James' World 2

The sprawling bill, which passed the House in May with the support of all but a handful of Republicans, includes cuts to Medicaid and extension of the tax cuts that Trump and Republicans first enacted in 2017.

GOP senators were at a weekly lunch in the Capitol when Musk’s tweet landed. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, another fiscal hawk, told BI that the post was being “passed around” among his colleagues as they ate.

“I texted it to a few people,” Johnson said. “I had a phone passed to me.”

Musk’s criticism of the bill isn’t new — he said he was “disappointed” in it in an interview clip that aired last week — and comes as he formally exits the Trump administration.

On Friday, the world’s richest man joined Trump for a press conference to commemorate his time in government. The president lavished praise on Musk and seemed keen on dispelling any notion that cracks had emerged between the two men.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated that in its current form, the bill would add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

“It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt,” Musk wrote in another post on X, adding in a third post that “Congress is making America bankrupt.”

The bill is now being worked on by GOP senators, and several fiscal hawks have already raised concerns about the bill’s impact on the deficit. Among them is Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who immediately replied to Musk’s post.

“The Senate must make this bill better,” Lee wrote.

Musk’s post landed just as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was delivering a briefing.

“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” Leavitt said. “It doesn’t change the President’s opinion. This is one big beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it.”

It’s not the first time Musk has criticized the bill — though last time, he wasn’t as forceful. In a recent interview with CBS, Musk said that the bill undermined DOGE’s cost-cutting work.

“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. “I think a bill can be big, or it could be beautiful. I don’t know if it could be both.”