Trump says he will negotiate tax bill amid Musk’s criticism

By Doina Chiacu and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he plans to negotiate aspects of the "big, beautiful" tax bill, expressing dissatisfaction with certain provisions while being satisfied with others.

His comments followed billionaire Elon Musk’s criticism a day earlier, in which Musk argued that the bill detracts from efforts to reduce the U.S. budget deficit.

"We will be negotiating that bill, and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it," Trump told reporters, without directly addressing Musk’s concerns.

He also emphasized the need to secure sufficient support for the bill’s passage in the Senate, stating, "we can’t be cutting, you know, we need to get a lot of support."

In an interview with CBS "Sunday Morning," broadcast late on Tuesday, Musk said he was "disappointed to see the massive spending bill" because it increases the budget deficit and undermines the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

"I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both," Musk said in the interview.

The White House intends to send Congress a small package as early as next week to formalize cuts made by Musk’s team targeting federal government spending, a White House official familiar with the plan said on Wednesday.

For months, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress have been asking the administration to codify the federal spending cuts announced by DOGE.

Musk, the world’s richest man, was appointed by Trump in February to lead his administration’s chaotic reform of the federal government as head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed the sweeping tax and spending bill that would enact much of Trump’s policy agenda and saddle the country with trillions ofdollars more in debt.

Trump and his fellow Republicans, which passed the measure by a single vote, have dubbed the legislation the "big, beautiful bill." It will add about $3.8 trillion to the federal government’s $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The U.S. Senate is now considering the measure.

A DOGE website that claims it has saved U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars has been riddled with errors and corrections.