Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the fifth of June. I'm Billy Fitzsimon.
I'm Emma Gillespie.
You may have seen that Elon Musk has criticized a bill brought forward by US President Donald Trump. To be specific, must call Trump's bill a disgusting abomination. It comes just days after Musk finished up at the White House as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE. It's left us with one question. A Trump and Musk, a duo whose close relationship have been at the center of political power this year in the US
now fighting and if so, what's it all about? Well, explain what you need to know in today's podcast, Billy.
This is not the turn in the el mask Donald Trump friendship, bromance, whatever you want to call it, that I saw coming. But some very strong language this week. Let's take a step back. Why was Elon Musk ever in the White House? To begin with?
Yeah, So, if you're not familiar with Elon Musk, although I'm sure many of our listeners are, he is one of the richest people in the world. He is the banks.
The richest man in the world.
He is the owner of x, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. He is also the CEO of Tesla and has a whole suite of very very successful companies. Now, it was big news when he did become part of the White House under Donald Trump, because I think it is quite unusual for someone who is so successful in the private sector to then make this move into the public sector. Yeah, although I guess it does kind of mimic Donald Trump himself.
True.
Yeah. And so Mask became part of the White House because he was appointed as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, which, as I said before, is more commonly known as DOGE. And now that was, or is, I should say, a government agency established when Trump was sworn in as president earlier this year. So it was an entirely new agency. It had never been created before. Now,
its goal was very simple. Its goal was to reduce what it labeled as wasteful spending by the US government, and it did have certain targets, although like any good target it changed over time. So at the start, I think it was around the two trillion marks. So it wanted to reduce spending by the US government buy up to two trillion dollars.
And you might remember in the very very early days of the Trump administration some quite sweeping threats or comments about cuts to public sector government jobs on the line. There were some pretty significant announcements in those early days.
Yes, and then the target changed and it was reduced to one trillion dollars. The goal was to reduce spending by one trillion dollars. Now just less than six months in to DOGE, it hasn't achieved that, although we are just six months in and it is set to continue.
I mean a trillion dollars in US or Australian. Yeah, it's a lot of money. It's more than my small brain can even comprehend.
Now. Last week Elon Musk said that DOGE had found one hundred and fifty billion dollars in savings for the next financial year, which is of course significantly less than the one trillion dollars that he was planning to save, but one hundred and fifty billion dollars still no small amount of money.
I think it's also important to flag that in his capacity as this advisor to DOGE, Elon Musk wasn't necessarily an elected official. He was brought on in this advisory capacity, which is why he's no longer in the job. It was kind of always going to be this temporary role. Come in, cleaning up, so to speak, and get out and go and live.
Your life, exactly. And I think that's what's important here is that Elon Musk is no longer part of DOGE, although DOGE will continue after he has now left, But it was always planned that his involvement in this would only ever be temporary. And that's because he was serving as something called a special government employee, and that is just a specific category of temporary contractor who can only work for the federal government for one hundred and thirty
days each year. So that's a very specific thing in US law and.
Ties into democracy elected officials being the key decision makers exactly.
And he was also unpaid, so he didn't receive any money in that role. And so all of that meant that his last day was last Friday, and on his last day, Trump and Mask held a press conference. It was mostly civil, it was nothing out of the ordinary for the two. They both complimented each other and Musk said that he looks forward to quote continuing to be a friend and advisor to the president. So as of last Friday, all mostly looked good.
I will say it was very civil on the surface, but it was a far cry from Elon Musk waving a chainsaw on stage, which you might remember back in February, he brought this chainsaw on stage as a kind of symbol of how he was going to slash spending in this role, and it was all very exciting, shiny concert like rockstar like energy around this political relationship. So it has been a few days since that final conference, that departure of Elon Musk from that role. But now he's
come out swinging. He's been very critical of Trump. What has Elon Musk said?
Yeah, so yesterday we woke to the news that Musk has very heavily criticized one of Trump's proposed laws, which is called the Big Beautiful Bill. So in a po x yesterday, Musk said, this massive, outrageous Porkfield Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong, you know it. I will say, it's actually not the first time that
Musk has criticized this big beautiful bill. He also did that last week, right before his final day, but this is definitely his strongest criticism of it yet, at least publicly, we don't know what has happened behind closed doors. I would also point out, though, that Mask has stopped short of naming Trump specifically, So he's criticizing this bill, but he hasn't said Trump by name, although we of course know that Trump is the one behind this bill.
We'll be back with more of today's deep dive right after this. Yeah, this bill really has been at the center of Trump's second term as president. So what is the quote unquote big beautiful bill? What do we need to know about it? Why does it mean so much to Donald Trump?
So this bill sets out key parts of Trump's domestic policy agenda. So it sets out what he wants to do within the US specifically, and some of it is about cutting spending, but then some of it also increases spending by the US government. I'll go through There's so much in it, but I'll go through some of what it includes. So one is that it extends tax cuts
that were introduced during Trump's first term. Those tax cuts were actually due to expire this year, but under this bill, those tax cuts will extend for many more years to come.
So picking up where Trump left off the last.
Time exactly, and just to explain it a little bit more, that means that the government will be earning less in revenue from income tax So we know that government spending relies significantly on taxes, and because of this bill, they will now have less of that income from taxes. It also increases spending or funding at the US Mexico border to control or stop illegal immigration. So those two specific
parts of this bill will increase the deficit. But then there are parts of the bill that will then limit spending. So one of that is limiting who is eligible for something called Medicaid, and that's a program which helps cover medical expenses for those on lower incomes. So under this bill, Trump is wanting to limit who is eligible for the program, which means that the government will be spending less on
the program. It also wants to bring forward the expiry date of some renewable energy initiatives, so it wants to spend less money on clean energy. And then it also wants to increase the national debt limit by four trillion dollars.
Here we are with this trillion figure. Again, So just to recap, we've got a bill that would cut tax revenue for the government but also reduce its spending on welfare and renewable energy. What is the national debt limit though? What does that really mean?
So this is something that I feel like, especially in the last five years or so, has come up time and time again. It is a limit that is set by Congress on the amount of money that the federal US government can borrow to fund its policies and operations. Right, I feel like, for another day we need to explain why all countries are in very, very large debts.
Yep.
But like I said, I think that is for another day. What you need to know is that under this bill, Trump wants to increase the national debt limit by four trillion dollars.
So it's kind of like expanding America's credit limit.
Yes, got it.
So back to Musk's criticism of this plan, then, is he saying Congress are spending too much money with this plan?
Exactly? That? In a nutshell, that is exactly what he's saying. And this is all in the context of the life six months where he has tried to cut how much the US government is spending, and now he's saying that with this bill, the government is basically just undoing what he's done because they're just spending more and more by trillions. Just to give you more of an idea of what he said yesterday, he also said, quote mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America, and that has been a word that
has come up time and time again by Mask. He has said that if we do not control the spending, America will go bankrupt.
How has the White House responded to all of these comments. He's obviously tabling some significant concerns around spending, very strong language, very critical about this plan. What are officials saying to that?
I will say that this concern about the spending of this specific bill isn't necessarily new. So the White House Press Secretary back in May responded to concerns about it, and she said it does not add to the deficit. And she actually claimed that it will say one point six trillion dollars, So she's saying it will do the opposite of what Musk is saying it will do. In terms of Trump himself, he hasn't personally responded to Musk's
most recent comments, at least at the time of recording. However, just hours after Elon Musk sent out this post, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt she did hold a press briefing where she was obviously asked about it. He's a little bit of what she said. The President already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bell and he's sticking to it.
So, Billy, what happens now? This bill has passed the House of Reps. But it's not a sure thing yet. What is in the future for the bill?
Exactly so, like you said, it has already passed the House of Representatives. Now the next step is for it to pass the Senate. Now, the Republicans, which is the party that Donald Trump leads, they do have a slight majority in the Senate, which usually would mean that it probably would pass. However, there have been some Republicans who
have come out criticizing this bill. I think it works quite differently to Australia, where in Australia, if a party supports a bill, that kind of means that everyone who is a member of that party also has to support it's going to toe the party line exactly. In the US, they don't have that, so there can be Republicans who don't support it. And they only have a majority in the Senate by something like three members, so they really
do need most people to support this bill. It probably will pass, but there might be some amendments, and then, just like all bills, if there are amendments in the Senate, it needs to go back to the House of Representatives, and then once it gets that, it will then be signed into law.
As with any major policy from this administration. Billy, I'm sure this is just the beginning in terms of what we're going to hear about this bill, and knowing Trump and Musk as we do, I'm sure they won't be holding back with their thoughts and feelings about it either. So we will keep our listeners updated on that one. Thank you so much for explaining it to us. Thank you, and thank you for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed it, feel free to share it with a friend.
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Bye. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcutin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.