While the “big beautiful” spending package championed by President Donald Trump still hasn’t passed the Senate – and Trump is locked in a social media scuffle about it with his sometimes ally Elon Musk – the president is still planning to sign it into law quite soon.
“We have to move this bill forward,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week when talking about the “big beautiful bill” with KFTK. “We need to get the votes. We did it in the House… surely, we can do it in a Senate. And the President expects the Senate to get to work and to have this bill back to his desk by July 4. That is the goal.”
However, there are some challenges ahead. In order to pass the bill, nearly all of the Republicans in Congress would need to vote in favor of it. However, some seem inclined not to support it, including U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who is known as an advocate against excessive government spending.
Musk – who has been an ally of Trump since the 2024 presidential campaign season and was hand-picked by the president to lead the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) spending cuts – has also publicly criticized the bill, particularly on X, the social media platform that the owns. His bashing of the bill, including calling it an “abomination,” resulted in a social media scuffle between the two men Thursday.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” said Trump in a Truth Social post, for example. In an earlier post, he said that “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”
“Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” asked Musk in an X post.
When KFTK asked Leavitt about the very public fight between the president and Musk, she said that the spending bill is “the most fiscally conservative and historic piece of legislation that has ever moved through Capitol Hill.”
“I was on the road with President Trump throughout the entirety of his campaign, and he promised voters he would finish the construction of the border wall,” Leavitt said. “He would secure our southern border. He would hire ICE and Border Patrol agents to help with the mass deportation efforts, and that he would cut taxes. And this bill does all of those things, all of the promises that the president and... these Republicans made to voters.”
Still, several agencies, experts and think tanks have projected that, if the bill is passed, that it will significantly contribute to the national debt. For instance, the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan entity, estimates that it will increase the deficit by about $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
“I know there has been some reporting about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates about this bill,” Leavitt told KFTK. “The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, your audience needs to understand that... is a political and partisan institution. Unfortunately, we wish that was not the case, but it’s just the facts.”
CBS News noted that the CBO isn’t the only group calling an alarm on the bill.
“Independent analysts at Penn Wharton and the Tax Foundation estimated that even after accounting for economic growth the bill could create, it would still raise the deficit by $3.2 trillion or $1.7 trillion, respectively,” said the outlet.
Last month, Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget group, told Audacy that the bill as it was structured “would blow up the national debt,” citing a figure of $3 trillion. She said that is a big deal for a number of reasons, including the fact that it would stifle the economy at large and even become a national security threat.
Despite concerns about the debt (which has been steadily increasing over recent years) Leavitt stressed the importance of getting the budget bill passed.
“This legislation is a pro-growth bill. It’s going to extend the Trump tax cut. It’s also going to ensure no tax on tips,” and certain overtime, she said, adding that “anyone who votes against this legislation will be voting against tax cuts and voting for a tax hike and voting for open borders.”
Leavitt also seemed confident that the bill will eventually pass and end up on Trump’s desk to sign by Independence Day.
“I can tell you, for any legally binding documents, anything of true legal weight or important executive orders, proclamations, all of them are signed directly by the President of the United States,” she said. “That man is signing documents all day, every day, because he actually wants to know what he is signing and the decisions that are being made are only made by him in this White House. I can tell you that.”