Elon Musk said this week that he would "check" with President Donald Trump about sending American households $5,000 "DOGE dividend" payments from potential Department of Government Efficiency savings, similar to a round of economic stimulus, but should you actually expect this check anytime soon? Maybe not.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who has been tearing through federal agencies at Trump's urging, responded to a post on X Tuesday night suggesting that the US government pass on some of the potential savings from his recent flurry of spending cuts to taxpayers in the form of tax refund checks, similar to stimulus payments of the past. "Will check with the President," Musk wrote.
The concept of economic stimulus checks have been deployed by the US government over the years, most recently by the Trump and Biden administrations in response to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, Trump signed the Cares Act, which provided $300 billion in one-time stimulus payments, with most adults receiving a check for $1,200. A year later, former President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided eligible adults with up to $1,400 in stimulus payments.
Speaking to the press at an event on Wednesday, Trump said the idea is under consideration and added that another portion of the potential savings would go toward paying down the national debt. "There's even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens, and 20% goes to paying down debt, because the numbers are incredible," Trump said.
These ideas are still hypothetical, however, and depend on Trump and Musk's cost-cutting plans meeting their stated goals, which many economists and Democratic lawmakers have suggested won't be possible without destroying many programs that Americans rely on. For all the info we have on this stimulus proposal, read on.
What is DOGE and what does it do?
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is an initiative of the second Trump administration spearheaded by Musk to make substantial and wide-ranging cuts to the federal government. The official reasoning behind this has been to cut down on federal spending and, as the name says, increase efficiency. Musk initially said the goal of this effort was to cut around $2 trillion in spending.
But the cuts made so far have been controversial and widely criticized, such as the mass firings at agencies like USAID and the ceasing of regulatory actions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Critics have argued that the real intention of DOGE is not to cut spending but rather to consolidate power and create chaos. Despite the name, it is also notably not an official department of the US government, and many of its actions so far have been called illegal by critics, such as Project Democracy.
Why is the proposed stimulus $5,000?
The proposal that Musk initially responded to came from James Fishback, CEO of the Azoria investment firm and a vocal supporter of the businessman and Trump's political agendas. The executive shared to X, Musk's social network, a plan of his own making to pass on the savings from Musk's government spending cuts to the American people.
Fishback got the $5,000 per household number by taking 20% of the $2 trillion savings goal of DOGE, or $400 billion, and dividing it among the "79 million US households that will be net payers of federal income tax" that he said would be eligible to receive this hypothetical payment.
Based on that math, a $5,000 check would be possible in only the best-case scenario for DOGE cuts, which is very likely not going to happen given how difficult $2 trillion in cuts would be to actually achieve. Musk later walked back that figure and said $1 trillion would be more feasible, which would put the value of the checks at $2,500. DOGE's website now claims to have saved $55 billion, but the math on this has been challenged.
When would these checks be issued?
The answer to this question is as up in the air as every other part of this situation. Fishback's proposal gives a general "July 2026" date for the payments, to coincide with July 4, 2026, the date when the DOGE initiative will purportedly wrap up. An actual round of stimulus payments would require an official piece of legislation to be drafted and passed first, so there's no telling at this stage what the specifics of it might be. It's also possible that DOGE will continue to operate past that date.
Speaking with CNET in an email correspondence, Jassen Bowman, an IRS enrolled agent and expert on all things tax-related, echoed a lot of these points about why these payments might not actually happen, and specifically stressed how hard it would be to convince Congress to get behind the idea. In blunt terms, he called the idea "a pipe-dream."
"In reality, we have no idea if it will ever see the light of day," Bowman wrote. "The two most significant points for consumers to bear in mind are that the work of DOGE isn't scheduled to be wrapped up until mid-2026, so this isn't happening anytime soon, and that sending these $5,000 payments to Americans would require an act of Congress, which could prove to be a tough bill to pass in the current deficit situation. My personal opinion is that it's a pipe-dream and will never happen, because Congress won't have the stomach for it."
