Tesla (TSLA-3.33%) CEO Elon Musk wants Republicans to take a big U-turn and start from scratch on President Donald Trump’s big domestic policy bill.
Musk hasn’t let up in his fusillade of attacks on the GOP bill that started Tuesday, only days after exiting a special advisory role spearheading a cost-cutting campaign under the U.S. DOGE Service. The billionaire exhorted his followers on X to call their lawmakers and encourage them to oppose the legislation carrying the bulk of Trump’s agenda.
“We need a new bill that doesn’t grow the deficit,” Musk posted on X on Wednesday afternoon.
“KILL the BILL,” Musk said in a separate post. He followed up by posting a promotional image of the 2003 film “Kill Bill” featuring Uma Thurman brandishing a sword.
“Bankrupting America is not OK,” he said in another post.
Musk assailed the bill as “a disgusting abomination” a day earlier. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s caustic, unilateral campaign against the legislation could upend GOP efforts to speed the bill through Congress to Trump’s desk by July 4. The bill would renew a suite of tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, and eliminates taxes on tips and overtime pay. There’s more funding for defense programs and border enforcement as well. It is partly paid for by scrapping clean energy tax credits and cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid.
Earlier on Wednesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over a decade.
Congressional Republicans are trying to avoid getting rattled by Musk and his enormous social media megaphone. “Trump is staying the course so that’s a pretty strong signal to [Capitol] Hill that we don’t need to worry,” one senior GOP aide in Congress told Quartz.
The same aide said many GOP lawmakers privately believe Musk’s onslaught against the bill stem from its elimination of federal tax incentives for electric vehicles that benefit Tesla rather than a genuine concern to rein in government spending.Meanwhile, Democrats are ratcheting up their own attacks against Trump’s megabill. Party operatives and Democratic lawmakers have recently elevated comments from Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. At a town hall last week with constituents, Ernst defended proposed cuts to Medicaid saying, “Well, we all are going to die.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was the latest to do the same on Wednesday. In a weekly press conference, he talked about the GOP legislation by a new name: “Well, We are All Going to Die Act.”
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