by WorldTribune Staff, February 19, 2025 Real World News
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk plans to slash $1 trillion in federal expenditures.
“I want to commend Elon … They started off with 12. I call them 12 geniuses. They started off with 12, and they went to 20 and 25 and now they’re up to almost 100 people joining to help them,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
On Tuesday, Musk posted on X that he would “check with the president” about a proposal to send $5,000 checks to every American using money saved by DOGE’s cost-cutting operations.
Call it the “DOGE Dividend.”
James Fishback, a partner at the investment firm Azoria, first floated the idea, saying: “Few in America knew precisely what to expect from DOGE. The early perceived turbulence around leadership, the uncertainty around legal structure, and the lack of precedent for such a bold initiative created a sense of ‘show me’ with DOGE. Just a month into President Trump’s second term, DOGE is delivering. Full stop.
“With DOGE reportedly achieving $1 billion in savings per day, President Trump has an opportunity to work with Congress to take DOGE one step further and deliver what we at Azoria call the ‘DOGE Dividend,’ a tax refund check to be sent after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026 funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE.”
All recipients must be paying federal income tax in order to qualify,
Fishback added: “Finally, President Trump’s DOGE Dividend will work to increase labor force participation by requiring individuals to be net payers of federal income tax to be eligible to receive their DOGE Dividend check. As just one example, 7 million working-age men in America are neither working nor looking for work.
“The prospect of a $5,000 DOGE Dividend in 2026 will incentivize many to re-enter the labor force in 2025 in order to be eligible for the DOGE Dividend.
“Low labor force participation is throttling U.S. economic growth and the DOGE Dividend will provide a powerful incentive to begin reversing this trend on the margins.”
Musk took questions from journalists Tuesday alongside Trump in the Oval Office and said that he hopes to halve the roughly $2 trillion federal deficit.
“With the support of the president, we can cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to one,” the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla said.
“If you can cut the budget deficit by a trillion between now and next year, there is no inflation,” Musk said.
“And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So everyone’s mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, any — their student debt, their monthly payments drop. That’s a fantastic scenario for the average American.”
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‘DOGE Dividend’: Could money saved go toward $5K check for every American taxpayer? added by Editor Two on
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