This week, Reps. Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Greg Landsman of Ohio became the first two Democrats join a caucus that will ostensibly work with the Department of Government Efficiency, a planned advisory commission for Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
The toothless commission, whose DOGE acronym is based on a cryptocurrency-adjacent meme, will be led by two people with zero experience inside the very federal government they’re threatening to blow up: mega-billionaire Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. So far, Ramaswamy has pledged that multiple federal agencies will be “deleted outright.” But since DOGE has no legal status, public funding, nor real power, it likely needs friends in Congress to help implement its plans.
Enter Moskowitz and Landsman—along with a bevy of Republicans, including Reps. Pete Sessions of Texas and Aaron Bean of Florida and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.
“I think most Americans want to pay the least amount of taxes possible, but still get the most amount of services out of that,” Moskowitz told NPR on Thursday. “So if they’re right on something, we should support it.”
That sounds like a good idea in theory, right? Who wouldn’t want a more efficient government?
But DOGE isn’t a real government agency, meaning it can’t do much more than make suggestions. And the reality is that it will likely be nothing more than a playground for extremist rhetoric and ideas, peddling the half-baked policies of a far-right authoritarian president whose promises for his second term in the White House are downright scary.
If DOGE’s goal is to cut federal spending, it’s unlikely many congressional Democrats will come to an agreement with their Republican colleagues on what funds to slash—unless it’s in defense.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent progressive from Vermont, gave Musk plaudits for his idea to cut defense spending. It’s easy to see why Sanders would support such an idea: In November, the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row, meaning it was unable to account for its massive $824 billion budget.
In a statement, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California also said that Democrats could work with DOGE on cutting the nation’s defense budget.
Musk welcomed the idea of bipartisanship—for now. But it’s unclear what happens to DOGE and its budding (and seemingly bipartisan) caucus when the planned commission inevitably wants to do something even more controversial, like slashing Social Security.
With today’s high level of political polarization, it’s hard to find many things that a majority of Americans agree on, but protecting Social Security is one of them. A strong majority of Americans (79%) oppose cutting Social Security benefits, according to a March 2023 poll from The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Musk from amplifying the idea. Last week, he reposted an X thread from Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme that’s running out of new investors” and “government dependency at its worst.”
During an October rally for Donald Trump in New York, Musk said he wanted to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget. Since Social Security is the largest single program in the federal budget, that suggests it will be a target. Doing this, though, won’t gain either Republicans or Democrats in the caucus any favors with voters.
For the Democrats joining the DOGE caucus, the idea might be to angle for bipartisanship in an era when partisanship dominates politics. Or maybe they want to stave off a hard reelection battle in 2026. After all, Moskowitz and Landsman both won reelection by less than 55% this year.
Either way, no evidence suggests this caucus committee will be effective or that DOGE will be popular among voters, so Democrats’ pledges to work with the planned, far-right, MAGA commission might prove short-sighted.
Campaign Action
