That $5,000 check from Elon Musk? Don’t spend it quite yet.

by Ashley Murray, Kansas Reflector February 26, 2025 WASHINGTON — Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, claims American taxpayers could receive a $5,000 refund from the federal government — despite no apparent support in Congress, which controls the nation’s purse strings. Soon after Musk began floating the idea, President Donald Trump told investors at a conference in Miami on Feb. 19: “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, because the numbers are incredible, Elon.” Musk and Trump’s statements excited Trump supporters on social media. Others online dismissed the claim as a “bad idea” and a “steaming pile of horses–t.” Right-wing media outlet Newsmax wrote that the proposal is “meant to incentivize the public to report government waste.” The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization, established by Trump via executive order, was born out of Trump and Musk’s campaign promise to establish a Department of Government Efficiency with the goal of slashing up to $2 trillion in federal spending — an almost certainly unattainable figure that Musk has since walked back. Musk, a senior White House adviser and Trump’s top reelection campaign donor, posted on Feb. 18 to his social media platform X that he would “check with the president” about returning government savings directly to taxpayers. DOGE touts questionable savings DOGE, which is not a federal department but rather an 18-month executive office project, claims on its website to have saved the government an estimated $65 billion through “fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.” The New York Times reported Tuesday that DOGE deleted five of the biggest “savings” on the original list even as the sum climbed to $65 billion.