You can add Elon Musk to the ranks of Trump supporters who are bailing on the spending bill working through Congress. The bililoinaire backer of the president has broken ranks with the White House over the administration’s latest tax and spending package, calling it a betrayal of the fiscal restraint he once championed from inside the White House. The legislation—branded by Trump as the “big beautiful bill”—passed the House last week and now heads to the Senate, where it faces pushback not only from Democrats but increasingly from Trump’s own allies.
Musk, once a top donor and advisor to the president, publicly criticized the bill in an interview with CBS News, accusing the administration of abandoning its promises to streamline federal operations. “I’m disappointed,” Musk said, arguing the bill’s trillions in tax breaks and ballooning defense expenditures run counter to the principles of efficiency he advanced during his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. “You can call it beautiful or ambitious, but that doesn’t make it responsible,” he added.
🚨 ELON MUSK: "I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it could be both." pic.twitter.com/kiawREP5mp
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) May 28, 2025
The legislation, which extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and introduces new exemptions for tips, overtime, and Social Security income, also greenlights $521 billion in new spending on defense and immigration enforcement. According to the Tax Foundation, the total package amounts to a staggering $5.3 trillion in deficit-financed tax cuts—numbers that even some Republican lawmakers have balked at.
Musk’s comments expose deepening fractures inside the GOP, where the party’s old guard of budget hawks continues to clash with Trump’s populist, pro-growth coalition. Rand Paul, a Trump supporter, recently slammed the White House for increasing the debt.
They’re going to explode the debt,” Paul said, warning that the bill’s proposed $4 trillion debt ceiling increase over two years would plunge the country into even deeper fiscal peril. “That’s just not conservative,” he added, emphasizing that he might be open to voting for the bill if rthe debt hike were removed—but not otherwise. “There’s got to be someone left in Washington who thinks debt is wrong and deficits are wrong,” Paul insisted.
As the Senate prepares for a contentious debate, Musk’s dissent now looms over Trump’s economic agenda. Whether it’s a one-off protest or the beginning of a wider break remains to be seen—but the rift has made clear that even Trump’s most loyal backers have limits.
