The White House’s fuzzy math is starting to haunt the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

Elon Musk’s 36-word social media missile directed at the cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda marked the latest, if most visceral, example of a growing problem for the White House.

Elon Musk’s 36-word social media missile directed at the cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda marked the latest, if most visceral, example of a growing problem for the White House. Nobody buys its math. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk posted in the middle of the White House press briefing in a dramatic escalation of his initial objections to the giant domestic policy bill’s cost. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.” Musk’s post (and its Wednesday follow up) landed at the most delicate moment for an essential pillar of Trump’s entire domestic agenda. Senate Republicans are set to launch their high-stakes effort to pass the bill, while Trump and his top advisers seek to aggressively counter the widespread consensus among economists, nonpartisan budget scorekeepers and Wall Street analysts that the bill will pile trillions of dollars onto the soaring US debt. Trump’s top economic officials insist, unequivocally and repeatedly, that the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” won’t add to the debt over 10 years. The definitive statements serve as an unabashed outlier among the catalogue of budget scores, growth forecasts and macroeconomic analyses produced since House Republicans passed their version of Trump’s agenda by the narrowest of margins. Differences of opinion between economists, scorekeepers and analysts are commonplace, as are the heated rhetorical attacks lobbed at the Congressional Budget Office. They aren’t exclusive to this White House. But the near-universal agreement that the bill’s combination of tax and spending cuts net out as a significant deficit driver lays bare an unusually dramatic disconnect with the view of Trump’s economic team.