President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration is considering returning 20% of savings identified by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to Americans, echoing a proposal made on social media site X.
Speaking at a meeting of global financiers and tech executives hosted by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund in Miami, Trump said he is also considering using another 20% of the savings to pay down the federal government's debt.
"There's even under consideration a new concept, where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens, and 20% goes to paying down debt," Trump said in Miami.
The proposal originally came from businessman James Fishback, who on Tuesday posted a four-page memo on X suggesting a "DOGE dividend."
The post caught the attention of Musk, who responded: "Will check with the President."
Fishback, the CEO of Azoria Partners investment firm, is now in touch with the Trump administration over his proposal, a source aware of the conversations told Reuters on Wednesday.
Fishback's memo suggests slicing 20% from DOGE's savings, or what Fishback said would amount to $400 billion, in order to send a $5,000 check to all tax-paying households after DOGE's scheduled end in July 2026.
That calculation stems from DOGE achieving $2 trillion in savings, which Musk has described as a "best-case outcome" with $1 trillion the goal.
Musk's cost-cutting effort has so far pared hundreds of relatively small contracts that it says have saved U.S. taxpayers $8.5 billion, according to a Reuters analysis of partial data published by his team, a fraction of what the U.S. government pays contractors each year.
Musk's own SpaceX, for example, has about $22 billion in contracts with the U.S. government.
The first phase of Musk's rapid-fire effort appears driven more by an ideological assault on federal agencies long hated by conservatives than a good-faith effort to save taxpayer dollars, according to two veteran Republican budget experts.
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