President Trump on Wednesday punted on a question about tech billionaire Elon Musk’s criticism on the “big, beautiful bill” packed with the president’s legislative priorities the House passed last week.
Musk, who spearheaded the cost-cutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said in an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning that he was “disappointed” in the spending bill because “it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”
Trump was asked in the Oval Office about his reaction to Musk and replied, “Well, our reaction’s a lot of things” before pivoting to the votes needs to get the bill out of Congress.
“Number one, we have to get a lot of votes, we can’t be cutting — we need to get a lot support and we have a lot of support,” he said. “We had to get it through the House, the House was, we had no Democrats. You know, if it was up to the Democrats, they’ll take the 65 percent increase.”
The bill, which increase the debt limit by $4 trillion, is now in the Senate’s hands after it passed the House on Thursday following a series of last-minute negotiations and changes.
Trump on Wednesday said he’s not happy about some aspects of the bill, which extends his 2017 tax cuts, boosts funding for border priorities, imposes reforms like beefed-up work requirements on Medicaid and rolls back green energy tax incentives.
“We will be negotiating that bill and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” Trump said. “That’s the way it goes. It’s very big, it’s the big beautiful but the beautiful is because of all the things that we have.”
“The Senate, as you know, is negotiating with us and they have to then go back to the House and you know, it’s got a way to go,” he added.
He also praised Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) for their work on the bill.
“I think we have an amazing — if we pull this off,” Trump said.
Musk, who was a close ally of Trump, told CBS that he doesn’t think a bill can be both big and beautiful. The Tesla CEO has taken a step back from his role in Trump’s White House after spending months slashing government spending and reducing the size of the federal workforce.
