Elon Musk sparked a debate on social media after tweeting that former President Barack Obama “sounds exactly like DOGE” in response to a resurfaced video from 2011. The clip showed Obama announcing the Campaign to Cut Waste, an initiative aimed at eliminating unnecessary government spending. While some users found Musk's comment amusing, others took issue with it, criticizing how the Department of Government Efficiency is being run.
Obama's Push for Government Efficiency
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In the 2011 video, Obama stood next to a massive stack of bound books and said, “This stack of books right here is called the Federal Register. And while you might think that most people just can’t wait to dig into their copy as soon as it arrives, the truth is no one reads this thing.” He explained that taxpayers had been paying for something completely unnecessary, as the information had already been available online for years.
That was just one example of the wasteful spending the administration sought to eliminate. Obama also mentioned the government funding a website for a folk music ensemble called the Fiddling Foresters, as well as hundreds of similar websites and keeping thousands of unused federal buildings, including an empty warehouse in Brooklyn, on the books for years due to bureaucratic red tape.
The then-Vice President Joe Biden was tasked with leading the initiative, with Obama saying, “We're calling it the Campaign to Cut Waste, and I know Joe is the right man to lead it because nobody messes with Joe!”
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Musk's Comparison and Twitter's Mixed Reaction
The resurfaced speech drew comparisons to DOGE, a cost-cutting initiative under President Donald Trump's administration, which Musk has been spearheading.
While some users found the comparison fitting, others pushed back. One commenter dismissed it by saying, “Sorry but Obama wasn't a billionaire with contracts with the government. He wasn't an entrepreneur from South Africa. And he wasn't firing so many people for purely downsizing. You're not anything like Obama.”
Others focused more on the effectiveness of DOGE: “Obama spearheaded waste cutting, but notice something? He was using a scalpel, picking out silly and wasteful spending without breaking the Forestry Service or the VA. That is how this should be done. ELON MUSK you haven't taken the time to actually FIND the waste.”
A Constant Debate
The debate over government waste and spending is nothing new, but Musk's tweet reignited discussions about how efficiency efforts are handled. Obama’s initiative was framed as a targeted, systematic approach, while DOGE has been criticized for creating too much disruption at once. One X user summed up the sentiment of many frustrated users, saying, “No one is upset with the idea of DOGE. They are upset that you are causing mass hysteria all at once. Too many moving pieces and making a lot of mistakes.”
Musk’s comment, whether intended as a joke or not, highlights an ongoing issue: government waste remains a hot-button topic, and every administration has its own approach to tackling it. While Obama's 2011 plan focused on transparency and strategic cuts, DOGE's approach has been described as more aggressive and following Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things.”
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