WASHINGTON ― Not six months after Republicans celebrated oligarch Elon Musk as the “heroic” champion of fiscal responsibility, he may have just become the most surprising enemy of the centerpiece of their legislative agenda.
For weeks, Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill have falsely claimed their bill cutting taxes and Medicaid would reduce federal budget deficits, with only a few breaking from the party line to tell the truth.
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On Tuesday, Musk, until recently the face of Republican efforts to cut federal spending, ripped into the dubious deficit claims with a rhetorical chainsaw.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on X. “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.”
“It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt,” he added in a follow-up post.
Before Musk weighed in, President Donald Trump, his aides, and Republican lawmakers were all busy trying to claim that the bill would reduce the nation’s deficit ― ignoring analysis from nonpartisan budget experts saying otherwise. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of an earlier version of the bill suggested it would add more than $2 trillion to annual deficits over a decade, meaning an extra $2 trillion on a national debt that Republicans already say represents an existential threat to the country. Including interest on the debt would push it even higher.
“It’s not gonna add to the debt…I’m telling you this is going to reduce the deficit,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” insisting that the tax cuts in the bill would spur economic growth that will ultimately offset its cost in the coming years.
It’s a controversial argument that Republicans have made for decades, including when they passed their 2017 tax cuts into law. It’s never been true. Even if you take it at face value, federal revenue could fall during an unforeseen economic recession or, say, a global pandemic.
CBO estimated that the economy will grow at an average rate of 1.8% next year, but Republicans believe they can achieve a much higher level of at least 3%. And they say the CBO failed to anticipate a burst of revenue after they passed the 2017 tax cuts, though the CBO has said most of the increase resulted from the burst of inflation that started in 2021.
Johnson told reporters he was surprised and “disappointed” by his “friend” Musk slamming the bill on Tuesday. And he suggested Musk is only mad because the bill would phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
“I know that has an effect on his business,” Johnson said, in a remarkably pointed comment that suggested maybe he and Musk aren’t such good friends. (Musk has amplified his car company’s criticism of the bill’s phaseouts for clean energy tax credits.)
White House budget director Russ Vought also said Sunday that the so-called Big Beautiful Bill would reduce the federal budget deficit by more than $1 trillion, even though credible estimates show it would actually widen the deficit by more than twice that amount.
Several conservative Republican senators didn’t want to call out the White House directly for lying about the president’s priority legislation, but they all but suggested it in interviews on Tuesday.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said if it were really true that the bill didn’t expand federal budget deficits, then Trump wouldn’t insist the bill also increase the federal government’s authority to borrow money by $5 trillion.
“It means we’re going to borrow $5 trillion more, probably, presumably, in the next year or two. And so it means that they’re calculating that the spending and the deficit accumulation goes on unabated,” Paul told HuffPost on Tuesday.
“So I don’t think that they’re serious. I think the debt deficit this year is going to be over $2 trillion, and I think it likely is going to be over $2 trillion the following year,” Paul said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has fulminated against the bill’s budget impact and said the legislation should be split apart, sounded more conciliatory on Tuesday after a conversation with a White House economic adviser.
“I had a real nice conversation with Kevin Hassett last night, and I want to work with the White House. Let’s take a look at all the numbers,” Johnson told HuffPost. “Again, these are projections. Nothing’s even close to 100% certain, but that’s kind of what I’m working through.”
It’s not hard to see why Johnson might want to get on board. In a Truth Social post on Tuesday morning, Trump blasted Paul over his objection to the bill.
“Rand votes NO on everything, but never has any practical or constructive ideas,” Trump wrote. “His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can’t stand him. This is a BIG GROWTH BILL!”
But Paul, at least, isn’t backing down. In an interview with HuffPost, the Kentucky Republican said he felt no pressure to bend to Trump’s attacks.
“I think that when you ask people at home, and I do all the time, should we spend $7 trillion in or are you for $2 trillion annual deficit, almost to a person, everybody at home, Republicans, independents, even some Democrats, are alarmed at how much debt we’re accumulating,” Paul said. “We have a trillion-dollar interest payment. So no, I think that people at home are very much concerned about where we’re going and that we need to actually do something dramatic on the debt.”
He also praised Musk for speaking out about the bill’s impact on the deficit.
“We have both seen the massive waste in government spending and we know another $5 trillion in debt is a huge mistake,” he said. “We can and must do better.”