WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tesla CEO Elon Musk said President Donald Trump’s support for a GOP tax and spending bill would undermine the work done by the Department of Government Efficiency to slash spending.
Musk, who recently announced he would step back from his work with DOGE to focus on Tesla, dominated headlines during Trump’s first few months in office. The DOGE boss took credit and blame for proposals to cut spending, reduce the number of federal employees, and shrink the U.S. government’s footprint.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decreases, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” he told “CBS Sunday Morning” in a clip released Wednesday.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act increases the debt ceiling by $4 trillion and funds large parts of Trump’s tax, border, energy, and defense agenda, including codifying the 2017 tax cuts. Organizations such as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget say the bill’s true cost could amount to a $5.2 trillion federal debt increase.
Musk became the face of Trump’s effort to cut costs, but in April, the Tesla boss said he planned to spend less time in Washington after Tesla reported a 71% drop in profits during the first quarter of 2025. Many of DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts were tangled up in lawsuits filed by groups and states opposing such cuts. Some of the efforts remain in limbo.
When Trump first created DOGE, before taking office, he said it would be the government cost-cutting equivalent of the “Manhattan Project.”
Even last month, Musk said DOGE’s work was critical to the U.S.
“There’s been some blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government with the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. I think the work that we’re doing there is actually very important,” Musk said in April. “And the DOGE team has made a lot of progress in addressing waste and fraud… Because if the ship of America goes down, we all go down with it, including Tesla and everyone else. So I think this is this critical work.”
Musk initially said DOGE would aim to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, but he later cut that in half. At a Cabinet meeting in April, Musk said DOGE was on pace to cut $150 billion.
Both Trump and Musk promised Americans would get a more efficient government after DOGE addressed government waste and cut regulations, but the final product – a streamlined government – was promised by July 4, 2026, the nation’s 250th birthday.
