Actor and comedian Jon Lovitz supports billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in their efforts to reduce “tremendous” government waste. In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the stand-up comic and former Saturday Night Live cast member defended the Trump administration’s push to rein in federal spending, which he described as “astronomical.” Lovitz called the initiative “a good thing” and praised the efforts to make government more efficient.
“Here’s the money coming in and here’s the money going out. And the money going out is astronomical and way above what’s coming in — like crazy. And if everyone would look at this — if you haven’t seen it, you’d be shocked,” he said. “There’s tremendous waste and they’re finding it,” Lovitz said about DOGE and President Donald Trump. “And I think that’s a good thing.”
Lovitz, a lifelong Democratic voter until the party’s stance on Israel led him to reconsider his affiliation, has once again broken with liberal orthodoxy by supporting government spending cuts. Democratic lawmakers have opposed Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) since its creation last month, when Trump established the agency via executive order to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
In recent weeks, many Democrats have staged widely mocked public protests on Capitol Hill, claiming that Musk’s role in overseeing federal spending cuts violates the U.S. Constitution. Since its formation, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has targeted several federal agencies for wasteful spending, including USAID, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Treasury, the IRS, and others.
DOGE revealed that $1.9 billion in HUD money had been recovered as of Friday, saying the funds were misplaced during the Biden administration and were “earmarked for the administration of financial services, but were no longer needed.” Prompted by DOGE’s complaints about the Department of Education’s spending, fiscal watchdog group OpenTheBooks recently revealed that the department’s spending has grown by 749% since 2000, despite staff levels decreasing in that same timeframe, Fox Business reported.
During a recent interview alongside Trump with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Musk slammed Democratic Party protesters. “They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful… What we’re really trying to do here is restore the will of the people through the president. And what we’re finding is that there’s an unelected bureaucracy — speaking of unelected, there’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the president and the cabinet,” he said.
In his conversation with Fox News Digital, Lovitz criticized the Democratic Party for having a “spending problem,” while noting that Republicans appear to be more fiscally responsible. Republicans “seem to be a lot better at business than the Democrats,” he said, adding that Democratic Party members “just spend, spend, spend.” He then asked: “You wanna pay for it. But how are you going to pay for it?”
Nonetheless, the comedian acknowledged that the issue spans across the government, highlighting that both parties play a role in the significant national debt. “But the government’s way out of control because all I have to do is — forgetting whatever party you’re in, Democrat or Republican or nothing — your taxes go to the government, and then you look up how are they being spent.” He continued, “Anyone can look it up. It says, ‘US National Debt Clock.’ [It] shows you in black and white: here’s the money coming in and here’s the money going out.”