A resurfaced 2011 clip shows President Obama touting a "Campaign to Cut Waste," as Democrats ramp up criticism of Elon Musk and DOGE.

Long before DOGE took a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy, Obama pledged to take on the government's "stupid" spending habits, putting Vice President Joe Biden in charge of the task.

"No amount of waste is acceptable, especially when it’s your money," Obama said. "Just as families are living within their means, government should too."

Obama's anti-waste campaign

Elon Musk retweeted a clip of the video, saying Obama "sounds exactly like DOGE." Indeed, Obama's rhetoric sounds awfully familiar.

In the clip, he points to "thousands" of government buildings lying empty, a website for a folk music group called the "Fiddlin' Foresters," and other "pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn't benefit anybody."

The former president, who was preparing for a re-election fight at the time, also conceded that balancing the budget is impossible without "tough" cuts to programs "people care about."

"Everyone 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," Obama says in the video.

Then VP, Biden also appeared in the video, saying the administration would "eliminate fraud and waste" with "relentless focus."

"We’re holding ourselves accountable, and we’re deeply committed and focused on making government function better," Biden said.

Talk vs. action

Obama's campaign against waste was, not surprisingly, an abysmal failure. As the Washington Times reported at the time, Obama struggled to meet the modest goal of shuttering government websites.

Let's be honest: Obama was always a tax-and-spend liberal, and he was never serious about cutting waste. The national dent continued to soar on his watch, despite his posturing about reform.

All politicians like to talk about saving taxpayers money, but when it comes to actually cutting government, the excuses start flying. Elon Musk's critics may object to the aggressive approach DOGE is taking, but DOGE is actually doing what politicians have only promised for generations.

Democrats are up in arms, of course, because today's Democrats are doctrinally against whatever Donald Trump is for. Since Trump is against government waste, Democrats are embracing it.

They're a party lost in the wilderness - and not even Obama can help them find the way back to political