‘Big one to eliminate’: Elon Musk spotlights cost of federal entitlements amid fear of cuts to programs

Elon Musk on Monday highlighted the cost of federal spending on entitlement programs, the latest sign of the tech billionaire and presidential adviser’s focus to downsize the federal government amid fears of cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Elon Musk on Monday highlighted the cost of federal spending on entitlement programs, the latest sign of the tech billionaire and presidential adviser’s focus to downsize the federal government amid fears of cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe six, 700 billion,” Musk said on Monday in an interview with Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow. Amid reaction to Musk’s interview, President Donald Trump’s communications team defended Musk’s comments, saying in a Tuesday morning X post, “Lying hacks. He was talking about waste, fraud, and abuse — of which there is $500+ billion every year.” The SpaceX and Tesla CEO questioned federal entitlements in his interview, particularly the number of people benefiting from social security and Small Business Administration loans. “The president’s gone through a long list of absurd things. Why are there 20 million people who are definitely dead marked as alive in the social security database? Why were hundreds of millions of dollars of Small Business Administration loans were given out to people aged 11 and under, according to the Social Security?” Musk questioned. Trump repeated a similar false claim during his speech to a joint session of Congress last week, where he said 4.7 million people who are at least 100 years old are still listed in the Social Security Administration’s database and that “money is being paid to many of them.”