As you’ve probably noticed already, Elon Musk revealed this week that he is not a fan of the Big, Beautiful Bill. In fact he’s been tweeting about it constantly for the last couple days.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2025
It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt https://t.co/dHCj3pprJO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2025
Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America!
ENOUGH https://t.co/65bQQfthGo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2025
I’m skipping a bunch…
This immense level of overspending will drive America into debt slavery! https://t.co/AuBXzJRjIT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
Interest payments already consume 25% of all government revenue.
If the massive deficit spending continues, there will only be money for interest payments and nothing else! No social security, no medical, no defense … nothing. https://t.co/UKp4HYdKRt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
Elon also strated retweeting some of his interviews from earlier this year when he was making the case that DOGE was necessary to ensure America did not go bankrupt.
Elon Musk: Your company is not going to exist if the ship of America sinks.
“A country is no different from a person. If a country overspends and doesn’t spend wisely, just like a person, the country will go bankrupt.
The reason I’m here is because I’m very worried about… pic.twitter.com/hTK3WowIaC
— ELON CLIPS (@ElonClipsX) June 4, 2025
There are still a lot of conservatives in agreement with him on this point.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
America is in the fast lane to debt slavery https://t.co/eht8gaIMxY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
A new spending bill should be drafted that doesn’t massively grow the deficit and increase the debt ceiling by 5 TRILLION DOLLARS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
He’s calling on people to pressure congress to kill the bill.
Call your Senator,
Call your Congressman,Bankrupting America is NOT ok!
KILL the BILL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
Grok sides with the CBO estimate.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
He also retweeted this:
It’s not the Right vs Left.
It’s the Establishment vs Americans.
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) June 4, 2025
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
He also retweeted this old Remy clip from 2013:
This meme puts his work at DOGE in perspective.
Exactly https://t.co/ulRHCYTfsU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
It more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the @DOGE team at great personal cost and risk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
He has been making this case all along.
Elon Musk: America is going bankrupt extremely quickly and everyone seems to be whistling past the graveyard.
“The Defense Department budget is a very big budget. It’s a trillion dollars a year. And interest payments on the national debt just exceeded the Defense Department… pic.twitter.com/yBbFqcrRqi
— ELON CLIPS (@ElonClipsX) June 3, 2025
He RT’d this clip of Sen. Kennedy agreeing with him.
Kennedy: Musk is frustrated. I think he believes in my judgment correctly, that we’re quickly becoming debt slaves—that congress needs to rearm the magical healing power of no, and I agree with it. Having said that, I’m not ready to throw in the towel on this bill. pic.twitter.com/OpY5Zrrlvu
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 4, 2025
He also dug up an old Trump tweet from 2012:
I couldn’t agree more! 🇺🇸🇺🇸 https://t.co/sZ6xgisZEA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Keep the good, remove the bad
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
As for the cuts to EV incentives, he says he’s fine with that so long as the bill is put on a diet.
Whatever.
Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.
In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful.…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Anyway, after all that it’s probably not surprising that President Trump is being asked about it and is suggesting that maybe he and Elon aren’t friends anymore. Trump is also claiming that Elon “knew the inner-workings of this bill” long before now.
President Trump:
“Elon and I had a great relationship, I don’t know if we will anymore. And he hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon.” pic.twitter.com/Tive7PsWES
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 5, 2025
But Musk says that’s not the case. No one showed him this.
False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it! https://t.co/V4ztekqd4g
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
I think this is Musk’s response to Trump saying “I’ve helped Elon a lot.” That cuts both ways.
Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Such ingratitude
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Musk RT’d some reporting from OAN suggesting his tweets have reset the conversation in the Senate. They may not have the votes for the current version of the bill.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Here’s Musk’s pinned tweet at the moment. You can click on the embedded tweet and bring up the image but basically it’s a collection of Donald Trump tweets demanding a balanced budget. “Where is this guy today??”
Where is this guy today?? https://t.co/qcLNVSYEIB
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Musk risked his companies and potentially much more to run DOGE and try to save money and make the government more efficient. He became public enemy #1 for months to save less than $200 billion in spending. Now this bill threatens to add billions more to the debt, at least according to the CBO score of the House bill.
About the CBO score, you can certainly make the argument that conservatives and maybe most Americans want the Trump tax cuts to be extended. That’s probably true. But the fact remains that extending the tax cuts does raise the deficit over the next decade compared to letting the cuts expire under current law. Why? Because the government is going to bring in less tax revenue if the cuts are extended. Over ten years the difference could be as much as $4.5 trillion. That’s great news for taxpayers (who aren’t being forced to pay all of that), but the federal budget still has to be balanced. If it’s not from higher taxes then it has to be from lower spending.
It’s worth noting that the CBO is going to score the BBB again looking for the impact of potential growth (“macroeconomic effects”) on these numbers, so they could still improve. But as it stands the BBB cuts only partially offset the cost of extending the tax cuts. That’s certainly better than nothing, but it still leaves us with debt going up rather than down over the budget window. Can we do better?
If the result of this BBB is that the debt is higher a decade from now then Musk’s efforts at DOGE seem to be in vain. No wonder he’s upset.
Update: Well, that escalated quickly.
Such an obvious lie. So sad. https://t.co/sOu9vqMVfX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
I don’t think it’s true that Musk is doing this over subsidies. He said months ago that cutting subsidies might hurt Tesla but would hurt other EV manufacturers a lot more. If there’s an angle here it’s not that. And then Musk drops the big one.
Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Hard to see them patching this up now.