‘Utterly insane': Musk wades back into debate over Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
Washington: Elon Musk has waded back into the political fray, slamming a major domestic policy bill that Senate Republicans are scrambling to pass weeks after he ended a feud with US President Donald Trump over the legislation.
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, GOP leaders released a new 940-page version of the legislation to carry out the president's agenda. Like the House version, the bill would slash taxes, scale back Medicaid, cut nutritional assistance and increase spending on the military and immigration enforcement.
But the Senate also included new measures intended to mollify holdouts in the Republican ranks, including a fund to help rural hospitals that depend on Medicaid.
Leaders in the Republican majority are hoping to push the bill through the Senate and win final approval in the House before Trump's deadline of July 4.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, had been relatively quiet since his blow-up with the president this month, but as the Senate convened to discuss the package Saturday afternoon, he re-entered the debate, calling the bill 'utterly insane and destructive' in a post on his social platform X.
'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!' he wrote.
The bill lies at the centre of his feud with the president. Musk had said he believed that the package would significantly add to the national debt and would undermine the savings he claims were found by the department of government efficiency, a federal government cost-cutting project he led.
He called the bill a 'disgusting abomination' that would make the country bankrupt.
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The sweeping tax-cut and spending measure, Trump's top legislative goal, passed its first procedural hurdle in a 51 to 49 vote late on Saturday, US time (Sunday afternoon AEST), with two Republican senators voting against it. The result came after several hours of negotiation as Republican leaders and Vice President JD Vance sought to persuade last-minute holdouts in a series of closed-door negotiations. The procedural vote, which would start debate on the 940-page megabill to fund Trump's top immigration, border, tax-cut and military priorities, began after hours of delay. It then remained open for more than three hours of standstill as three Republican senators joined Democrats to oppose the legislation. In the end, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson flipped his no vote to yes, leaving only two senators opposed among Republicans. Trump was monitoring the vote from the Oval Office late into the night, a senior White House official said. The megabill - titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act - would extend the 2017 tax cuts that were Trump's main legislative achievement during his first term as president, cut other taxes and boost spending on the military and border security. Nonpartisan analysts estimate that a version of the bill would add trillions to US government debt. Democrats fiercely opposed the bill, saying its tax-cut elements would disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of social programs that lower-income Americans rely upon. Elon Musk doubled down on his opposition to the bill, arguing the legislation would kill jobs and bog down burgeoning industries. "The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country," Musk wrote on his social media platform X ahead of the vote. "It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future." The Tesla and SpaceX chief, whose birthday was also on Saturday, later posted the bill would be "political suicide for the Republican Party". The criticisms reopened a recent fiery conflict between the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency and the administration he recently left. The Republican-controlled US Senate has advanced President Donald Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill in a key procedural vote, raising the odds the "big, beautiful bill" will be passed in coming days. The sweeping tax-cut and spending measure, Trump's top legislative goal, passed its first procedural hurdle in a 51 to 49 vote late on Saturday, US time (Sunday afternoon AEST), with two Republican senators voting against it. The result came after several hours of negotiation as Republican leaders and Vice President JD Vance sought to persuade last-minute holdouts in a series of closed-door negotiations. 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Democrats fiercely opposed the bill, saying its tax-cut elements would disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of social programs that lower-income Americans rely upon. Elon Musk doubled down on his opposition to the bill, arguing the legislation would kill jobs and bog down burgeoning industries. "The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country," Musk wrote on his social media platform X ahead of the vote. "It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future." The Tesla and SpaceX chief, whose birthday was also on Saturday, later posted the bill would be "political suicide for the Republican Party". The criticisms reopened a recent fiery conflict between the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency and the administration he recently left. The Republican-controlled US Senate has advanced President Donald Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill in a key procedural vote, raising the odds the "big, beautiful bill" will be passed in coming days. The sweeping tax-cut and spending measure, Trump's top legislative goal, passed its first procedural hurdle in a 51 to 49 vote late on Saturday, US time (Sunday afternoon AEST), with two Republican senators voting against it. The result came after several hours of negotiation as Republican leaders and Vice President JD Vance sought to persuade last-minute holdouts in a series of closed-door negotiations. The procedural vote, which would start debate on the 940-page megabill to fund Trump's top immigration, border, tax-cut and military priorities, began after hours of delay. It then remained open for more than three hours of standstill as three Republican senators joined Democrats to oppose the legislation. In the end, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson flipped his no vote to yes, leaving only two senators opposed among Republicans. Trump was monitoring the vote from the Oval Office late into the night, a senior White House official said. The megabill - titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act - would extend the 2017 tax cuts that were Trump's main legislative achievement during his first term as president, cut other taxes and boost spending on the military and border security. Nonpartisan analysts estimate that a version of the bill would add trillions to US government debt. Democrats fiercely opposed the bill, saying its tax-cut elements would disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of social programs that lower-income Americans rely upon. Elon Musk doubled down on his opposition to the bill, arguing the legislation would kill jobs and bog down burgeoning industries. "The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country," Musk wrote on his social media platform X ahead of the vote. "It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future." The Tesla and SpaceX chief, whose birthday was also on Saturday, later posted the bill would be "political suicide for the Republican Party". The criticisms reopened a recent fiery conflict between the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency and the administration he recently left.
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