$8.6 Billion Without a Vote: How the White House Is Stretching Executive Power on Middle East Arms Sales

A single memo, signed on a Friday afternoon, moved more money in weapons than most countries spend on their entire military in a year. No floor debate. No recorded votes. By Monday morning, the White House had cleared the way for up to $8.6 billion in U.S. arms transfers to the Middle East, invoking emergency authority to short‑circuit Congress.

That decision—quiet, legal, and explosive—has reopened one of Washington’s most enduring constitutional fights: who really controls American war power when foreign policy collides with domestic politics.

The legal lever the White House keeps pulling

The mechanism sits inside the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976, specifically Section 36(b). It allows the president to waive the standard 30‑day congressional review of major arms sales if an “emergency exists which requires such sale in the national security interests of the United States.”

Congress wrote that clause for rare moments: sudden wars, collapsing allies, imminent threats. Since 2023, it has become routine.

Between December 2023 and January 2025, the Biden administration used emergency determinations or informal bypasses to advance dozens of weapons packages to Middle Eastern partners—most notably Israel, but also Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar—totaling up to $8.6 billion, according to notifications reviewed by the Washington Post, Reuters, and the Congressional Research Service.

The breakdown included:

• 155mm artillery shells and tank ammunition for Israel, approved December 29, 2023
• Precision-guided munitions kits (JDAMs) that convert unguided bombs into GPS‑guided weapons
• Spare parts and maintenance support for U.S.-made aircraft and missile systems
• Air defense interceptors tied to regional missile threats

Each sale, standing alone, fit within statutory authority. Together, they represent something else: a normalization of executive speed over legislative consent.

Military spending by memo, not mandate

The numbers tell the story Congress never got to debate.

The United States spent $916 billion on defense in FY2024, according to the Pentagon’s own budget documents. Roughly $80 billion of that total supported foreign military assistance, arms transfers, and security cooperation—often framed as cheaper than deploying U.S. troops.

Arms sales sit at the center of that logic. The U.S. approved $238 billion in foreign military sales globally in 2023, a record high driven by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, per State Department data. The Middle East accounted for nearly 40% of those approvals.

What changed wasn’t just volume. It was process.

Traditionally, congressional committees—Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs—place “holds” on controversial sales. These holds lack formal legal force, but administrations historically respected them. Over the past two years, the White House has treated them as suggestions.

In January 2024, then–SFRC Chair Sen. Ben Cardin publicly confirmed that the administration proceeded with Israel-related sales despite ongoing objections from multiple senators. The message landed with a thud on Capitol Hill: oversight only works if the executive branch agrees to be overseen.

The foreign-policy calculus behind the bypass

White House officials argue the stakes justify the speed.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, Israel burned through artillery ammunition at rates unseen since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. U.S. planners worried that delayed resupply could embolden Hezbollah, Iran, or other regional actors watching for weakness.

From that vantage point, emergency authority looked less like constitutional vandalism and more like deterrence maintenance.

But the administration’s approach created second‑order effects it now struggles to contain.

• Regional escalation risk: Accelerated arms flows increased Israel’s operational capacity while diplomacy lagged, narrowing Washington’s leverage to restrain civilian harm in Gaza.
• Credibility erosion: U.S. claims to champion civilian protection rang hollow when paired with expedited deliveries of high-yield munitions.
• Precedent setting: Future presidents—of either party—now have a thicker paper trail justifying unilateral arms decisions.

As William Hartung of the Quincy Institute put it in a January 2024 briefing, “Every emergency sale becomes evidence for the next one. Over time, the exception eats the rule.”

Congressional oversight in name only

Congress technically retains power. Practically, it’s watching from the gallery.

Lawmakers can introduce joint resolutions of disapproval to block arms sales. The last time one actually succeeded was 1986, when Congress stopped Saudi Arabia from buying U.S. arms tied to AWACS aircraft—and even that took a veto override fight.

More recently, in 2019, bipartisan majorities voted to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Yemen. President Trump vetoed them. Congress failed to override.

That history shapes today’s strategy inside the White House. Why endure weeks of political theater when the end result looks the same?

Yet the cost of sidelining Congress shows up elsewhere:

• Staff expertise atrophies when lawmakers stop shaping outcomes.
• Public accountability vanishes when deals move faster than hearings.
• Policy coherence suffers as arms sales substitute for strategy.

One former State Department official, speaking on background, described the current system bluntly: “We’ve replaced foreign policy with logistics.”

The human consequences beneath the balance sheets

Numbers dominate arms debates, but consequences land on people.

The Airwars monitoring group estimates that U.S.-supplied munitions have been linked to thousands of civilian casualties across Middle Eastern conflicts since 2015, particularly in Yemen and Gaza. While responsibility rests with end users, American fingerprints complicate diplomatic efforts to broker ceasefires or humanitarian access.

Inside Israel, accelerated resupply removed pressure to pause operations during critical humanitarian negotiations in late 2023 and early 2024. Aid corridors opened later and more narrowly than U.S. diplomats initially sought.

Regionally, Gulf partners interpreted Washington’s urgency as reassurance: the U.S. still prioritizes hard power commitments over human-rights conditionality. That reading influences everything from oil diplomacy to basing agreements.

Why this matters beyond the Middle East

Strip away geography and the implications sharpen.

If the executive branch can move $8.6 billion in weapons without a vote during a politically sensitive conflict, what stops similar actions in East Asia, Africa, or Latin America?

The AECA contains no numerical ceiling for emergencies. It demands no retroactive approval. Congress learns after the fact—and often after the weapons ship.

That imbalance tilts U.S. foreign policy toward speed, secrecy, and supplier logic. Defense contractors thrive in that environment. Democratic deliberation does not.

Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and General Dynamics reported combined defense revenues exceeding $230 billion in 2024. Emergency sales compress timelines, reduce uncertainty, and insulate programs from political risk. Wall Street notices.

Tools citizens can use to track what Congress doesn’t vote on

Oversight hasn’t vanished entirely—it’s migrated.

Readers who want to monitor arms sales in real time can use:

• Congress.gov Advanced Search — Track AECA notifications, resolutions of disapproval, and committee correspondence by country or weapon system.
• SIPRI Arms Transfers Database — Offers independent data on delivery timelines and system types, often clearer than U.S. government summaries.
• Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) Press Releases — Dry but essential; emergency determinations appear here first.
• Quincy Institute’s Security Assistance Monitor — Aggregates sales data with policy analysis, useful for spotting trends early.

For deeper context, two books remain indispensable:

• “The Spoils of War” by Andrew Cockburn
• “Prophets of War” by William Hartung

Both trace how process choices shape outcomes long after the headlines fade.

What a course correction could actually look like

Restoring balance doesn’t require rewriting the Constitution. It requires friction.

Practical steps Congress could take now:

• Mandatory post‑sale votes within 60 days of any emergency determination
• Country‑specific spending caps that trigger automatic review
• Civilian harm certification requirements tied to replenishment, not initial delivery
• Public reporting deadlines with penalties for noncompliance

None of these block arms outright. They slow them just enough to force justification.

The White House, for its part, could reclaim credibility by narrowing its definition of “emergency” and engaging Congress earlier, even when it expects resistance. Speed wins battles. Legitimacy wins alliances.

The power that expands quietly

Executive authority rarely announces itself with fanfare. It grows through footnotes, memos, and deadlines missed by design.

The $8.6 billion figure matters less than the method that moved it. A system built to balance urgency with consent now favors urgency alone. That tilt reshapes U.S. foreign policy long after the current wars end.

Congress still holds the constitutional pen. Whether it chooses to use it will determine who decides the next emergency—and how many votes democracy requires when billions of dollars and countless lives hang in the balance.