President Trump and Elon Musk are backing the idea of a $5,000 stimulus check they’re calling a ‘DOGE dividend’ for Americans. Earlier this week a four-page proposal for the dividend made the rounds on social media by X user James Fishback. This check would come from savings produced by DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts. Though DOGE’s initial goal was to cut $2 trillion, Musk recently dialed this number back to $1 trillion.
This week on Capitol Gains, anchor Madison Mills, Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul, and Senior Columnist Rick Newman talk about the likelihood of Musk’s DOGE dividend coming to fruition and how much money Americans could actually make from it based off of what’s been saved so far.
Though DOGE and the Trump administration are claiming they have saved $55 billion in the first month of their cost-cutting ventures, Newman and Werschkul crunched the numbers ahead of this week’s episode and though the actual total amount saved is a moving target, the total savings is somewhere between $4 billion and $7 billion.
Related Videos
With these projected savings in mind, the dividends would total to approximately $2.42 per person, according to Werschkul, citing Manhattan Institute's Jessica Riedl. A long way away from $5,000.
“The promise here is $5,000, but that’s based on $2 trillion in savings by July of next year,” Werschkul explains. “We'll see exactly if we're supersizing our fries or getting more [money].”
To learn more, listen to the full episode of Capitol Gains here.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch more Capitol Gains.
Capitol Gains is Yahoo Finance’s unique look at how US government policy will impact your bottom line long after the Presidential election polls have closed.
This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff.