Elon Musk Dumps On Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill'

President Donald Trump’s point man on cost-cutting criticized the bill enshrining Trump’s domestic policy agenda because it would cost the government trillions of dollars if enacted.Elon Musk, leader of Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” said he was let down by the legislation, which is known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.“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 told CBS News in an interview clip released Tuesday.The legislation would add $3 trillion or more to federal budget deficits over the next decade with tax cuts that are only partially offset by spending reductions.The White House and most other Republicans have insisted, contrary to all budget experts, that the tax cuts will be so good for business that they will juice government revenue and make up the difference. So it’s striking for Musk, a close ally of the president, to dump on the bill.And it’s not like Musk has a problem with questionable budget projections, such as his claims that his DOGE team could find $1 trillion in annual savings by cutting government waste, or that they’ve eliminated $175 billion so far even as real-time federal data shows the government spending more than it did last year by roughly that same amount.Republicans pushed the “big, beautiful bill” through the House last week, but their counterparts in the Senate plan to make changes, meaning both the Senate and the House will have to vote again before the bill can go to the president’s desk.A handful of right-wing House and Senate Republicans have major qualms about the bill’s deficit impact. Adding more to the national debt goes against everything Republicans have said about fiscal responsibility. It’s not clear if those qualms, however, will lead them to actually block the bill.Musk’s team, under Trump’s executive authority, has worked from inside federal agencies, pushing for mass layoffs and other changes. Many of their actions have gotten tied up in federal courts, since it’s supposed to be Congress, not the executive branch, that controls federal spending. The White House has hesitated to send Congress a package of “rescissions” that lawmakers could vote on to codify DOGE’s cuts.In recent weeks, Musk has signaled his intention to step back from his temporary White House role and spend more time at his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.