On Tuesday, tech billionaire Elon Musk unleashed his ire at the House-passed version of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which has the blessing of his former boss, President Donald Trump.
The massive bill, which is now being considered by the Republican-led Senate, contains many provisions in line with Trump’s second-term agenda, but also is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the national debt, already nearing $37 trillion.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk said in a post on X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
He added in another post, “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America (sic) citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shrugged off the critique when a reporter asked how “mad” Trump will be when he finds out what Musk said about the legislation.
“Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ and he’s sticking to it,” Leavitt said.
After the bill narrowly passed through the GOP-controlled House last month, Trump hailed it as “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History” of the United States. However, the president has given his blessing to GOP senators, some of whom have also raised objections to the bill in its current form, to “make the changes they want.”
Musk, who just ended his stint as a special government employee helping to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, made waves last week after he expressed concerns about the bill inflating the federal deficit that has already blown past $1 trillion in recent years.
“I was like — disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview.
Musk also said that when the bill came along, he thought “everything” accomplished by DOGE would get “wiped out” in the first year. He also said, “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
Russ Vought, the director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), delivered on Sunday a counterargument to Musk’s warning about the deficit.
“I love Elon,” Vought told CNN anchor Dana Bash in a “State of the Union” interview. “This bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt. In fact, it lowers it by $1.4 trillion. What some of the watchdogs have done is, they have used CBO’s artificial baseline, which doesn’t allow and assume that current tax law will be extended because of sunsets that are in the law.”
Vought added later, “When you assume the extension of the president’s tax relief from 2017, this budget or this bill, and it’s really a reconciliation bill — it’s not really a budget bill. It is using a budget process. This is a $1.4 trillion over 10 years deficit reduction. It’s $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings. Obviously, we have a little bit of spending in there as well for border and defense. But that is the biggest mandatory savings package that we have seen since 1997. It’s very historic.”
The White House is poised to send its first rescissions package of the year to Congress as early as Tuesday, aiming to claw back spending for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Public Radio (NPR) — programs that Republicans view as being wasteful and partisan. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has listed rescissions as being one of two actions the House will take based on findings from DOGE, in addition to using the appropriations process to “swiftly implement” Trump’s proposed 2026 budget.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump singled out Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for criticism in a dispute over how the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” claiming the lawmaker “has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming.” Paul said on CNBC that he opposes legislation as it stands because it aims to raise the debt ceiling by several trillion dollars, but is “pretty much open to compromise on everything else in the bill.”
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[[{“value”:”
On Tuesday, tech billionaire Elon Musk unleashed his ire at the House-passed version of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which has the blessing of his former boss, President Donald Trump.
The massive bill, which is now being considered by the Republican-led Senate, contains many provisions in line with Trump’s second-term agenda, but also is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the national debt, already nearing $37 trillion.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk said in a post on X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
He added in another post, “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America (sic) citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shrugged off the critique when a reporter asked how “mad” Trump will be when he finds out what Musk said about the legislation.
“Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ and he’s sticking to it,” Leavitt said.
After the bill narrowly passed through the GOP-controlled House last month, Trump hailed it as “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History” of the United States. However, the president has given his blessing to GOP senators, some of whom have also raised objections to the bill in its current form, to “make the changes they want.”
Musk, who just ended his stint as a special government employee helping to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, made waves last week after he expressed concerns about the bill inflating the federal deficit that has already blown past $1 trillion in recent years.
“I was like — disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview.
Musk also said that when the bill came along, he thought “everything” accomplished by DOGE would get “wiped out” in the first year. He also said, “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
Russ Vought, the director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), delivered on Sunday a counterargument to Musk’s warning about the deficit.
“I love Elon,” Vought told CNN anchor Dana Bash in a “State of the Union” interview. “This bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt. In fact, it lowers it by $1.4 trillion. What some of the watchdogs have done is, they have used CBO’s artificial baseline, which doesn’t allow and assume that current tax law will be extended because of sunsets that are in the law.”
Vought added later, “When you assume the extension of the president’s tax relief from 2017, this budget or this bill, and it’s really a reconciliation bill — it’s not really a budget bill. It is using a budget process. This is a $1.4 trillion over 10 years deficit reduction. It’s $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings. Obviously, we have a little bit of spending in there as well for border and defense. But that is the biggest mandatory savings package that we have seen since 1997. It’s very historic.”
The White House is poised to send its first rescissions package of the year to Congress as early as Tuesday, aiming to claw back spending for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Public Radio (NPR) — programs that Republicans view as being wasteful and partisan. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has listed rescissions as being one of two actions the House will take based on findings from DOGE, in addition to using the appropriations process to “swiftly implement” Trump’s proposed 2026 budget.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump singled out Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for criticism in a dispute over how the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” claiming the lawmaker “has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming.” Paul said on CNBC that he opposes legislation as it stands because it aims to raise the debt ceiling by several trillion dollars, but is “pretty much open to compromise on everything else in the bill.”
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