Jesse Scheckner
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz is jumping on the DOGE train.
The Parkland lawmaker announced he is joining the Delivering on Outstanding Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus. It will support a similarly named advisory commission headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to restructure federal agencies under President-elect Donald Trump.
Moskowitz is the first Democrat to join the Caucus.
He explained the move Tuesday, pointing to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an example of a “very necessary” agency that needs downsizing.
“I believe that streamlining government processes and reducing inefficient government spending should not be a partisan issue. I’ve been clear that there are ways we can reorganize our government to make it work better for the American people,” he said.
“The Caucus should look at the bureaucracy that DHS has become and include recommendations to make Secret Service and (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) independent federal agencies with a direct report to the White House. It’s not practical to have 22 agencies under this one department.”
Moskowitz, who previously led the Florida Division of Emergency Management, joins a slew of GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill as an inaugural DOGE Caucus member.
The organization launched Nov. 19 under Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and U.S. Reps. Aaron Bean of Florida and Pete Sessions of Texas.
“Our national debt has surpassed a staggering $36 trillion and should be a wakeup call for all Americans. We must take action to avoid diving headfirst off the cliff of fiscal ruin,” Bean said in a statement last week. “The DOGE Caucus will work with President Trump, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy to dismantle the out-of-control bureaucracy, cut wasteful programs, slash excess regulations, and restructure federal agencies.”
Other U.S. Senate members include Rick Scott of Florida, Ted Budd of North Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah and Roger Marshall of Kansas.
Other U.S. House members include Florida lawmakers Scott Franklin, Carlos Giménez, Anna Paulina Luna, Cory Mills, María Elvira Salazar, Daniel Webster and 30 others.
Trump appointed Musk and Ramaswamy on Nov. 12 to co-lead a Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE, a nod to a meme-based cryptocurrency Musk has touted — to rein in government spending during his second term.
After Trump announced the plan, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that, among other things, they would encourage the President-elect to make cuts by refusing to spend congressionally allocated funds. Former President Richard Nixon applied such a method, known as impounding, prompting the passage of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to prevent such executive branch actions in the future.
Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that they are “prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington.”
“We expect to prevail,” they wrote. “Now is the moment for decisive action.”
Moskowitz’s decision to join the DOGE Caucus is the latest in a series of steps to foster cross-aisle collaboration in Washington, D.C. In February 2023, he started an initiative to take one of his Republican colleagues to lunch every week.
Two months later, he kicked off the Congressional Sneaker Caucus to find common ground with his GOP colleagues through community events and social gatherings open to both major political parties.
“We must show the American people that you can adamantly disagree with your neighbors and still act normal,” he said at the time. “The American people didn’t send us here to bicker just to increase our Twitter following — they sent us to D.C. to produce solutions to their problems.”
