Once again, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted to criticism from the media and Democrats regarding President Donald Trump’s attempts to drastically reduce federal spending by implementing suggestions from Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency.

Leavitt cited earlier video footage showing Democratic Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton all advocating for drastic spending cuts. However, only Clinton, working with a Congress controlled by the Republican Party, was able to reduce spending sufficiently to balance the federal budget for a few years.

“To all Democrats who intend to demonstrate this week, here is an explanation on DOGE from the esteemed leaders of your party!” Leavitt shared a video clip of Obama and Biden discussing the need for cuts on the X platform.

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! https://t.co/D2rPvR2ijl

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) February 16, 2025

Other X users shared video clips of Clinton enacting significant spending and workforce reductions across the federal government, which resulted in balanced budgets and trillions of dollars in savings over his two terms.

In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore took on a challenge that few politicians dared to confront: cutting the size of the federal government.

Facing a ballooning deficit and mounting inefficiencies, Clinton announced an ambitious plan to slash wasteful… pic.twitter.com/ROujdd5wf3

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 17, 2025

The account of X KanekoaTheGreat summed up the benefits of the Clinton-era plan for the nation as follows:

Clinton unveiled a bold plan to cut unnecessary spending, reduce bureaucracy, and limit government overreach in response to the growing deficit and inefficiencies. He signed an executive order that consolidated or terminated hundreds of out-of-date programs, cut administrative costs by 12%, and eliminated 100,000 federal jobs.

One of his most important cautions? By the early 2000s, the federal deficit would have grown to $650 billion annually if wasteful spending wasn’t reined in, with an increasing portion of tax revenue going toward debt interest payments rather than public investments.

Let’s fast-forward to today. The federal deficit in 2024 is $1.83 trillion, which is nearly three times as much as Clinton’s worst-case projection. An increasing amount of the national budget is being consumed by interest on the debt alone, which has reached $880 billion.

During his presidency, Clinton’s reforms were successful. 380,000 federal jobs were lost, representing a 16% reduction in the federal workforce. Deficits were controlled, waste was minimized, and programs were streamlined.

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) reprimanded Democrats and their media allies who are now griping about the Trump-Musk cost-cutting initiative in a column for the Washington Examiner. He reminded them that their party was in favor of cutting government spending until the current president took the initiative.

“The United States owes $36 trillion, and taxpayer money is still being lost in Washington, D.C. He started, “Instead of efficiency, people have an ever-expanding bureaucracy that is unaccountable to the public and wastes taxpayer dollars.”

Webster went on to say, “This is precisely why President Donald Trump’s plan to establish the Department of Government Efficiency is a daring step toward clearing the bureaucratic swamp, compelling federal agencies to modernize, streamline, and justify their spending.” “But who is spearheading the resistance is the greatest irony of the backlash against DOGE.”

He pointed out that the United States Digital Service, established by Obama in 2014, is actually the source of DOGE.

Democrats lauded it for years. They had no issue when Silicon Valley insiders were infiltrated by Obama and Joe Biden’s USDS into our federal agencies, including granting engineers access to Medicare’s mainframe, which handles billions of dollars’ worth of payments annually, Webster wrote.

According to him, the USDS grew into a bloated bureaucracy with minimal oversight, but because its goals coincided with those of the Democratic Party, its access to sensitive government systems was never questioned. The same people who once supported USDS are now demonstrating outside the Treasury Department after Trump renamed it the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and appointed Elon Musk, one of the most innovative and visionary men of our time, to reform Washington’s inefficiencies, he continued.

“Those who allowed USDS to make changes to Medicare’s billion-dollar payment system now seek to prevent Trump from reducing waste,” Webster said.