President Donald Trump signaled he likes the idea of sending some of the DOGE savings directly back to taxpayers, but the idea has been met with skepticism by even his allies on Capitol Hill.
Trump said he was considering giving 20 percent of savings from Elon Musk’s effort to cut federal spending back to U.S. citizens and another 20 percent to pay down the national debt at a conference in Miami on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while heading back to Washington, the president later that evening declared ‘I love it’ of DOGE dividends.
He claimed it could be a lot of money back in taxpayers’ pockets but also suggested it would give taxpayers the incentive to go out and report waste, fraud and abuse to the government.
But some Senate Republicans had other thoughts on the idea as the U.S. grapples with its ballooning national debt and persistent inflation.
Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said it was ‘very Donald Trump like’ to make the suggestion.
‘My view that we should get the budget closer to balanced rather than an inflationary stimulus check,’ Cramer told DailyMail.com.
While he was hesitant to rejected the proposal outright, he said his instinct on any cost savings would be to buy down some of the debt.
‘Clearly we would all like dividends,’ said Senator Rick Scott (R-FL). ‘But we’ve got to deal with the fact that we’ve got over $36 trillion worth of debt, and we have a big deficit.’
He would not weigh in on the inflationary aspect of such a proposal but argued the U.S. needs to balance the budget.
Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) told DailyMail.com said he was much more concerned about the debt and that would probably be his bigger priority.
But not every GOP senator wrote off the idea of DOGE stimulus checks.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said it would depend on the details which remain to be seen, but he said he was ‘encouraged by the work DOGE is doing to go after waste, fraud and abuse.’
Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) called it an ‘interesting idea – all the taxpayers having more money in their pocket.’
But he also noted the possibility of putting it toward deficit reductions and the budget.
‘I think reducing the size of government and allowing people to make more of their own decisions with their own money is always a good path,’ he told DailyMail.com.
Trump’s comments came one day after Musk said on X he would ‘check’ with the president about DOGE dividends in response to a pitch from an investment firm CEO James Fishback, who posted his four page proposal on social media.
The proposal suggested a ‘tax refund check’ sent to all Americans after DOGE wraps up its work in July 2026.
His proposal estimates each household would get $5,000 when 20 percent of DOGE’s targeted $2 trillion in spending cuts is divided up among income tax-paying households.
But the success of DOGE’s efforts to tackling government spending remains to be seen. The group claims it is saving $55 billion already, but what that estimate includes is less clear.
There have already been multiple issues raised over DOGE’s posted receipts when it comes to cancelled contracts including a data entry error that inflated $8 million in one instance to $8 billion.
While DOGE initially claimed it is saving $16.5 billion in terminated contracts, NPR’s analysis after reviewing the data suggested it was closer to $2 billion to date.
Democratic senators on the hill on Thursday pointed to the questionable savings when asked by DailyMail.com about proposed dividends.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) said in looking at the actual savings ‘we don’t see much there, there. Somebody’s got some explaining to do.’
Even if DOGE does meet its stated goal, experts have noted the president does not have the power to send out dividends to Americans without Congress where only some members appeared lukewarm on it.
Even if Congress did act on the proposal, it would likely be in the form of a tax reduction, not checks, noted Judge Glock from the Manhattan Institute.
‘The range or size of checks that they are talking about is not plausible form any current DOGE reductions,’ he said.
Glock also warned sending out checks would exacerbate inflation.
‘It would create inflation, but some of it would occur gradually as they spend down the checks,’ Glock said.
While inflation has eased since its peak in 2022, prices ticked up .5 percent from December to January.
Consumer prices were up three percent last month from a year ago according to the latest Consumer Price Index, the highest annual rate of inflation since last June and above the Federal Reserve’s target.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government sent out three rounds of checks including ones for $1,200 and then $600 under Trump in 2020 and another one under President Biden for $1,400 in early 2021.
Republicans for years have blamed the Biden checks and policies for the soaring inflation as prices shot up around the world coming out of the pandemic.