Earlier this week, it looked like Elon Musk had delivered arch conservatives a gift when he trashed President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
On Tuesday, Musk called the legislation an “outrageous, pork-filled, disgusting abomination.” It seemed like a boon for some of the fiscal conservatives in the Senate like Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who criticized the fact the bill still blows up the deficit.
Had Musk stopped there, he probably would have given fiscal conservatives additional leverage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had spent much of the first part of the year getting every faction of the House GOP on board with the bill despite fiscal conservative grumbling. But Johnson admitted during his weekly press conference that he had tried to call Musk with no response.
Immediately, House Republicans and members of the Freedom Caucus — including its former chairman Scott Perry and Andy Ogles, who has tried to allow Trump to run for a third term — voiced their criticisms of the bill that they had when it was being deliberated.
They could have voiced them at any moment but did not.
It clearly showed that they had abandoned their fiscal conservative principles in fear of the pressure campaign from Trump.
Had Musk kept his critiques strictly to the bill, the tech tycoon could have offered an effective counterweight to give conservatives leverage against leadership given his immense wealth and his wide reach as owner of X.
But the world’s richest man chose to blow that to smithereens when he turned the attacks personal.
First, he said that Trump would not have won the presidency, Republicans would have lost the House and would have a smaller minority in the Senate had it not been for Musk’s money, before huffing “such ingratitude.”
Then Musk lobbed the ultimate grenade when he said that Trump had not fully released the “Epstein files” —information related to the late financier who parlayed his money into sex trafficking teenaged girls — because Trump was mentioned in them.
The Tesla founder took it a step further by calling for Trump’s impeachment.
Not only did Musk’s words permanently spike any chance for reconciliation, it killed any chances for budget reconciliation, the arcane process through which Republicans hope to pass the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who has spent much of the legislative process in the House trying to make the bill more conservative but ultimately voted for it, tried to split the difference.
“He’s got concerns with the bill, he’s a free American, and he can speak freely and and God bless him for what he’s been doing to try to make improvements,” Roy told The Independent.
“Again, is it what Chip Roy would draft? Not even close. But did it move in the right direction to get to a place that I felt comfortable sending it to the Senate to see if they could make it better? Sure.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who has spent much of the new Congress trying to declassify information related to Epstein, said it was too early to tell about the Senate bill since text did not exist.
“I’ve always been a big fan of going back to pre-Covid spending levels,” Luna told The Independent, but understood it would require negotiation.
Rep. Andy Harris, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, who ultimately voted “present” on the bill last month, said he agreed.
“I still think his concerns about the deficit are real,” he said.
But the damage might already be done.
If Republican elected have learned anything in the past decade, they’ve learned that their voters are not so much devoted to conservative ideals; they’re devoted to Trump. Deviation from Trump, even in the name of conservative principles like restraining spending and balanced budgets, amounts to heresy.
Musk’s decision to start talking about forming another political party further alienates him from the GOP. He is now no longer part of the Trump coalition or even the Republican coalition.
That means that fiscal conservatives cannot depend on him to drop millions of dollars for people opposed to the reconciliation bill or if he does, that it will immediately be tainted as money coming from a heretic.
This makes Senate and House leadership’s job easier. It gives them a foil to oppose and allows critics of the bill to tied to Musk. And they’ve already seen that most Republicans’ bluster about spending levels are just that given that they will ultimately fold.
Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee spent much of the early parts of the reconciliation process intimating to reporters that he would not vote for the bill only to fold. As votes wrapped on Thursday, he did not seem worried about it all.
“It’s just two biggest dogs in the pound, they’re both gonna fight a little,” he said.
Except now, Musk just defanged fiscal conservatives.
