Elon Musk often gets a lot of things wrong, both in factual claims he makes and in his opinions — just like his once (and, possibly, future) friend and ally, Donald Trump.

For instance, it’s hard to believe his since-deleted claim that Donald Trump was mentioned in the files regarding the clients of financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Somebody would have leaked it to some journalist at some point. The Democrats wouldn’t have simply sat on this information for four years. Trump, similarly, has made dubious or outright false claims, like when he alleged that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father knew Lee Harvey Oswald — a story that originated in the National Enquirer.

Both men can get things right, too, though.

When it comes to HR 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — yes, I roll my eyes every time I see or write the title, too — Elon Musk is completely right to call it out. He was wrong to get personal with Trump about it, and he may not be honest about why he’s really opposing the bill, but he’s right to oppose it.

Musk claims he’s against it because the bill would add to the deficit, running counter to the work that he was doing with DOGE — and he’s right about that, even if he couldn’t find the savings he’d once hoped for.

Trump, of course, claims that Musk is only opposed to the bill because it eliminates tax breaks for electric vehicles. That’s also perfectly plausible, since every single iteration of the bill would have added to the deficit, but Musk only decided to come out publicly against it late in the process. If he were really solely concerned about the deficit, he should’ve opposed it from the beginning. Perhaps then it never would have even passed the House. Instead, he waited until virtually the last minute, making his claims about his motivation somewhat suspect, just like his claims about Trump and Epstein.

There are, of course, many individual provisions of the bill that are open to criticism, whether from the left or the right. Take the increase in the deduction for state and local taxes — SALT. The overall concept allows taxpayers to deduct the combined total of what they pay in state and local taxes from what they owe in federal taxes.

Sounds good, right? The problem is that the way it’s structured it currently only helps higher-income people in higher-tax states. The current cap on how much one can deduct from SALT is $10,000 — that is, the total of how much you paid in state and local taxes. That’s more than enough, but Republicans from high-tax states held the entire bill hostage to raise that cap to $40,000.

This doesn’t help the middle class; instead it helps surgeons, lawyers and executives who make seven figures. Let’s take a look at, say, a lawyer or a surgeon, filing jointly, making around a million dollars in a year. To benefit from the SALT deduction, they must live in a high-tax state like New York or California; the same person in Texas or Florida doesn’t benefit. That surgeon or lawyer, though, would get around $10,000 in federal tax relief by raising the SALT deduction. Meanwhile, the only benefit the average middle-income household gets from the One Big Beautiful Bill is that their taxes won’t go up.

That’s significant financially, but not psychologically.

So, this bill adds to the federal deficit without offering extensive, tangible cuts to middle-class households. Instead, it adds tangible, direct tax cuts for wealthy Americans in high-tax areas. The new tax relief that it adds, no taxes on tips and a special deduction for seniors, wouldn’t provide its beneficiaries anywhere near what the wealthy would get from raising the SALT deduction.

While the 2017 tax cuts ought to be extended, we shouldn’t be expanding the SALT deduction. Instead, we ought to consider eliminating it completely, saving over $1 trillion a decade. This bill increases the deficit, helps a certain subset of wealthy taxpayers the most and doesn’t do nearly enough to help the middle class.

Instead of calling it the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it ought to be called the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Act and be sent back to the drawing board, crafting a version that provides real middle-class tax relief instead of expanding a tax break for the wealthy that shouldn’t exist at all. If we’re going to add to the deficit, let’s at least help people who really need it.

Correction (June 16, 2025): A previous version of this column misstated the savings that would occur by eliminating the state and local taxes (SALT) deduction for American taxpayers. It would save over $1 trillion a decade.