Musk throws wrench into GOP's plan to pass Trump’s 'big, beautiful bill'

Elon Musk on Tuesday threw a wrench into Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) ambitious plan to get President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by July 4, calling the legislative agenda passed by the House “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”

Musk’s sharp criticism of the bill gives political cover to GOP fiscal hawks, such as Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.), who are already railing against the legislation.

They want to see it include much deeper spending cuts, heightening tensions with GOP colleagues who are worried about cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“The Senate must make this bill better,” Lee, the chair of the conservative Senate Steering Committee, posted on the social platform X in response to Musk’s slap at the legislation.

Paul told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday that if four conservatives band together, they could force Senate GOP leaders to agree to bigger spending cuts and possibly “separate out” language to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.

“Four people with courage can make the bill into anything we want,” he said.

The complaints from Musk, Lee and Paul may represent speed bumps to the Trump legislation, which Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are desperate to pass.

Yet they are bumps that could slow the legislation’s movement at a time when GOP leaders in Congress have little to spare if they are to get a package to Trump’s desk by the August recess. This deadline is also important because of calls from Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent that Congress also must approve a hike to the debt ceiling before August. The idea is to combine all of that into one bill that would move without Democratic votes.

Paul acknowledged he and other Senate conservatives are putting themselves on a collision course with colleagues who want to reverse some of the House-passed spending cuts.

“Right now, there are competing factions,” he said. “There are four or five who don’t want any spending cut, and there are four or five who want more spending cuts. So it’s who sticks together better and who has more courage to stand up and say no.”

Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) are worried that House language to cut Medicaid spending will hurt their constituents.

Murkowski on Tuesday said the House-passed language to require more cost-sharing for people who earn between 100 percent and 138 percent of the federal poverty line “is a big concern for us.”

She also noted that Alaska has “old” systems for managing Medicaid benefits and expressed concern that eligibility reforms could have a disproportionate impact on her state.

And she questioned whether senators would have enough time to work through their concerns and objections before July 4, noting the Senate is scheduled to have a shortened week because of the Juneteenth holiday.

“It doesn’t give us a whole lot of time to do much of anything,” she said.

“The third week that we’re here … it’s Juneteenth, and we have Thursday and Friday that are off. I’m just looking at the calendar and wonder how we make this all happen.

“It’s going to be hard.”

Johnson told The Hill that Musk's attack “bolsters my case” that the bill needs to be overhauled to include bigger spending cuts. 

“He's an astute businessperson. He's been inside government, he's ferreted out ... all these examples of grotesque waste, fraud and abuse. He knows what he's talking about,” he said. 

Paul said Musk's comments “changed the debate” in the Senate GOP conference. 

“There's been a lot of discussion today,” he said. “I think it does change the debate. I think it's going to be more acceptable to have a really robust debate over” additional spending cuts.

GOP leaders in the House and Senate, however, pushed back at Musk.

Thune argued the bill would enact the biggest spending reduction in American history, even though the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would ultimately add more than $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

“You will see a reduction, not an increase in the deficit. We have a difference of opinion; he’s entitled to that opinion. We’re going to proceed full speed ahead,” Thune said.  

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also pushed back at Musk strongly.

“Let me say this: It’s very disappointing,” he told reporters at the Capitol, later adding: “With all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong about the one big, beautiful bill.”

Trump has become more involved in talking to senators about the legislation. Hawley said Trump promised him during a Monday conversation that the bill would not cut Medicaid benefits.

“Just had a great talk with President Trump about the Big, Beautiful Bill. He said again, NO MEDICAID BENEFIT CUTS,” he posted on X.

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) said colleagues are concerned about spending cuts that would require states to pay more into the SNAP program.

“We’ll need to address that,” he told reporters before the Memorial Day recess.

Republicans warn there’s a lot of work still to be done, which means the July 4 deadline Trump set for the bill is already starting to slip.

“You got to set a target, but it’s a lot of work to get done,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said.

Republican lawmakers, including Tillis, are pushing back at proposals to terminate clean energy subsidies and tax breaks, which would cut off tens of billions of dollars in investment to Republican-leaning states.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, indicated the House bill doesn’t give clean-energy investments enough time to adapt to a sudden cutoff in federal support.

“The timelines that the House put on were much more dramatic — were shorter timelines. I’m sure the Finance Committee is considering that,” she said.

She said senators are reviewing some of the “finer points” of the bill, such as when clean-energy tax breaks expire.

Capito said she wants to change an early phase-out of federal support for the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub in West Virginia.

“I want to be able the innovation to go forward on hydrogen and clean coal, they’re very expensive projects. Tax relief helps that. I’ve always said some of the IRA tax credits are things that I would be in favor of and have created jobs in my home state even now,” she said of the energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act passed under former President Biden.

She said the House bill requires hydrogen projects to be “under construction by the end of this year” to qualify for tax credits.

“I don’t think my Appalachian hydrogen hub is going to be under construction by the end of this year. That I’m going to have to talk to them about, for sure,” she said.

Thune on Tuesday acknowledged Senate negotiators will need to make changes to get it through the upper chamber.

“We’re going to take a lot of input from our members and make sure that as we go through this process it’s done in a way that incorporates the views of Republican senators,” he said.

Senate Republicans plan to hold a special conference meeting Wednesday afternoon to make more headway on the legislation.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) objected strongly to a provision to auction off government-owned spectrum, which he says would hamstring the military.

“For me, it’s deal-breaker. It has to be modified,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Rounds said he wants spectrum used by the Department of Defense to be protected until the auction authority expires in 2034.

“I’ve talked to the leadership here in the Senate,” he said.