Trump responds to Musk saying he’s ‘disappointed’ in big tax bill

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Trump responds to Musk saying he’s ‘disappointed’ in big tax bill

WASHINGTON – President

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defended the sweeping tax and policy bill he is pushing through Congress after his ally

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said he was “disappointed” in the package’s price tag.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told

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.”

More: Elon Musk bemoans DOGE becoming Trump administration’s ‘whipping boy’

The bill passed by the House on May 22 would extend existing income tax cuts and implement new ones for tipped wages and overtime, add new restrictions to benefit programs like Medicaid and food stamps and fund Trump’s deportation efforts.

It would also add an estimated $3.8 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years due to those tax cuts, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office – a point of frustration for fiscal conservatives in Congress as well as Musk.

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS News, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

Asked about Musk’s comment at the White House on May 28, Trump suggested that the high price tag is a result of the House’s tough politics: Republican leaders there could afford to lose only two GOP votes and still pass the bill. If they had implemented deeper cuts, they would have likely lost the votes of key moderates.

“We have to get a lot of votes, we can’t be cutting – we need to get a lot of support,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“We will be negotiating that bill. I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” Trump continued. He noted that the bill still has to go through the Senate and back through the House before it can be signed into law: “It’s got a way to go.”

Lawmakers are hoping to pass the bill by July 4, though the real deadline is the end of July, as the United States is expected to default on its debt sometime in August. The bill includes a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.

The back-and-forth between Musk and Trump is a rare moment of public disagreement between the president and his billionaire advisor as

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from his role leading the temporary Department of Government Efficiency. Musk has also criticized

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.

The comments also come as Trump prepares to send a request to Congress to claw back federal funding for things that Musk’s DOGE project has cut.

The package is

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$1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and $8.3 billion in foreign assistance.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:

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