federal–state partnership to support free or low-cost college access. Not only would that create game-changing opportunities for low-income students, but it would also be a boon to the economy: American college graduates, including those who go to public two-year schools, earn tens of billions more each year than individuals who have only a high school education.
Send life-saving medication to tens of millions of people around the world.
In 2024, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the U.S. program that provides HIV treatment to people around the world, had a budget of $7.1 billion. It was widely considered America’s most successful global health initiative. Congress cut that down to $4.6 billion in 2026. (Trump had requested a much bigger cut, and used an executive order to completely freeze PEPFAR in some countries during 2025.) The $200 billion could reverse the $2.4 billion decrease for the next eight decades. This would provide life-saving medication to tens of millions of people around the world—and help Americans, since, as we should all know by now, pandemics don’t care about borders.
Supply food assistance to millions of Americans.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) delivers benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being. This past fall’s government shutdown caused the program to stop for the first time in its history. The $200 billion could instead be used to cover two full years of SNAP’s annual budget, supplying food assistance to 42 million Americans.
Fully fund Pell Grants.
Some 32 percent of undergraduates depend on Pell Grants, which help low-income families afford college. But the Pell Grant is facing an expanding, multibillion dollar shortage that threatens to push higher education out of reach for many families. The Pell Grant shortfall is expected to grow to more than $11 billion in fiscal year 2027. Trump’s “solution” is a proposal to significantly cut grant sizes. The $200 billion would be enough to fully eliminate the program’s projected ten-year shortfall twice over—and keep millions of low-income students in higher education.
Provide free child care for millions of children.
Some three-quarters of American voters support universal child care. Yet millions of families do not have access to affordable, high-quality child care because Congress has failed to significantly invest in it. With the $200 billion, Century Foundation experts estimate that America could fund child care for at least 10 million more children for a year. Funded at this level, high-quality child care would include higher wages for providers and low teacher-to-student ratios, ensuring every child gets the early care and education to support them to thrive.
Double school funding for low-income students.
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 helps fund schools serving low-income students; in recent years, nearly two-thirds of public schools receive some portion of its $18.3 billion annual budget. Still, Title I money has never really been enough to close American educational opportunity and achievement gaps, which have grown over time. And while Title I funding has escaped Trump cuts so far, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 called for its eventual elimination. The $200 billion could instead more than double Title I funding for a decade, investing more in teachers and better instruction for America’s children.
Close the multibillion-dollar gap in state funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
States have shortchanged public HBCUs for decades, funding them at lower levels than other public colleges. The $200 billion could instead be used to fund HBCUs, leveling the playing field and addressing decades of historical underfunding. The Century Foundation has previously called on the federal government to invest $40 billion over a decade in HBCU endowments. The $200 billion could more than fully fund every single HBCU endowment, allowing them to be used to rebuild infrastructure, make college affordable for HBCU students, build new programs, and assist with student success and completion.
And so much more….
There are countless other investments in America that $200 billion could significantly help, many related to the devastating cuts the Trump administration has made in the past fourteen months: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting could be resurrected and kept alive for many decades. Vital Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs, some closed or vastly diminished, could be brought back. The United States could restore its contributions to the World Health Organization for well over a century. Every small business in the United States could receive over $5,500 to make accessibility improvements to support the aging and disabled population’s access to the economy. Countless badly needed regional and national infrastructure projects—such as mass transit in New York and the Bay Area, or rural broadband, to name just a few—could also desperately use the money.
But the amount of money being thrown at the Iran war wouldn’t just pay for a long list of investments that better align with Americans’ needs and values, while addressing their mounting concerns about affording the basics like groceries, health care, education, and more. Invested more constructively, it would also provide economic growth in ways that transform our society for the better and achieve long-term goals—and have better returns than the dubious stimulus of spending on defense contracts.
Not that the administration appears to be listening to reason at this point. But as the conflict spirals, Americans would do well to keep close tabs on what they are giving up to keep stoking a regional conflagration with no end in sight.
Header Image: Smoke billows after overnight airstrikes on oil depots on March 8, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. Source: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
Tags: iran, War, war budget
15 Things America Could Buy Instead of Spending $200 Billion More on Iran War
Six days after the Trump administration went to war with Iran, the Pentagon reported it had already spent $11.3 billion on the offensive. At the time of writing, spending on the war had continued at an estimated rate of $1 billion a day, and the United States had already burned through more than $23 billion. By the time you read this, the sum is probably already significantly more. Recent reporting suggests that the additional funding request may even go higher than $200 billion.
Giant sums like these are hard to wrap one’s head around. What if we compared the cost of war to investments to help Americans that our government could make instead? Here’s a rundown of some of the major programs that the United States could have financed with the money the president has proposed spending on a reckless war.
These programs would make Americans healthier, happier, and richer, and make life more affordable. Yet rather than funding these efforts, the Trump administration has repeatedly sided against working families. From cutting health care and food assistance to funnel trillions into unpopular tax cuts skewed toward the very rich, to imposing harsh tariffs, to impulsively entering a war with no serious plans to end it in sight, the president has repeatedly used the power of the purse to pursue his own agenda, not the one he was elected to enact.
Here’s what $200 billion could pay for:
Cancel all medical debt in the United States.
An estimated 100 million Americans owe an estimated $194 billion in medical debt, and medical bills are often filled with errors, causing people to pay or be harassed by debt collectors for debt they may not even owe. States like North Carolina have been able to eliminate medical debt for millions of their residents by purchasing the debt for pennies on the dollar. The $200 billion could be used to purchase and cancel all medical debt nationwide.
Provide free school lunch to all American children.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government briefly provided free school lunches to all American children, through the National School Lunch Program. The policy was a smashing success at reducing hunger (millions of American kids are food insecure), but Senate leadership stopped its extension on the grounds of it being, at $11 billion a year, too expensive. The $200 billion could pay for over eighteen years of free school lunches under the program.
Provide tariff refunds to every household in America.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump did not have the legal authority to issue tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Economists estimate that approximately $175 billion was improperly collected by the Treasury under this authority. Members of Congress and attorneys general across the country have been demanding that the Trump administration provide refunds to the millions of Americans who saw their prices rise as a result of the tariffs. The $200 billion could be used to issue refunds to Americans for every dollar paid in illegal tariffs.
Make health care more affordable for millions of Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that maintaining expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would cost the government $350 billion over a decade and increase the number of insured Americans by 3.8 million. Last fall, bitter Congressional opposition to these expenditures led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Now, after making cuts that will result in 7.5 million fewer Americans getting subsidies for health coverage in 2026, that same Congress is standing by as the military tears through a sum of money—in a few weeks—that could fund months of subsidies for millions of Americans. The $200 billion could fund the subsidies for nearly six years. (Reminder: ensuring health coverage for all Americans could save an estimated 68,000 lives per year.)
Provide credit card interest rebates to millions of cardholders.
Americans currently collectively owe $1.27 trillion in credit card debt, and 40 percent—about 111 million Americans—cannot afford to pay off their balances each month. As a result, millions of people are exposed to, on average, 22 percent interest—nearly double the rate charged a decade ago. Before taking office last year, President Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, and his failure to do so has cost Americans $240.7 billion in credit card interest charges since he took office. Rather than spending an additional $200 billion for war with Iran, President Trump could keep his promise to cap rates at 10 percent, and issue rebates to the millions of Americans who have paid sky high interest rates over the past year.
Discharge student debt for over a million struggling borrowers.
The student loan crisis is massive: Total U.S. student debt tops $1.8 trillion. Nearly one in four student loan borrowers is delinquent on their loans, and nearly 9 million are in default. The problem obviously can’t be solved with $200 billion, but that sum could cover loan discharges for over a million struggling borrowers. And there are distinct cohorts of borrowers who are most in need of help, such as portions of the 6.7 million who had subscribed to the SAVE repayment plan that Trump repealed last year. Millions of those borrowers had $0 monthly obligations under SAVE and are now at heightened risk of default.
Fully fund educational services for millions of students with disabilities for the first time ever.
It’s been more than fifty years since Congress passed the historic Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). As The Century Foundation has previously reported, millions of disabled students (some 15 percent of the public school population) have received individualized education services under IDEA every year. Yet many students have also missed out on the promise of IDEA, because Congress has routinely failed to fully fund the legislation. In 2024–25, there was a $38.7 billion shortfall in IDEA funding. The $200 billion would fill that gap for years—so that children with disabilities get the education they deserve.
Delay Medicaid coverage loss for millions of people.
Among the drastic cuts to the social safety net in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is a new, mandatory work requirement for Medicaid enrollees that is projected to reduce spending by $326 billion over ten years starting in 2027 by bouncing people out of the program; the full cuts to Medicaid spending during that period are a staggering $911 billion. Rather than denying people health care, the $200 billion could delay work requirements for six years, helping to prevent Medicaid coverage loss for up to 5.2 million people according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Send millions of low-income Americans to college.
The $200 billion would fully cover annual tuition for 5 million community college students per year for ten years. It would go even further if it were invested as part of a federal–state partnership to support free or low-cost college access. Not only would that create game-changing opportunities for low-income students, but it would also be a boon to the economy: American college graduates, including those who go to public two-year schools, earn tens of billions more each year than individuals who have only a high school education.
Send life-saving medication to tens of millions of people around the world.
In 2024, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the U.S. program that provides HIV treatment to people around the world, had a budget of $7.1 billion. It was widely considered America’s most successful global health initiative. Congress cut that down to $4.6 billion in 2026. (Trump had requested a much bigger cut, and used an executive order to completely freeze PEPFAR in some countries during 2025.) The $200 billion could reverse the $2.4 billion decrease for the next eight decades. This would provide life-saving medication to tens of millions of people around the world—and help Americans, since, as we should all know by now, pandemics don’t care about borders.
Supply food assistance to millions of Americans.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) delivers benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being. This past fall’s government shutdown caused the program to stop for the first time in its history. The $200 billion could instead be used to cover two full years of SNAP’s annual budget, supplying food assistance to 42 million Americans.
Fully fund Pell Grants.
Some 32 percent of undergraduates depend on Pell Grants, which help low-income families afford college. But the Pell Grant is facing an expanding, multibillion dollar shortage that threatens to push higher education out of reach for many families. The Pell Grant shortfall is expected to grow to more than $11 billion in fiscal year 2027. Trump’s “solution” is a proposal to significantly cut grant sizes. The $200 billion would be enough to fully eliminate the program’s projected ten-year shortfall twice over—and keep millions of low-income students in higher education.
Provide free child care for millions of children.
Some three-quarters of American voters support universal child care. Yet millions of families do not have access to affordable, high-quality child care because Congress has failed to significantly invest in it. With the $200 billion, Century Foundation experts estimate that America could fund child care for at least 10 million more children for a year. Funded at this level, high-quality child care would include higher wages for providers and low teacher-to-student ratios, ensuring every child gets the early care and education to support them to thrive.
Double school funding for low-income students.
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 helps fund schools serving low-income students; in recent years, nearly two-thirds of public schools receive some portion of its $18.3 billion annual budget. Still, Title I money has never really been enough to close American educational opportunity and achievement gaps, which have grown over time. And while Title I funding has escaped Trump cuts so far, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 called for its eventual elimination. The $200 billion could instead more than double Title I funding for a decade, investing more in teachers and better instruction for America’s children.
Close the multibillion-dollar gap in state funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
States have shortchanged public HBCUs for decades, funding them at lower levels than other public colleges. The $200 billion could instead be used to fund HBCUs, leveling the playing field and addressing decades of historical underfunding. The Century Foundation has previously called on the federal government to invest $40 billion over a decade in HBCU endowments. The $200 billion could more than fully fund every single HBCU endowment, allowing them to be used to rebuild infrastructure, make college affordable for HBCU students, build new programs, and assist with student success and completion.
And so much more….
There are countless other investments in America that $200 billion could significantly help, many related to the devastating cuts the Trump administration has made in the past fourteen months: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting could be resurrected and kept alive for many decades. Vital Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs, some closed or vastly diminished, could be brought back. The United States could restore its contributions to the World Health Organization for well over a century. Every small business in the United States could receive over $5,500 to make accessibility improvements to support the aging and disabled population’s access to the economy. Countless badly needed regional and national infrastructure projects—such as mass transit in New York and the Bay Area, or rural broadband, to name just a few—could also desperately use the money.
But the amount of money being thrown at the Iran war wouldn’t just pay for a long list of investments that better align with Americans’ needs and values, while addressing their mounting concerns about affording the basics like groceries, health care, education, and more. Invested more constructively, it would also provide economic growth in ways that transform our society for the better and achieve long-term goals—and have better returns than the dubious stimulus of spending on defense contracts.
Not that the administration appears to be listening to reason at this point. But as the conflict spirals, Americans would do well to keep close tabs on what they are giving up to keep stoking a regional conflagration with no end in sight.
Header Image: Smoke billows after overnight airstrikes on oil depots on March 8, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. Source: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
Tags: iran, War, war budget