What will Elon Musk do with money DOGE saves? Tesla CEO answers

An X user asked Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to divide the money that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) saved among all the tax paying Americans. The user proposed claimed that with the money saved, Musk could give $5000 ( ₹4.3 lakh) to each household. The Tesla CEO responded saying that he “will check with the President.”

According to entrepreneur James Fishback, DOGE is reportedly achieving $1 billion in savings per day. The department was set up soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January this year. Led by Musk, who claims he is not paid to work at the government agency, the department’s sole aim is to slash government funding.

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So far, DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, has set its sights on the country’s foreign aid agency USAID and the education department, among other government bodies.

The proposal

Fishback proposed “DOGE Dividend” be paid out to taxpaying households in the US. He described it as a “tax refund cheque to be sent after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE”.

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For calculation purposes, Fishback only considered 20% of the department’s targeted savings of $2 trillion, which comes out to be $400 billion. He suggested returning the $400 billion to nearly 79 million US households that will be net payers of federal income tax in calendar year 2025 as a “tax refund cheque”.

This calculation will result in $5,000 being returned to each taxpaying household in the country.

Fishback also listed the benefits of the DOGE Dividend. He called it a compensation for the “egregious misuse and abuse of their hard-earned tax dollars that DOGE has uncovered”.

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The dividend will also incentivize citizens to report instances of “waste, fraud and abuse to DOGE”, which would further increase the total savings that DOGE successfully makes and also increase the size of the dividend payout. It would also increase the trust between taxpayers and the government, he said.

Lastly, it might also encourage eligible Americans to join the workforce. According to a report by the Philadelphia Federal Bank cited by Fishback, 7 million working-age men in America are neither working nor looking for work. The dividend will incentivise such non-working Americans to return to the workforce.