Karoline Leavitt Exposes Old Video of Obama, Biden Pushing DOGE-Style Cuts

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt once again dismissed media and Democrat criticisms regarding President Donald Trump’s initiative to significantly reduce federal expenditures. His approach is based on recommendations from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk and his team.

Leavitt pointed to past footage of Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden advocating for major spending reductions. However, only Clinton—working with a Republican-controlled Congress—managed to cut expenditures enough to achieve a balanced federal budget for a short period.

“To all of the Democrats who are planning to protest this week, here’s an explanation on DOGE, from your party’s own beloved leaders!” Leavitt shared on the X platform, accompanying a video clip of Obama and Biden emphasizing the importance of budget cuts.

Meanwhile, other X users circulated footage of Clinton unveiling extensive reductions in federal workforce numbers and overall spending, leading to significant financial savings and balanced budgets throughout his presidency.

The X account KanekoaTheGreat outlined Clinton’s approach and its economic impact:

Confronting a growing deficit and increasing inefficiencies, Clinton launched an aggressive initiative to eliminate wasteful spending, reduce bureaucratic excess, and curb government overreach. He enacted an executive order slashing 100,000 federal jobs, cutting administrative costs by 12%, and consolidating or discontinuing numerous outdated programs.

One of his starkest warnings? If wasteful spending persisted, the federal deficit could escalate to $650 billion annually by the early 2000s, with a rising share of tax revenue being funneled into interest payments rather than public investments.

Fast forward to 2024. The federal deficit has surged to $1.83 trillion—almost triple Clinton’s worst projections. Interest payments alone have ballooned to $880 billion, consuming an increasingly large portion of the national budget.

Clinton’s strategy proved effective during his tenure. The federal workforce shrank by 380,000 jobs, marking a 16% reduction. Programs were streamlined, waste was curtailed, and budget deficits were reined in.

In a Washington Examiner column, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) criticized Democrats and media figures for opposing the Trump-Musk cost-cutting effort, noting that the Democratic Party previously championed similar measures when they were in power.

“The United States is $36 trillion in debt, and Washington, D.C., continues to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars. Instead of efficiency, people have gotten an ever-growing bureaucracy that wastes taxpayer dollars and is unaccountable to the public,” he wrote.

“This is exactly why President Donald Trump’s initiative to implement the Department of Government Efficiency represents a bold step toward draining the bureaucratic swamp, forcing federal agencies to streamline, modernize, and justify their spending,” Webster continued. “But the biggest irony of the backlash against DOGE is who is leading the resistance.”

He highlighted that DOGE is essentially an evolution of the United States Digital Service (USDS), an entity established by Obama in 2014.

“For years, Democrats praised it. They had no problem when Obama and Joe Biden’s USDS embedded Silicon Valley insiders deep in our federal agencies, including giving engineers access to Medicare’s mainframe, which processes billions of dollars in payments every year,” Webster explained.

Despite the USDS expanding into a sprawling bureaucracy with limited oversight, its access to sensitive government systems went largely unchallenged, as its objectives aligned with Democratic priorities, he noted. Now, with Trump rebranding USDS as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and appointing Elon Musk—one of the most forward-thinking innovators of our time—to overhaul Washington’s inefficiencies, the same individuals who once praised USDS are now demonstrating outside the Treasury Department, he added.

“The same people who let USDS tinker with Medicare’s billion-dollar payment system now want to block Trump from cutting waste,” Webster stated.