Elon Musk attacks President Donald Trump's spending bill

7NEWS

2 days ago

Elon Musk launched a series of attacks on Saturday against a massive spending bill that would fund much of President Donald Trump's agenda, renewing his criticisms as Senate Republicans rush to pass a package dubbed the 'big, beautiful bill' in order to meet a July 4 deadline set by Trump.
'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!' Musk wrote in a post on X.
'Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.'
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The billionaire and former Trump adviser amplified a poll that suggests the 'big, beautiful bill' is politically unpopular due to its budgetary effects, a notion that was affirmed this month by several separate surveys.
Forty percent of Republican respondents to a recent NBC News Decision Desk poll said 'ensuring the national debt is reduced' is the most important issue as Congress considers the Trump-backed mega-bill.
Overall, a majority of respondents said maintaining current spending levels on programs like Medicaid is the most important issue.
'Polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican Party,' Musk wrote on X.
Musk has long been a critic of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' balking at its expected impact on the national deficit and arguing that it would offset government savings brought in by the Department of Government Efficiency, an office Trump appointed him to lead earlier this year.
He maintained that opinion on Saturday, expressing it through several posts on his platform, X — including one post that attacked the bill's expected effect on the deficit as 'putting America in the fast lane to debt slavery!'
Trump previously argued that Musk only opposed the legislation because of provisions aimed at stripping away electric vehicle tax credits.
Musk today called a provision in the bill that he framed as targeting clean energy production 'incredibly destructive to America'.
The Tesla chief's departure from the White House, where he formally served as a special government employee, came a day after he publicly expressed his criticisms of the bill during an interview with CBS Sunday Morning.
'I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, I don't know if it can be both,' Musk said at the time.
While Musk no longer commands similar levels of influence in Washington, his past opposition to the bill emboldened Republicans lawmakers, some of whom, like Musk, took issue with its expected $US 4 trillion ($A 6 trillion) increase to the national deficit.
The renewed criticism by Musk comes as Senate Republicans rush to whip enough votes to pass the 940-page mega-bill amid breaks in the party over certain provisions, including expected cuts to Medicaid that could strip funding from rural hospitals.
Senator Thom Tillis, cited the loss of rural hospital funding in explaining his decision to oppose the bill.
Earlier this month, shortly after the House of Representatives passed its version of the bill, Musk urged his more than 200 million followers on X to tell Congress to 'kill the bill.'