Some lawmakers in the Senate are advocating for a more bipartisan approach to paying for the Pentagon’s $185 billion Golden Dome missile defense project, arguing that the effort’s goal of bolstering homeland defenses has support across ideological lines but the process for funding it has been politically charged—leaving the program’s near- and long-term future uncertain.
During a Sept. 29 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee, lawmakers bemoaned the Pentagon’s decision to use a controversial funding tool called reconciliation—which allows Congress to appropriate funds with a simple majority vote—to kickstart President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome initiative in 2025. That decision, they argued, took a program whose mission has broad support in Congress and enveloped it in politics.
“Should it have been necessary to go to reconciliation to get this started? I would say no. This should have been on a bipartisan basis,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said during the hearing. “I won’t lay fault for why that’s happening, I’m just simply saying we need to get back to a bipartisan approach to this as soon as possible.”
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said the effort is one of the “most expensive and important initiatives of this government” that has strong support in Congress, making it “very bothersome” that the Pentagon and the White House opted to circumvent the traditional appropriations process to resource it.
And Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) pointed out that while Golden Dome as a program materialized under President Donald Trump’s administration, its roots are bipartisan. The Senate Armed Services Committee inserted language into the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act codifying the need for a layered missile defense architecture.
“So, it came from us,” she said.
Yet it was Trump’s announcement in January 2025 that the Pentagon would build an expansive homeland missile defense architecture that brought major attention and funding to idea. First called “Iron Dome For America” and later changed to “Golden Dome,” the vision is for a layered architecture comprised of sensors, ground and space-based interceptors, and interconnected command-and-control systems designed to defeat a range of threats, from drones and more traditional weapons to advanced hypersonic and cruise missiles.
To date, the Pentagon’s strategy for funding the program has been to bypass the annual budget process and rely instead on reconciliation. As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Congress passed in July 2025, Golden Dome received $25 billion—90 percent of which it had obligated as of mid-August, according to Golden Dome Director Gen. Michael Guetlein.
This year, the Pentagon requested $17 billion for the effort as part of a proposed $350 billion reconciliation package, and just $400 million in the normal “base” budget for fiscal 2027. For now, though, there appears to be little political will to pass another spending bill via reconciliation, leaving Golden Dome without a clear path for near-term funding.
That challenge is exacerbated by the fact that the federal government is now operating under a continuing resolution, a stopgap funding measure aimed at avoiding a wholesale shutdown that holds spending at prior year levels. The CR took effect Oct. 1, the first day of the new fiscal year, and because Golden Dome does not have a fiscal 2026 appropriation to serve as its baseline, the program has nothing to fall back on.
Guetlein warned in August that a CR presents a real challenge for the program, and a failure to provide any funding in fiscal ‘27 would be disastrous.
“A CR doesn’t help me under Golden Dome because I don’t have a topline to fall back to to get that percentage of the continuing resolution,” he said during the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, adding that if Congress and the Pentagon can’t find a way to pay for the effort in fiscal ‘27, “there is no Golden Dome because there is no funding.”
During this week’s hearing, Rounds urged his colleagues in Congress to find a solution.
“Let’s get back to a bipartisan [approach], and let’s include it in the underlying appropriations bill,” he said.
Meanwhile, experts testifying in front of the Senate panel agreed that it’s important for Congress to address the funding quagmire, but added that there’s a broader risk that the politicization of the program could make it a target in the future.
Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that even Golden Dome’s name is polarizing and argued that Congress should consider potentially renaming the effort in future policy legislation. He also suggested making steps to institutionalize the project and Guetlein’s acquisition authorities within the broader missile defense enterprise.
In his written statement, Karako noted that Guetlein’s status as a direct reporting portfolio manager, or DRPM—which means he reports directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steven Feinberg—is meant to be temporary, and said now may be the time to start thinking about the program’s long-term management and where it should sit within the enterprise after that moniker and its associated authorities fade.
Karako offered that while the Pentagon and Congress could opt to create a permanent entity to oversee Golden Dome, that approach may lead to duplication with other organizations like the Missile Defense Agency and the military services and would take time to establish. But merging Golden Dome with MDA could be a viable solution, he said.
“Whatever the scope of mission for the future air and missile defense of the homeland, its realization and governance will benefit from unity of effort with clear authority, high level access, control of resources, and appropriate acquisition authorities,” Karako said in his statement.