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. 

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. 

But the biggest irony of the backlash against DOGE is who is leading the resistance. 

DOGE is actually the new name for the United States Digital Service, which then-President Barack Obama created 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.

USDS ballooned into a bureaucratic mess with little accountability, but because its politics aligned with the Democratic Party, its access to sensitive government systems was never questioned. But now that Trump has renamed the USDS the DOGE and enlisted one of the most brilliant innovators of our time, Elon Musk, to reform our bloated bureaucracy, the same people who cheered USDS are trying to incite a riot outside the Treasury Department. 

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

Under Obama and Biden, employees of the USDS were described as “idealistic tech workers,” while Musk is described as an “oligarch” and his team labeled as “young” and “inexperienced.” The hypocrisy is nonsensical.

Contrary to reports, members of the DOGE team do not have access to people’s sensitive details or information, and they cannot stop payments. As they work to audit federal agencies, they are monitored by agency officials. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was confirmed by the Senate, granted the DOGE team access to the Treasury’s payment system in a read-only capacity to review the overall efficiency of the system. 

But government reform shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

DOGE represents a turning point in how our government operates. For decades, despite my attempts to get reforms, Washington’s default solution to inefficiency has been to throw more money at the problem. But Trump knows better — real reform means cutting waste, not feeding it. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

If Democrats were truly serious about responsible governance, they would be applauding Trump. Instead, they’re doing what they do best: protecting the bloated status quo. 

I made a pledge to my constituents to stop the spigot of spending, and with Trump back in the White House, we will not accept the status quo. We are committed to cutting waste, reining in spending, and building the golden age of America. 

Daniel Webster is a Republican who represents Florida’s 11th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.