A growing number of Republicans are demanding Congress take real steps to cut government spending after Elon Musk blew the whistle on Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on his way out the door.
The tech billionaire slammed the massive legislation as disappointing. He said it increased the deficit and undermined DOGE’s work, which fell way short of its goal of chopping $2 trillion in spending.
Musk’s comment in an interview with CBS News exposed a growing rift in MAGA, and now other conservatives are piling on. Some have attacked the bill focused on Trump’s domestic agenda as it heads to the Senate, while others have questioned why the GOP-controlled Congress hasn’t done more work on its own to cut spending.
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Senator Ron Johnson has blasted the bill passed in the House last week and called for significant changes.
He went on Newsmax on Thursday, where he questioned why the president has not “twisted arms in Congress” to eliminate spending.
“I agree with Elon Musk. I can understand why he’s disappointed. He’s done all this work, and we haven’t codified any of the grotesque examples of spending abuse that he and DOGE have exposed.”
GOP Senator Rand Paul, an ongoing critic of the bill, wrote on Thursday that the bill’s military and border spending exceeds most estimates for DOGE cuts.
“The military industrial complex advocates secretly hijacked the bill to add bloat to the military budget,” he posted on X.
Paul also said Musk was right about the bill undermining DOGE cuts, arguing it would explode the debt. He wrote there was “nothing beautiful about that.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a former congressman, took to social media to slam Congress for not working harder to cut spending as they control the power of the purse.
“To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful spending reductions (and, in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected them,” he wrote on X.
The White House has pushed back on criticism with top official Stephen Miller arguing that the House bill cannot cut discretionary spending due to the Senate rules governing the reconciliation process being used to pass the “big, beautiful bill.”
But separate from the bill, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, one of the few House Republicans to vote against it, wrote that “people need to keep the pressure on @SpeakerJohnson and the White House to bring the DOGE cuts for a vote.”
He was responding to an X post from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the chair of the House DOGE subcommittee.
Congress is out on recess, but Greene suggested the first bill implementing DOGE cuts in Congress will be revealed Monday, but despite being a congressional leader on the topic, she wrote that she hadn’t seen the bill.
The White House on Thursday thanked Musk for his service and said the effort to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” will continue.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated her claim that Trump’s bill does not increase the deficit, disputing analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, Penn-Wharton Budget Model, Moody’s and others.
At the same time, she claimed the DOGE mission will continue. But she said it will be led by Cabinet members and the president, who are committed to making cuts.
