President asks for $1.15 trillion in base defense as a U.S. fighter jet goes down over Iran.

Hon. We’re paying for a war.

Day thirty-five of the Iran war. An American F-15E was shot down over Iran. Two crew members ejected. The pilot was recovered. The weapons officer, as of that night, was not. This is the first American aircraft confirmed lost since the conflict started in late February.

The same week, the administration submitted a request for $1.15 trillion in base defense spending. That is the base number. It does not include the supplemental for the war that is, on the same Tuesday, downing American planes. The supplemental gets bolted on later. Bolted-on supplementals are how a $1.15 trillion floor becomes a $1.5 trillion ceiling by August.

I have served biscuits to oil rig hands and grid linemen and a few retired airmen who actually know what an F-15E costs. The unit price, before all the classified bits, runs north of a hundred million dollars. The pilot trains for a decade. The weapons officer trains for a decade. You can put a price tag on the airframe. You cannot put one on the chair.

The President, on his social media platform, said the regime “knows what has to be done.” The same day, the U.S. struck the B1 suspension bridge in Karaj, west of Tehran, and then struck the same bridge again about an hour later. Iran reported the second strike killed eight and wounded close to a hundred. A second strike on a target your own crews are still walking is what is called, in the regrettable jargon, a double tap.

The Pentagon’s request is up something like a hundred and fifty billion from last year. The justification, in the supporting documents, leans on the war we are now demonstrably losing equipment in. There is no version of these numbers that does not pass straight through the West Texas grocery store as a quieter way of saying the eggs are still going up.

You can argue with the war. You can’t argue with the receipts.

That ought to concern you.