As Trump Requests $1.5 Trillion for Pentagon, Sens. Markey and Merkley Press for Details on “Golden Dome” $1.2 Trillion Price Tag, Mission

Letter Text (PDF) Washington (June 17, 2026) - As Congress considers President Trump’s $1.5 trillion request for Pentagon spending and SpaceX wins billions in Golden Dome contracts, Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Representatives John Garamendi (CA-08) and Don Beyer (VA-08), co-chairs of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, today led their colleagues in a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, demanding further information on the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome missile interceptor system. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently estimated that Golden Dome could cost American taxpayers $1.2 trillion and deliver much less capability than advertised. Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) rejected the accuracy of CBO’s estimate but has refused to share key information about Golden Dome with CBO, Congress, or the American people. In the letter, the lawmakers wrote , “This is unacceptable. Before you spend one more taxpayer dollar on Golden Dome, DOD must share its plans and goals for the system. There is no reasonable justification for keeping the mission and number of interceptors for Golden Dome secret. It is one thing to withhold design details or performance specifications of certain systems, but it is quite another to withhold the entire system architecture that you expect Congress to approve and fund. Congress and the American public have a right to know what they are paying for.” The lawmakers continued , “Transparency is particularly important when it appears, as it does here, that the system’s ultimate capability will fall far short of the original promises. On May 20, 2025, President Trump said that, with Golden Dome, ‘we will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.’ According to CBO’s calculations, even a system that would cost $3 trillion would not meet that ambitious goal, which would need to be able to engage hundreds of missiles. If the Administration has not scaled back its goals for the system, the current official price tag is woefully unrealistic.” Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Representatives Jim McGovern (MA-02) and Bill Foster (IL-11) co-signed the letter. The lawmakers requested answers by June 30, 2026, to questions including : What is the intended purpose of Golden Dome? How many missiles (and of what types) is it being designed to intercept? What system architecture will be used? How does the Administration plan to spend the proposed $185 billion on Golden Dome? What is your 20-year estimated cost of Golden Dome? Will the Administration propose a third missile defense interceptor site on the East Coast? How does the Administration expect China and Russia to react to Golden Dome? How does the Administration plan to reconcile its arms control goals with these reactions? What parts of your plans for Golden Dome do you expect to keep secret and what parts will you release to the public? As a founder of the national Nuclear Freeze movement, Senator Markey has worked to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout his career and has fought back against the Trump administration’s Golden Dome boondoggle. Yesterday, Senator Markey held a press conference and introduced legislation calling to cut the Pentagon budget in half by capping defense spending at $750 billion as Trump seeks a $1.5 trillion defense budget for FY 2027. In November 2025, Senator Markey spoke with ABC’s Martha Raddatz about Trump’s misleading call to resume nuclear weapons testing, and condemned Trump’s flawed and wasteful Golden Dome system. In July, Senator Markey and colleagues wrote to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging the administration to scale back the proposed Golden Dome. In September, Senator Markey led the fight to take down Trump’s Golden Dome scheme through an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2026 . The amendment would have limited funding for Golden Dome’s space-based interceptors until the Pentagon submits to Congress a detailed deployment plan, a realistic cost estimate, assurances that the program will not ignite a new arms race with Russia and China, and commitments to realistic testing and independent technical review. ###