Elon Musk criticized President Donald Trump’s signature spending bill that recently made it through a House vote, saying it counters the work he’s been doing to reduce wasteful government spending.
In an interview to be aired June 1 on “CBS Sunday Morning,” the richest person in the world and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency advisory board said the “big, beautiful bill” will not help the nation’s finances.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X.
Trump responded Wednesday to the critique from his top campaign donor.
“We had to get it through the House,” Trump said of the massive spending bill. “The House was, we have no Democrats” who supported the package.
“I’m not happy about certain aspects of it,” the president said, “but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it. That’s the way they go.”
The sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill Act is projected to raise the federal budget deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that conducts economic analysis for Congress. The deficit is on track in 2025 to run close to $2 trillion, with the national debt now at $36.2 trillion.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in the CBS clip.
Trump and congressional Republicans counter that the bill reduces spending in key areas and will generate enough growth to compensate for the tax reductions. The legislation, though, is expected to face strong resistance in the Senate.
For his part, Musk has pulled back his DOGE work, saying he plans to focus on running his companies, which include X, Tesla and SpaceX. Musk had been a frequent presence in the White House since Trump’s election.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday praised DOGE and Musk’s work.
“The House is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President [Donald] Trump wants and the American people demand,” Johnson wrote in a post on X.
Before the House can vote to approve the cuts, however, the White House needs to formally request permission to cancel some of the money that Congress set out for specific programs.
“When the White House sends its rescissions package to the House, we will act quickly by passing legislation to codify the cuts,” said Johnson, using the term for White House requests not to spend money that Congress authorized.
Despite Johnson’s upbeat tone, many of Musk and DOGE’s drastic cuts to government grant programs and the federal workforce have been met with resistance in Congress, including from Republicans whose districts have been hit by the cuts and mass layoffs.
DOGE says it has saved $170 billion in taxpayer money since it began in January by targeting waste and redundancy in government.
But what counts as wasteful spending has proven to be a deeply divisive question.
In February and March alone, DOGE-related moves were responsible for some 275,000 government layoffs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consultancy firm.
Musk’s work with Trump, and his frequently incendiary political rhetoric, have also inspired a backlash and widespread protests against his autos business, Tesla.
“People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk told the Post.
—CNBC’s Erin Doherty and Lora Kolodny contributed.
