This article was first published on April 14, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elon Musk fired back at critics of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by sharing a resurfaced clip of former President Barack Obama announcing a nearly identical initiative over a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking to his X platform, Musk reposted a 2011 video of Obama launching the \u201cCampaign to Cut Waste,\u201d an effort to reduce unnecessary government spending. Musk captioned it, noting the similarities: \u201cSounds exactly like DOGE.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the video, Obama even joked that he was putting then\u2013Vice President Joe Biden in charge of the campaign, saying, \u201cNobody messes with Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obama highlighted several examples of what he called \u201cpointless waste and stupid spending that doesn\u2019t benefit anybody\u201d uncovered early in the campaign\u2014including the continued funding of a website for a folk music group called the \u201cFiddlin\u2019 Foresters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Below is a transcript of the exchange:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obama: \u201cEveryone knows that getting rid of the deficit will require some tough decisions, and that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about. But what should be easy is getting rid of the pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn\u2019t benefit anybody, waste we should be getting rid of even if we didn\u2019t have a deficit. Sure, some of these cuts aren\u2019t that big, but no amount of waste is acceptable. Not when it\u2019s your money, not at a time when so many Americans are already cutting back. Just as families are living within their means, government should too. Did you know the federal government pays for a website devoted to a folk music ensemble made up of forest rangers? They called the Fiddlin\u2019 Foresters. I\u2019ll put their music on my iPod, but I\u2019m not paying for their website. And there are hundreds of similar sites that we should consolidate or just get rid of. By the way, you\u2019re not only paying for websites no one needs. You\u2019re paying for thousands of buildings all across the country no one uses.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Obama: For the last decade, the government\u2019s owned a massive and completely empty warehouse in the middle Brooklyn, for example. Now, the government hadn\u2019t been able to sell this building and others like it because of red tape, main Washington politics, that held things up for years, but we\u2019re finally cutting through all that and plan to get rid of these buildings in the months ahead. We need to step up our game. We need to go after every dime. We need to make government work for you. That\u2019s why, starting today, I\u2019ve asked the vice president to lead a renewed effort to hunt down misspent tax dollars in every agency and department of this government. We\u2019re calling it the campaign to cut waste, and I know Joe\u2019s the right man to lead it, because nobody messes with Joe.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden: \u201cThere\u2019s a new standard by which the government is going to function from this point on. The American people are entitled to transparency. Look, a lot of this depends on new sophisticated methods, but it also \u2014 it also, we know, depends on relentless focus on making this a priority; focus that can\u2019t be delegated. We\u2019re holding ourselves accountable and we\u2019re deeply committed and focused on making government function better. We\u2019re not just eliminating fraud and waste. We hope to be instilling an entire new culture that not only our administration, but every succeeding administration will, in fact, pursue. We\u2019re going to give you the government you expect and deserve.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The clip of Obama was originally recorded as he prepared for his 2012 re-election campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some commenters on Musk\u2019s repost argued that the initiative ultimately had little impact on curbing federal spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article was first published on April 14, 2025 Elon Musk fired back at critics of his Department<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}