- Elon Musk, co-head of cost-cutting commission DOGE, said on X that the bill “should not pass.”
- The 1,547-page proposal would fund the government through mid-March.
- Speaker Mike Johnson said in a press release that he spoke to Musk last night about his displeasure.
Hours after lawmakers released an eleventh-hour bill to fund the government through the middle of March, Elon Musk weighed in on the proposal.
“Ever seen a bigger piece of pork?” he asked in a post on X above a photo of the 1,547-page bill.
Musk is set to co-lead Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which aims to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget by July 4, 2026, alongside biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
In his own post late on Tuesday, Ramaswamy urged every representative and senator to read the bill. Musk minced no words when he reposted his co-head’s statement.
“This bill should not pass,” Musk wrote above his repost.
If passed, the stop-gap spending bill will fund the government through March 14 and avert a government shutdown, leaving Congress to deal with major spending choices after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The bill includes $100 billion in disaster relief, $10 billion in economic aid for farmers, and the first pay raise for members of Congress since 2009.
Ramaswamy issued a scathing rejection of the bill in a six-paragraph X post on Wednesday, writing that “it’s full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics.”
Among other provisions, Ramaswamy criticized the stimulus for farmers, disaster relief, and pay raise for members of Congress, and compared the additional “feel good” spending to “showering cocaine on an addict.” He also said that the bill could have been fewer than 20 pages.
How members of Congress vote will, he said at the end of his post, show how serious they are about working with DOGE. “This is an early test,” he wrote.
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said in a press release that he had spoken to Musk and Ramaswamy in a text chain on Tuesday night. The two “understand the situation,” the speaker said in the release.
“They said, it’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending,” Johnson said. “I said, guess what, fellas, I don’t either.”
Musk and Ramaswamy have already begun publicizing potential places to cut, including scaling back the federal workforce and slashing departments. The two have met with GOP lawmakers to discuss their goals, though details of the meeting remain scarce.
Representatives for Johnson and Ramaswamy declined to comment further for this article, and Musk did not respond to Business Insider’s request.
