Elon Musk Is Right. The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is a Bad Deal.
Elon Musk says he’s “disappointed” to see the House pass a major tax bill that will require the federal government to borrow trillions of additional dollars in the coming years.
The bill, which faces an uncertain future in the Senate, “undermines the work that the [Department of Government Efficiency] team is doing,” Musk told CBS News on Sunday.
He’s right. While DOGE has not been able to fully deliver on the grand promises Musk made during last year’s campaign and during the transition process, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act moves the federal budget in the complete opposite direction. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill would add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years—and that’s a rosy projection that includes several gimmicks meant to reduce the apparent impact of the bill. Estimates by independent entities like the Yale Budget Lab and the Penn Wharton Budget Model expect it to add over $3 trillion to the deficit, as written, and potentially as much as $5 trillion once the gimmicks are stripped away.
By comparison, DOGE expects to trim federal spending by about $170 billion this year, and it looks like Congress may only implement a tiny fraction of those cuts.
The bill does include some sizable spending cuts, largely aimed at Medicaid, which provides health insurance for the poor. The bill would establish new work requirements for Medicaid recipients who are childless adults without disabilities. It would also close a loophole that states have used to c
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