Golden Dome Has Bipartisan Roots. Now It Needs Bipartisan Money
At a Sept. 29 Senate hearing, lawmakers backed the missile shield's mission but warned its funding is stuck. In our view, the program deserves regular, bipartisan funding, and CBO's $1.2 trillion figure needs context, not panic.
By Clara Hughes
ALTAS WORLD NEWS OPINION | By Clara Hughes, Senior Features Writer | October 5, 2026 | 6-min read Picture a cruise missile skimming low over the ocean toward an American port. Or a swarm of large drones aimed at a power plant. Sen. Deb Fischer, the Nebraska Republican who chairs the Senate's strategic forces subcommittee, put it plainly in her prepared remarks for a hearing last week: "We do not have an effective counter to these threats" [2]. President Trump's Golden Dome is meant to change that. In our view, it is worth building, and Congress should stop playing games with how it is paid for. Key Takeaways At a Sept. 29 Senate hearing, Republican and independent senators backed Golden Dome's mission but said it needs regular, bipartisan funding, not one-off party-line bills [1][3]. The government is now running on a stopgap budget, and because Golden Dome had no regular fiscal 2026 appropriation, the program has "nothing to fall back on" [3]. The Congressional Budget Office's $1.2 trillion, 20-year figure is a serious number. But CBO itself calls it "one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific Administration proposal" [4]. Golden Dome is a layered defense of the homeland: sensors, interceptors on the ground and in space, and command systems tying them together [3]. In our view, the question now is not whether America needs it. The question is whether Washington will pay for it the normal way, with both parties on board. What Happened at the Hearing The Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee heard from three outside witnesses: David Trachtenberg of the National Institute for Public Policy, Tom Karako of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and David Mosher of CBO [1][2]. Fischer opened with a warning. "Our homeland is not a sanctuary," she said in her prepared remarks. The threats include "cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, and large drones." She also said Golden Dome "completed its first successful test in June,"…