Elon Musk drove another wedge through a conservative consensus on a budget resolution as House Speaker Mike Johnson struggled to hold his “big, beautiful bill” together.
Johnson was caught between swing district doves wary of cuts to Medicaid and fiscal hawks insisting the $2 trillion spending cuts didn’t go far enough.
Then Musk caused more turmoil by siding with Republicans worried about the growing federal deficit.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a noted deficit hawk and a forceful advocate for spending cuts, wrote on X: “If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better.”
Musk tweeted back at him: “That sounds bad.”
Johnson was already rolling the dice by putting his bill to the vote on Tuesday evening unsure if he had enough votes to overcome Democratic Party objections. He told reporters he would try again if the bill fell.
Either way, if Johnson can’t push the bill through, Donald Trump’s immigration, tax, defense, and energy agendas will, at the very least, all be delayed.
While Trump told Sean Hannity in an interview on Fox News that he would not slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits, the scale of the spending cuts in the bill means it will be hard to leave them unscathed.
Meanwhile, the deficit hardliners are saying they won’t settle for any legislation that fails to address their concerns about the nation’s growing debt.
Johnson acknowledged on Monday that “there may be more than one” Republican member planning to rebel against him and, consequently, Trump’s wishes.
The president supports Johnson’s bill, but insiders say he hasn’t laid down the law to Republicans who have made their objections public.
Johnson wasn’t overconfident, saying: “We’re going to get everybody there. This is a prayer request. Just pray this through for us, because it is very high-stakes, and everybody knows that. … I don’t think anybody wants to be in front of this train. I think they want to be on it.”
