Elon Musk is speaking out against President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” spending bill.
Musk criticized the bill in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that’s set to air on June 1. His comments were featured in a clip of the interview shared on X on Tuesday.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said.
The Tesla CEO has worked closely with the White House DOGE office on efforts to cut government spending and eliminate fraud and waste in the federal budget. Musk recently said he is scaling back his work with DOGE.
Trump’s spending bill, which passed the House last week, would make some of his 2017 tax cuts permanent and add trillions to the federal deficit.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk told CBS.
In November, Trump announced that DOGE would be co-led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump said the commission would conclude its work by July 4, 2026. Ramaswamy left DOGE in January, leaving Musk as its sole leader.
Musk had lofty goals for DOGE. In October, Musk said DOGE would save at least $2 trillion for the government. He later said in January that saving $2 trillion would be a “best-case outcome” and DOGE had a “good shot” at saving $1 trillion.
Last month, Musk told reporters DOGE saved $160 billion in federal spending and cut 20,000 government jobs, or about 1% of the federal workforce.
“In the grand scheme of things, I think we’ve been effective. Not as effective as I’d like. I think we could be more effective. But we’ve made progress,” Musk said on April 30.
Musk has faced increased calls from investors to spend more time on his businesses after his work at DOGE sparked boycotts and protests against Tesla.
Last week, Musk embarked on a media blitz where he reaffirmed his commitment to Tesla. Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg on May 20 that he will be cutting down on his political spending.
“In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk told Bloomberg. “I think I’ve done enough.”
Musk later told CNBC on the same day that he would still be spending time in Washington. Last month, Musk said in a Tesla earnings call that he plans to scale down his involvement with DOGE to focus on Tesla.
“My rough plan on the White House is to be there for a couple days every few weeks. And to be helpful where I can be helpful,” Musk told CNBC.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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