The billionaire has said the tax legislation “undermines” cost-cutting efforts by his efficiency agency
Elon Musk has voiced his disappointment with US President Donald Trump’s recently passed tax and spending bill, claiming it undermines efforts to reduce the federal deficit.
The House of Representatives approved Trump’s flagship tax bill last week, aimed at avoiding a year-end tax hike while adding to the $36 trillion national debt. The bill will now proceed to the Senate.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X, recently stepped back from running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a body created by Trump in his second term to implement widespread federal spending cuts, saying he will return to focusing on his business ventures.
The billionaire, who was a near-constant presence in the early weeks of Trump’s second-term, expressed rare criticism in a CBS interview.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip from the interview released on Tuesday before its broadcast in full on Sunday.
The tech mogul criticized the legislation, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” for increasing the national debt and thus counteracting the objectives of DOGE, which he co-led.
“A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both,” Musk remarked in the strongest rebuke of Trump’s policies yet.
The bill heavily backed by the president, which passed the House by a narrow margin, aims to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts and introduces additional tax reductions, while also increasing spending in areas such as defense and border security.
Critics argue that the bill disproportionately benefits the wealthy and could add trillions to the national debt over the next decade.
Musk, who has been instrumental in DOGE’s reported $175 billion in savings through agency closures and workforce reductions, expressed concern that the new bill’s provisions would negate these efforts.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where it faces opposition from some Republicans concerned about its impact on the federal deficit and proposed cuts to socially important federal health insurance programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.
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