Fact Check: Is DOGE Actually Sending Out Stimulus Checks To Americans?

Every so often, a rumor kicks up that the government is going to send out free money to its citizens. The three Economic Impact Payments (or stimulus checks) that were sent to eligible taxpayers in 2020 and 2021 – to provide economic relief during the COVID-19 pandemic — unfortunately loom large in public memory. Sometimes, that memory combines with financial frustrations and even viral social media posts designed to spread misinformation in order to create brand new false hopes. Rumors of freshly approved stimulus checks and even student loan forgiveness stimulus checks still swirled at the end of 2024. Jumping to February 2025, new rumors of promised stimulus checks are swirling again — but this time, it's President Donald Trump, his tech billionaire advisor, Elon Musk, and an investment firm CEO doing the swirling.

The Department of Government Efficiency (often referred to as "DOGE", a reference to Musk's longtime favored dog-themed cryptocurrency, Dogecoin) was created by Trump via executive order  to cut costs and expose potential fraud. The task force has been busy slashing federal jobs and gaining unprecedented access to private data since the start of Trump's second term. But, could the agency also soon be responsible for $5,000 stimulus checks for qualifying U.S. taxpayers in the form of a "DOGE Dividend"? Despite rumors, the odds of anyone not already inside Trump's team of tech CEOs getting a financial boost from DOGE cuts are about as likely as Musk successfully cutting his promised $2 trillion from the federal budget. In other words, the outlook is not great.

The DOGE Dividend rumor got it's start with James Fishback, an investor known for his "anti-woke" ETF. In February 2025, Fishback drafted a four-page proposal for a "DOGE Dividend" plan and posted it to Musk-owned X, formerly known as Twitter. Fishback's plan calls for DOGE to send tax refund checks to eligible Americans funded by the total savings reportedly delivered by DOGE. Both Musk and President Trump have expressed support for the idea. While the exact execution of such payments is supposedly being worked on, Trump emphasized that he believed 20% of DOGE's savings should go to taxpayers while another 20% should go to the national debt — which surpassed $35 trillion in 2024. However, the reality of implementing such a strategy is far more complicated than the plan's supporters might realize.

For starters, determining DOGE's total savings amount is murky at best, which could make calculating stimulus checks fairly difficult. So far, DOGE claims $55 billion in savings citing that this has come from a combination of things like fraud detection, contract/lease cancellations and negotiations, asset sales, grant cancellation, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings. While the agency is reportedly still working towards full transparency with it's data on how, exactly, its savings are achieved, some of the sources are already clear. Despite public bipartisan pushback, DOGE's gutting of staff at agencies like USAID, the National Park Service, Veterans Affairs, and the Education Department have undoubtedly contributed to the agency's unverifiable savings amount.

Beyond the lack of clarity regarding how much money is actually available to send to taxpayers, drastic inflationary concerns, conflicting debt management priorities, and even Republican ideological viewpoints regarding "handouts" are all factors at play when considering a DOGE Dividend rollout. According to USA Today Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson rolled his eyes when the dividends were brought up at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference before saying, "We have a $36 trillion federal debt. We have a giant deficit that we're contending with. I think we need to pay down the credit card, right?"

However, regardless of just how much Elon Musk is able to cut from the budget in order to pay the government's "credit card," there is also the legality of DOGE to consider. While a federal judge ruled against a coalition of Democratic states hoping to block DOGE's authority in February 2025, other cases remain open regarding DOGE's constitutional authority. Also, it's worth noting that in the February federal ruling, the judge noted that. "Defendants concede that there is no apparent 'source of legal authority granting' Musk or DOGE 'the power to order personnel actions' at federal agencies but do not deny that Defendants are taking such actions." DOGE's unprecedented, yet questionable, authority should keep consumers wary — if not downright skeptical — of any potential financial windfalls from the agency.