Trump’s Budget Chief Responds To Elon’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Critique

President Donald Trump’s budget chief delivered on Sunday a counterargument to Elon Musk’s warning that the House-passed version of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” would further expand the federal deficit.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” anchor Dana Bash showed Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a clip of Musk telling “CBS Sunday Morning” in a recent interview of his concern that the legislation will inflate the federal deficit that has already blown past $1 trillion in recent years. Musk also referred to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative that he oversaw for the past few months.

“I was like — disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said.

“I love Elon,” Vought responded. “This bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt. In fact, it lowers it by $1.4 trillion. What some of the watchdogs have done is, they have used CBO’s artificial baseline, which doesn’t allow and assume that current tax law will be extended because of sunsets that are in the law.”

Vought added later, “When you assume the extension of the president’s tax relief from 2017, this budget or this bill, and it’s really a reconciliation bill — it’s not really a budget bill. It is using a budget process. This is a $1.4 trillion over 10 years deficit reduction. It’s $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings. Obviously, we have a little bit of spending in there as well for border and defense. But that is the biggest mandatory savings package that we have seen since 1997. It’s very historic.”

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The “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which is moving through Congress through the reconciliation process that will allow the Senate to bypass the filibuster threshold, aims to advance Trump’s priorities on border security, energy, and national defense. It also seeks to retain tax cuts from 2017 that are set to expire at the end of this year, raise the debt limit by trillions of dollars, and much more.

Trump has called the bill “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History” of the United States, but has given his blessing to GOP senators, some of whom have also raised objections to the bill in its current form, to “make the changes they want.”

Musk, who just ended his stint as a special government employee, also said in the CBS interview that when the bill came along, he thought “everything” accomplished by DOGE would get “wiped out” in the first year. He also said, “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

Last week, Vought said the White House planned to send its first rescissions package of the year to Congress on Monday or Tuesday, aiming to claw back spending for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and NPR — programs that Republicans view as being wasteful and partisan. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has listed rescissions as being one of two actions the House will take based on findings from DOGE, in addition to using the appropriations process to “swiftly implement” Trump’s proposed 2026 budget.