MW Elon Musk calls Trump tax bill an 'abomination.' Does he have the clout to stop it?

By Chris Matthews

The Tesla CEO is giving support to a number of Senate fiscal hawks

Elon Musk on Tuesday made his sharpest attack yet on President Donald Trump's sweeping tax-and-spending package making its way through Congress, supporting Republican fiscal hawks who say the legislation would explode the national debt and do too little to rein in government spending.

"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore," the Tesla $(TSLA)$ chief executive proclaimed in a post on X Tuesday. "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination."

He added in a follow-up post that the legislation "will massively increase the already giant budget deficit ... and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt."

Nonpartisan analysts agree with Musk's take on the bill. The independent Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes that the House version of the bill, passed last month, would add between $3 trillion and $5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, even as it enacts significant cuts to projected Medicaid spending.

And that's before the Senate reforms the legislation, with analysts expecting the upper chamber to pare back Medicaid cuts and reforms to clean-energy tax credits, which account for the bulk of the spending cuts in the House version.

Musk's comments lend aid to a small group of fiscal hawks in the Senate who say the bill doesn't cut spending enough, and who have threatened to vote against the measure unless significant changes are made.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has led this group in the Senate, arguing that a provision in the bill that raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion shows that Republicans are not serious about cutting spending.

Paul also voiced concerns about interest payments becoming a larger share of the government budget, arguing that fiscal profligacy has led to the U.S. "having trouble selling the 10-year bond" BX:TMUBMUSD10Y even as yields on those bonds rise.

Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah are three other Senate Republicans who have voiced concerns over the lack of spending cuts. If the four of them stick together, that would be enough to sink the bill, assuming unified Democratic opposition.

"I think there are three or four of us" intent on holding out for steeper spending cuts, Paul said in an interview with CNBC Tuesday. "It takes four people with courage, and four people with courage can make the bill into anything we wanted to right now."

Analysts say that despite Musk's megaphone and the comments of fiscal hawks in the Senate, the bill is likely to pass before the end of September, if not earlier.

One reason is that the Trump administration estimates the U.S. government will run out of funds to pay its obligations sometime in August, when Congress is scheduled to be on recess.

The tax bill includes an increase to the debt ceiling, which would enable Treasury to borrow to fund everything from interest payments on bonds to Social Security payments to seniors.

If Republicans can't agree on a bill that raises the debt ceiling, they will be forced to negotiate with Democrats on short notice, likely having to make concessions that are even more distasteful to fiscal hawks than the Trump bill as currently written.

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress are already pushing back on Musk's comments.

"The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at a Tuesday press briefing. "It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he's sticking to it."

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, also took exception to Musk's rebuke, telling reporters Tuesday that Musk's comments "are very disappointing" and that "my friend Elon is terribly wrong."

Johnson said that he spoke to Musk on Monday about the bill, and that Musk "seemed to understand" the virtues of the legislation.

The task for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, is to thread the needle to keep both the fiscal hawks and moderates in his caucus on board.

"If Thune is able to preserve the roughly $1.5 trillion in spending cuts offered by the House or even get closer to his own $2 trillion target," predicted analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors in a Monday client note, "it's likely that most if not all of the fiscal hawks other than Paul will fall in line."

-Chris Matthews

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June 03, 2025 15:40 ET (19:40 GMT)

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