Trump's 'Golden Dome' Shield Exposed as 'Trillion-Dollar Boondoggle' by CBO

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday released a report estimating that President Donald Trump's proposed "Golden Dome" missile defense system would cost $1.2 trillion to create, deploy, and operate over the first 20 years of its existence.

The CBO report projects that acquisition costs for the proposed national missile defense (NMD) system would account for the vast majority of the $1.2 trillion total, including "costs for the system’s major components—namely, the interceptor layers and a space-based missile warning and tracking system."

In fact, the report says that the NMD system's space-based interceptor layer will be so expensive that it "accounts for about 70% of acquisition costs and 60% of total costs."

The CBO also questioned whether this massive investment would successfully protect the US from a foreign missile attack.

"Although the notional NMD system... would be far more capable than defenses the United States fields today," the report states, "it would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch."

"The strategic consequences of deploying an NMD system with the capacity considered here are unclear," the report continues, "because they hinge on an adversary’s perception of the defense's capability and how that adversary chose to respond."

The CBO's estimate on the missile system's cost was nearly seven times the projection Trump made last year, when he said it would cost just $175 billion.

And because the US Department of Defense still hasn't delivered key details about the proposed system, the CBO wrote, it is currently "impossible to estimate the long-term cost" of the initiative.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a longtime critic of the "Golden Dome" proposal, said the CBO report shows the Trump-backed project is "nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans."

"Just like the president’s symbolic renaming of the Department of Defense or deploying National Guard troops to our cities," added Merkley, who is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, "this move to fund the ‘Golden Dome’ will be far more effective at squandering money than protecting American lives."

The Oregon Democrat vowed to "continue to work with my colleagues in the Senate to prevent another dime from flowing to this racket."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), also a longtime critic of the president's proposed missile system, wrote in a social media post that "Trump’s Golden Dome is a $1.2 trillion golden sieve that won’t stop a nuclear attack, but will balloon the deficit and boost the bottom lines of billionaires."

Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama and current co-host of Pod Save America, was even blunter in his criticism of the "Golden Dome" plan.

"$1.2 TRILLION for this dumb fucking Golden Dome missile defense system," he wrote in a social media post. "The initial estimate was $175 billion! Madness. No one wants this."

Daniel Larison, contributing editor at Antiwar.com and former senior editor at The American Conservative magazine, wrote that the CBO report exposed Trump's dome as a "trillion-dollar boondoggle."

Trump has said that he was inspired to develop such a missile system after being impressed by Israel’s “Iron Dome," despite the fact that Israel has a vastly smaller landmass to defend compared to the US and has historically faced far more danger from missile and rocket attacks.