President Trump said Wednesday that he’s considering returning 20% of the savings from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative directly to taxpayers — potentially putting thousands of dollars in the pockets of Americans struggling under record inflation.
“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,” Trump said in a Miami Beach speech to a nonprofit funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
“The numbers are incredible, Elon, so many billions — hundreds of billions — and we’re thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens.”
Trump floated the potential refund after Musk tweeted Tuesday that he would “check with the President,” in response to a post from investor James Fishback, who has been advocating the concept.
It’s unclear precisely how much DOGE has saved to date, but Musk has stated a goal of $1 trillion in annual cost cuts as his 100-person team blazes through the federal bureaucracy, effectively closing some agencies, mass-firing employees at others and canceling contracts deemed wasteful.
Musk’s initiative has halted operations at the $50 billion-a-year USAID foreign aid agency and started the process of dismissing most of its 10,000 employees while beginning to dismantle the 1,700-person Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has $712 million in funds whose fate is in limbo.
On Friday, DOGE said that it discovered $1.9 billion in “misplaced” and unneeded Department of Housing and Urban Development funds and canceled $373 million in Education Department grants for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training sessions.
Also last week, the initiative scrapped $900 million in Education Department grants for tracking academic progress — and put the Pentagon’s vast discretionary spending in the crosshairs.
Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, says he plans to lead the fiscal overhaul for about four months.
Fishback, the advocate of a DOGE dividend, argues that $2 trillion in savings over two years would amount to roughly $25,000 per taxpayer. The proposed 20% dividend would then amount to $5,000 per taxpayer.
Musk tweeted Wednesday that he hasn’t endorsed a specific amount for the dividend, which he mentioned may take the form of a lower tax bill.
“The amount would… obviously be proportionate to how much savings DOGE actually achieves,” he wrote.
“More savings would mean a bigger tax reduction! The top DOGE priority remains however reducing the deficit to stop inflation and lower people’s interest rates.”
