Elon Musk said he will "check with the president" about sending Americans rebates for federal money saved by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Azoria CEO and co-founder James Fishback used social platform X on Tuesday afternoon to suggest President Donald Trump and Musk "should announce a 'DOGE Dividend' — a tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE."

Musk responded little more than two hours later by saying, "Will check with the President."

Fishback attached to his post an image of "The Case for DOGE Dividend."

Stating that DOGE was targeting $2 trillion in government savings. Fishback proposed returning $400 billion to taxpayers. That would mean about $5,000 apiece for the 78 million households that pay federal income tax.

Such a rebate program would require congressional approval, though, and budget experts say lawmakers might prefer to use that money in other ways, Politico reported.

Some House Republicans have suggested the savings should go toward reducing the national debt, while others see DOGE savings as a way to pay for extending the Trump tax cuts from his first term.

Democrats undoubtedly would be hesitant to support anything that could improve Trump's standing with voters.

"If [the DOGE dividend proposal] is real, you have to have a way of estimating and collecting the amounts that are being saved and putting them into some account," former OMB official F. Stevens Redburn said, Politico reported. "Both OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and CBO [Congressional Budget Office] would look at that, and then Treasury would then record those amounts."

As of Wednesday morning, the DOGE website said, "total estimated savings are $55 billion."

The group says the amount represents "a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings."

Shortly after winning the November election, Trump named Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, which was tasked with finding financial waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending. Ramaswamy since has left to run for Ohio governor.

Musk last week called to "delete entire agencies" from the federal government as part of his push to radically cut spending and restructure its priorities.

"I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind," Musk said during a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "If we don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back."

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