By Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch
The “big, beautiful” megabill just ran into an Elon Musk-shaped roadblock.
President Trump’s signature tax and domestic policy bill, which faces consideration in the Senate this week, has been on thin ice for months. The massive, sweeping piece of legislation barely passed the House, and now faces an even tougher crowd in the upper chamber.
Then came Musk, who posted Tuesday on his social platform X that he “just can’t stand it anymore.”
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote.
The Hill’s The Memo: Musk dropped a bomb on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Musk quickly garnered support from Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), one of the Republicans who did not vote for the bill in the House, and Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).
“The Senate must make this bill better,” Lee wrote in a reply to Musk.
Trump made a series of calls in recent days as he begins the effort to get the bill through the Senate, where it faces calls for more spending cuts from the likes of Paul and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Although members concede Trump’s impact is more acute with House members, given the political dynamics in the chamber, they still see the president as having real sway to get the package over the finish line.
“He’s the closer,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill. “The president clearly is very dialed in right now.”
Politico: “A ton of tradeoffs”: Thune acts fast to cut deals and move Trump’s megabill.
The president publicly criticized Paul for his opposition to the bill, as Republican leaders sought to downplay Musk’s criticism. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he had talked to Musk on Monday, and that the tech billionaire “seemed to understand” the importance of the legislation.
“For him to come out and pan the whole bill is to me just very disappointing, very surprising,” Johnson said. “With all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong.”
Senate Republican committee chairs will begin rolling out sections of the bill this week for colleagues to begin negotiating in committee-level breakout groups. Members of the powerful Senate Finance Committee will go to the White House to meet with the president this afternoon.
As that discussion begins, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports the window is fast closing on Senate conservatives who want to add more deficit-reduction measures, and moderates and a coalition of other GOP lawmakers who want to rewrite House-drafted cuts to Medicaid.
Thune on Monday outlined an ambitious timeline for the bill.
“I think we’re on track — I hope, at least — to be able to produce something that we can pass through the Senate, send back to the House, have them pass and put on the president’s desk by the Fourth of July,” he told reporters.
▪ NBC News: The White House on Tuesday sent congressional leaders a request to claw back $9.4 billion in approved spending, most of it for foreign aid.
▪ The Hill: Republicans are seeking a major rollback of ObamaCare coverage under the House-passed megabill that would result in millions of people losing insurance coverage.
▪ The Hill: Republicans are increasingly on the defensive over the party’s handling of Medicaid cuts in the party’s “big, beautiful bill,” underscoring how the issue has become an early flash point ahead of next year’s midterms.
Conservative spending hawks in the House are worried about changes to the bill that Senate Republicans are eyeing — and they may soon face a moment of reckoning. Under heavy pressure from Trump and his MAGA base, GOP spending hawks held their noses and voted for the bill last month, hoping the Senate would shift the massive package closer to being deficit neutral.
Instead, the opposite is now expected to happen, as moderate GOP senators leery of the House Medicaid cuts and efforts to phase out green energy subsidies seek to restore some of those benefit programs, potentially making the bill even more costly than the House version. With just a slim Senate majority, Thune will need the support of those moderates if he hopes to pass the bill.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a prominent spending hawk, was even more forceful, saying GOP senators “can’t unwind what we achieved” in the House or the bill would have a tough path upon its return to the lower chamber. “And those are going to be red lines,” he warned.