President Donald Trump floated the idea of giving 20 percent of the money that Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have saved back to the American people.
While speaking at the FII institute Priority Summit in Miami, Florida, Trump highlighted how his administration has “accomplished more in four weeks than most administration’s accomplish in four years.” Trump also highlighted how he had signed an order that created DOGE and had placed Musk in charge of it, noting that DOGE was “curbing inflation and saving taxpayers billions and billions of dollars every single day.”
“There’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20 percent of the DOGE savings to American citizens, and 20 percent goes to paying down debt — because the numbers are incredible, Elon,” Trump said. “So many billions — billions, hundreds of billions and we’re thinking about giving 20 percent back to the American citizens and 20 percent down to pay back debt — pay down debt.”
Trump’s words come after Musk responded to a post on X from InvestAzoria CEO James Fishback suggesting that Trump and Musk “announce a ‘DOGE Dividend’—a tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE.”
In a document included in the post, Fishback explained that “DOGE is targeting $2 trillion in total savings.”
“Take 20% of DOGE’s total savings ($400 billion) and return it to the —79 million U.S. households that will be net payers of federal income tax in CY 2025 as a tax-refund check called the ‘DOGE Dividend,’” Fishback’s document said.
In response to Fishback’s post, Musk stated that he would “check with the President.”
At the beginning of February, DOGE announced that it was terminating 20 consulting contracts that had been “mostly focused on ‘strategic communication’ and ‘executive coaching.’” These terminations were reported to save American taxpayers roughly $26 million.
Breitbart News’s Hannah Knudsen also previously reported that DOGE had cancelled “58 more contracts,” which saved American taxpayers over $150 million “in categories including Media, DEI, and Consulting.”
DOGE also recently announced that “$1.9 billion” of Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) money that had been “misplaced” was discovered.
