Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Elon Musk criticized the Republican spending bill that recently made it through a House vote, saying it counters the work he’s been doing to reduce wasteful government spending.
In an interview to be aired June 1 on “CBS Sunday Morning,” the richest man in the world and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency advisory board said the “big, beautiful bill” will not help the nation’s finances.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X.
DOGE says it has saved $170 billion in taxpayer money since it began in January, targeting areas of government waste and redundancy in sometimes-controversial ways.
For instance, it has gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development and reduced staff elsewhere. DOGE-related moves have been responsible for some 275,000 government layoffs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consultancy firm.
The sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill Act by contrast, is projected to raise the federal budget deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The deficit is on track in 2025 to run close to $2 trillion, with the national debt now at $36.2 trillion.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in the clip.
Trump and congressional Republicans counter that the bill reduces spending in key areas and will generate enough growth to compensate for the tax reductions. The legislation, though, is expected to face strong resistance in the Senate.
For his part, Musk has pulled back his DOGE work, saying he plans to focus on running his companies, which include X, Tesla and SpaceX. Musk had been a frequent presence in the White House since Trump’s election.
In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Musk said the federal bureaucracy is “much worse than I realized” and that DOGE became “the whipping boy for everything.”
