Musk compares government overhaul to Clinton-era initiative

In an attempt to defend the Department of Government Efficiency's controversial moves, Elon Musk is likening the aggressive government overhaul to a Clinton-era task force that oversaw a shrinking of the federal workforce.

"Sounds familiar," Musk wrote in one X post over the weekend in response to a 40-minute compilation video of President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore talking about their effort to modernize the government.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made the same argument on Fox News on Monday, saying the administration is doing what "Democrat politicians promised the American people they would do for decades."

Policy experts, including some involved in the Clinton initiative, emphasize there are big differences between then and now.

Led by Vice President Gore, the task force delivered a report to Clinton with more than 380 recommendations to reform the government, following his directives to make the government "both less expensive and more efficient," and to "change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment."

Within weeks of his inauguration, he signed an executive order calling on agencies to cut 100,000 jobs over three years, with 10% or more coming from high-level federal workers. In 1994, Clinton signed the bipartisan Federal Workforce Restructuring Act, which offered $25,000 to buyout non-Defense Department workers.

By the end of his term, Clinton reduced the federal government's workforce by more than 377,000 employees. But that all unfolded over several years, and with the help of Congress.

President Donald Trump and DOGE, on the other hand, is approaching this faster and in a less targeted fashion than the Clinton administration. And unlike Clinton, Trump does not have broad bipartisan buy-in.

"In many ways it's very hard to compare, because what the Trump administration is doing is reinventing government upside down and inside out," said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.

Kettl described the Musk-Trump approach as a "bulldozer" and likely modeled after Musk's leadership at X. Musk slashed the workforce at the social media giant by 80% after he took it over in 2022.

"But that's a pretty risky operation," Kettl said. "It's one thing if your social media goes down, it's another thing when you're tinkering with air traffic control or food safety."

In the month since Trump's inauguration, more than 200,000 federal workers at more than a dozen agencies have had their roles eliminated, according to ABC News. Firings have occurred at the Department of Energy, USAID, the Environmental Protection Agency and more.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski lamented dozens of Alaskans being put out of work, saying while she agreed with the goal to reduce the size of the government the "his approach is bringing confusion, anxiety, and now trauma to our civil servants."

"Indiscriminate workforce cuts aren't efficient and won't fix the federal budget, but they will hurt good people who have answered the call to public service to do important work for our nation," Murkowski said.

Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, voiced a similar concern: "I think if there's one thing I could change about the DOGE, it's that it's moving so fast, it's not really factoring in the human element."

Musk, in an interview with Trump that aired on Fox News on Tuesday night, said the goal of DOGE was to trim $1 trillion from the deficit.

Clinton was able to balance the budget and cut the deficit but it wasn't just because of his workforce cuts or efficiency reforms, Kettl said. Clinton was buoyed by a booming economy as well as the implementation of tax increases and spending cuts.

Elaine Kamarck, a Democratic operative who led the Clinton initiative, told ABC News that Musk and DOGE have the benefit of advanced technology to reshape government but are moving too fast to produce the desired effects. Kamarck is currently a senior fellow in Governance Studies and the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution.

"If they weren't in such a hurry, the Trump people could leverage new AI technology to make government more effective," Kamarck said. "But you can't do it with a blunderbuss and that's what they're doing."

Musk defended DOGE's work in the Oval Office with Trump last week, contending the administration received a mandate from voters to push back on a sprawling federal bureaucracy and "rightsize" the government.

Musk admitted the entity would make mistakes and "nobody can bat 1,000."

"We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly," he said.

In interviews with ABC News, several budget experts praised DOGE's stated goals but questioned some of its alleged findings and cuts to the federal workforce. DOGE has claimed $55 billion in cuts, but the figure is difficult to verify and only some records have been disclosed.

The experts also questioned whether the federal government will ultimately "save" any money from the cuts to programs -- some of which require congressional approval, setting up a potential impoundment fight.

Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at Georgetown's Government Affairs Institute, said it appears Musk and the Trump administration are conflating the concepts of government waste and fraud.

"There is actual fraud, and Musk has talked about some of it, if doctors are over-billing Medicare with phony patients, that is straight up fraud," he said. "Having a disagreement with the previous administration is called reality."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, told ABC News that Trump's definition of fraud "is in the eye of the beholder."

"They flagged some things that they think are silly or terrible but other people may think are valuable programs. Those become political footballs and their defenders in Congress make it harder for them to do reductions," he said.

To meet Musk's ambitious goal to cut $1 trillion in spending, the White House will have to aim higher than USAID programs and "haphazard and random" cuts to the federal workforce, Holtz-Eakin added.

"If you really want to cut federal spending you have to reform the big programs. Social Security, Medicare are over half of all monetary spending in the next ten years," he said.