House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that he contacted Elon Musk following the tech billionaire’s criticism of the Republicans’ “big beautiful bill.”
Musk, who officially ended his role as a special government employee with the Department of Government Efficiency last week, had characterized the legislation as a spending bill and voiced concerns over several elements, including what he described as its impact on “increasing the deficit.”
Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, stated on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he convinced friends and colleagues in Congress who shared similar views to reconsider.
“I sent a long text message to my good friend Elon Musk, after he made those comments the other day to explain this is not a spending bill. This is a reconciliation package,” he said. “It is reconciling a budget. So there is some additional spending … for historic investments in border security, the largest in generations, because those are necessary expenditures.”
Johnson said many are not seeing the “tremendous and historic level of spending cuts that are also in the same package” and are too often referencing analysis from groups like the Congressional Budget Office.
“The CBO, they have projected anemic economic growth. They’re assuming a growth level of 1.8% over the next 10 years,” the House speaker said. “Never in US history has the US economy sustained less than 2% economic growth over a 10-year period.”
Senate Republicans said Thursday they are eager to begin reviewing and revising President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which recently passed the House, with the goal of advancing their version by the July 4 weekend.
With a 53-seat majority, Republicans plan to use the budget reconciliation process to move the legislation forward—allowing them to bypass the 60-vote threshold and avoid needing Democratic support. However, any changes made in the Senate would require the bill to return to the House for further debate and a new vote.
The bill, a cornerstone of President Trump’s agenda, features broad spending cuts and tax reductions, including provisions to make his 2017 tax cuts permanent.
It also allocates funding for border security and national defense, while including measures aimed at boosting domestic energy production. Spanning over 1,000 pages, the legislation encompasses Trump’s directives on immigration, tax policy, education, energy, the military, the judiciary, healthcare, and entitlement programs.
