MIAMI, Fla. – During a speech in Miami on Wednesday, President Donald Trump floated a plan to pay out $5,000 “DOGE Dividend” stimulus checks to taxpayers.
The president explained in his speech that his administration is considering the plan, which would give out 20% of DOGE’s savings from the agency’s federal cost-cutting efforts back to the public.
“The numbers are incredible, Elon. So many millions, billions — hundreds of billions,” Trump said. “And we’re thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens, and 20% down to pay back our debt.”
The move seemingly stemmed from a conversation on X between James Fishback, CEO of the investment firm Azoria, and Elon Musk, who is heading the DOGE crusade.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
Fishback brought up the proposal on Tuesday, using the DOGE target of $2 trillion in savings and estimating a return of 20% — $400 billion total, if the DOGE target is reached — to around 79 million U.S. households that pay federal income tax. That amounts to $5,000 per household.
The CEO also justified the proposal by calling it a form of restitution:
“While roads and bridges in the American heartland crumbled and countless veterans were denied healthcare, USAID used taxpayer dollars to feed Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria, finance electric vehicles in Vietnam, and fund sex changes in Guatemala.
Taxation is an implied bicameral contract between taxpayer and government: taxpayers work hard and pay their taxes, and in exchange, government renders services with accountability, honesty, and fairness. American taxpayers held up their end of the bargain, but, as DOGE has exposed, the federal government did not, effectively breaching its implied contract with ~79 million tax-paying households throughout the United States.
When a breach of this magnitude happens in the private sector, the counterparty, at minimum, refunds the customer since they failed to deliver what was promised. It’s high time for the federal government to do the same, and refund money back to taxpayers given what DOGE has uncovered.”
James Fishback, "The Case for a DOGE Dividend"
His proposal also brought up other benefits of such a proposal, including sharing the rewards of cost-cutting measures with American citizens, boosting tax morale, and incentivizing greater labor-force participation.
Fishback also addressed potential concerns about the inflationary impact of such a proposal, as past stimulus checks during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to major bouts of inflation seen nationwide.
“DOGE Dividend checks are exclusively funded with DOGE-driven savings, unlike COVID stimulus checks, which were deficit-financed,” he argued. “DOGE Dividend checks are sent only to tax-paying householders, who have demonstrated propensity to save (not spend) the incremental dollar received.”
In response to the X post, Elon Musk wrote, “Will check with the President.”
Of course, this raises the basic question: could this actually happen?
According to DOGE’s savings tracker, the agency had managed to save an estimated $55 billion as of Monday, a combination of “fraud detection/deletion, contract/least cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”
In all, that’s only around 5.5% of the $2 trillion target amount.
Even if the agency manages to hit that threshold, sending out stimulus checks would still require congressional approval, meaning that it’s not all just in the president’s hands. And that’s not even accounting for the judicial obstacles to DOGE’s mission.
So in short: the proposal may be possible, but it remains to be seen whether Trump can pull it off.
You can listen to every episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate in the media player below: