Billionaire Elon Musk took to his platform, X, on Tuesday to denounce President Donald Trump’s marquee legislative effort—a sweeping Republican spending bill that narrowly passed the House—as a “disgusting abomination,” intensifying Republican infighting and casting doubt on the bill’s future in the Senate.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk posted. “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.”
Musk’s outburst—directed at what the GOP has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—comes as the legislation heads to the Senate after passing the House 215-214. The bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and introduce popular tax exemptions on tips and overtime income. But to balance the ledger, it slashes hundreds of billions from safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over 7.6 million Americans could lose healthcare coverage due to the Medicare and Medicaid cuts. And even with those reductions, the bill is expected to increase the national deficit by $3.8 trillion over 10 years.
That projected deficit appears to be Musk’s key concern. In a follow-up post, he warned, “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
His criticism comes at a sensitive moment for Republican leadership. The combination of Trump’s aggressive fiscal agenda and mounting trade tariffs has already rattled markets, with long-term Treasury bond yields approaching 5%—a sign that investors are increasingly wary of U.S. fiscal health.
While Musk is no stranger to controversy, his words carry significant political weight. A major financial backer of Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, Musk’s prior opposition to a bipartisan spending bill in December 2024 nearly tanked Republican support and brought the government to the brink of shutdown.
Now, with the Senate poised to take up the bill and Majority Leader John Thune targeting July 4 as the date to deliver the bill to Trump’s desk, Musk’s condemnation complicates an already fragile vote count.
Several Republican senators have begun to express their own reservations. Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Johnson have criticized the bill’s enormous cost, aligning with Musk’s fiscal concerns, while Sen. Josh Hawley has pushed back on the deep cuts to Medicaid.
Though loyalty to Trump remains a strong unifying force within the GOP, the divisions around this bill reveal fault lines that could disrupt its progress. As Thune recently conceded, there are “a lot of moving parts” to getting the bill finalized in time for Trump’s Independence Day signing target.
Musk’s blunt intervention—calling out lawmakers by saying “you know you did wrong”—adds fuel to the fire and may empower fiscal conservatives to demand deeper changes or stall the bill altogether. Whether his influence derails the bill, as it nearly did in December, remains to be seen. But his latest move makes one thing clear: the tech mogul is once again a major disruptor on Capitol Hill.