Is a $5,000 DOGE stimulus check a real thing? What we know

In February, President Donald Trump said he was considering a plan to pay out $5,000 stimulus checks to American taxpayers from the savings identified by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Are they happening?

No official plan or schedule for such a payout has been released, and a decision on the checks would have to come from Congress, which has so far been cool to the idea. And there have been questions as to how much DOGE has actually saved.

The idea was floated by Azoria investment firm CEO James Fishback, who suggested on Musk's social media platform X that Trump and Musk should "should announce a ‘DOGE Dividend'" from the money saved from reductions in government waste and workforce since it was American taxpayer money in the first place. He even submitted a proposal for how it would work, with a timeline for after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026.

"At $2 trillion in DOGE savings and 78 million tax-paying households, this is a $5,000 refund per household, with the remaining used to pay down the national debt," he said in a separate post.

Musk replied, "Will check with the President."

"We're considering giving 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% to paying down the debt," Trump said in a during the Saudi-sponsored FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach the same month.

DOGE has dismantled entire federal agencies, wiped out government contracts and led the firings of tens of thousands of federal workers, leaving many agencies struggling to continue operations.

DOGE checks? Elon Musk dodges DOGE stimulus check question during Wisconsin rally: Here's what he said.

Who would get a $5,000 DOGE stimulus check?

Fishbeck suggested that the potential refund go only to households that are net-income taxpayers, or households that pay more in taxes than they get back.

The Pew Research Center said that most Americans with an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 effectively pay no federal income tax. They would not be eligible.

How much would the DOGE stimulus checks be?

If DOGE achieves Musk's initial goal of stripping $2 trillion from U.S. government spending by 2026, Fishback's plan was for $5,000 per household, or 20% of the savings divided by the number of eligible households.

If DOGE doesn't hit the goal, Fishback said the amount should be adjusted accordingly.

“So again, if the savings are only $1 trillion, which I think is awfully low, the check goes from $5,000 to $2,500,” Fishback said during a podcast appearance. “If the savings are only $500 billion, which, again, is really, really low, then the [checks] are only $1,250.”

However, while Musk talked about saving $2 trillion in federal spending during Trump's campaign, he lowered the goal to $1 trillion after Trump assumed office and said in March he was on pace to hit that goal by the end of May.

At a Cabinet meeting in April, Musk lowered the projected savings further to $150 billion in fiscal year 2026.

Musk left the White House at the end of May when his designation as a "special government employee" ended. DOGE, the advisory group he created, is expected to continue without him.

How much has DOGE saved so far?

That depends on who you ask.

On its website, DOGE claims to have saved an estimated $175 billion as of May 30, "a combination of asset sales, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletions, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions." The site says that works out to $1,086.96 saved per taxpayer.

However, many of DOGE's claims have been exaggerated and several of the initiatives to slash agency workforces have been challenged in court.

DOGE has been accused of taking credit for contracts that were canceled before DOGE was created, failing to factor in funds the government is required to pay even if a contract is canceled, and tallying every contract by the most that could possibly be spent on it even when nothing near that amount had been obligated. The website list has been changed as the media pointed out errors, such as a claim that an $8 million savings was actually $8 billion.

On May 30, CNN reported that one of its reporters found that less than half the $175 billion figure was backed up with even basic documentation, making verification difficult if not impossible.

Some of the changes may also end up costing taxpayers more, such as proposed slashes to the Internal Revenue Service that experts say would mean less tax revenue generated, resulting in a net cost of about $6.8 billion. Over the next 10 years, if IRS staffing stays low, the cumulative cost in uncollected taxes would hit $159 billion, according to the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.

The per-taxpayer claim on the website is also inflated, CNN said, as it's based on “161 million individual federal taxpayers” and doesn't seem to include married people filing jointly.