Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman (D) said Tuesday he would join the Congressional Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, which seeks to be a counterpart to the new “Department of Government Efficiency in President-elect Trump’s administration.
Landsman joined NewsNation’s Blake Burman for “The Hill” on Tuesday when asked if he would follow fellow Democrat Rep. Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) in joining the caucus.
“Oh, yeah, you got to be in the room,” he said. “If you want to affect change and have an impact, you want to be in the room.”
Moskowitz became the first Democrat to join the Caucus, noting he believes in “streamlining” government processes and said that making government effective and efficient “should not be a partisan issue.”
Landsman agreed, arguing that commissions that balance budgets or find government spending solutions should have lawmakers working together.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be in the room? Why wouldn’t you want to be working together?” Landsman said. “And so there are opportunities where I think both parties would say, ‘yeah, that’s abuse’ or ‘that’s a waste of money’ or ‘that’s duplication.’”
Landsman noted that there will be times when Republicans and Democrats on the caucus disagree, but they can’t have debates “unless they’re you’re in the room.”
The caucus is led by Reps. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) and Pete Sessions (R-Texas) in the House and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in the Senate.
Trump’s new department, nicknamed DOGE, will be led by tech billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. The formation of the caucus is serving as recognition that DOGE will not be able to cut government spending or jobs without Congressional approval.
Landsman said in Congress he’s always tried to push his colleagues to work across the aisle.
“If there’s an opportunity to have a bipartisan solution, that, to me, is a better solution,” he said. “It’s almost always going to be better than a hyper partisan one.”
“And so, whether it’s government efficiency, balancing the budget, the border, fixing the economy, I hope the Democrats are at the table, participating, and I suspect they will,” Landsman continued.
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