US taxpayers could be getting a hefty payout should Donald Trump go ahead with his proposed plans.
The Department of Government Efficiency (often referred to as DOGE) was created by the Trump administration last month.
The organization – which is working with SpaceX founder Elon Musk – was created to ‘dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies’ — and it’s safe to say it’s done just that.
DOGE has apparently got a lot in savings (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
What has DOGE done so far?
Since its creation, DOGE has reportedly made $55 billion in government cuts.
As per the DOGE website, this sum has been saved from ‘a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings’.
In a recent update, DOGE said on Twitter that it had ‘terminated 18 grants for $226mm to Comprehensive Centers’, which is likely to have contributed to its $55 billion savings figure.
It’s believed that Musk has set himself the challenge of trying to save $1 trillion in annual cost cuts for the country.
What has Trump said about the DOGE savings?
Speaking yesterday (February 19), President Trump said DOGE’s savings pot is ‘incredible’.
President Trump revealed their plans at the FII PRIORITY Miami 2025 Summit (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)
“The numbers are incredible, Elon, so many billions — hundreds of billions,” he teased. He did not give an exact figure to back up the DOGE website’s claims of having saved $55 billion, however.
Trump continued to say of what they might do with the dividends: “There’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20 percent of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20 percent goes to paying down debt.”
How much might Americans get from DOGE?
Musk is said to have proposed the idea of giving $5,000 to every taxpaying American.
Dubbed the ‘DOGE Dividend’, the proposal was first put forward by James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, who has been acting as an outsider advisor for DOGE, says Forbes.
James Fishback proposed the plan to Elon Musk (Twitter)
Tweeting the concept earlier this week, Fishback said: “American taxpayers deserve a ‘Doge Dividend’: 20 per cent of the money that Doge saves should be sent back to hard-working Americans as a tax refund check.
“It was their money in the first place! At $2 trillion in Doge savings and 78 million tax-paying households, this is a $5,000 refund per household, with the remaining used to pay down the national debt.”
Musk went on to respond to the suggestion, saying he would ‘check with the president’.
As for when Americans might get the check, part of the proposal shared on social media read: “79 million American households will receive a $5,000 check next summer because of President Trump’s bold leadership.”
Donald Trump has made comments in the past suggesting he’s eyeing up a third term in office.
Should Trump run for president once more, it would make him the first person to have done so since Franklin Roosevelt.
This comes down to the fact that it’s currently prohibited for a person to run for more than two terms in office, which is outlined in America‘s 22nd Amendment.
What does the Amendment say?
The 22nd Amendment states, as per the National Constitution Center: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
What has Trump said about running again?
Trump has hinted on several occasions that he wants to run for office once more.
He first suggested it back in 2022, says TIME, during his campaign for reelection before losing to Joe Biden.
“We’re going to win Nevada and we’re going to win four more years in the White House,” Trump teased at the time.
“And then after that we’ll negotiate. Right? Because we’re probably—based on the way we were treated—we’re probably entitled to another four after that.”
He was quoted by MSNBC telling House Republicans last November after winning the election: “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say he’s so good we have got to figure something else out.”
More recently, Trump boasted how much money he’s raised and suggested that entitled him to run again.
President Trump is currently serving his second term in office (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Speaking to House Republicans in Florida last month, the 78-year-old said: “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race, that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure because… I don’t know, I think I’m not allowed to run again. I’m not sure. Am I allowed to run again, Mike [Johnson]?”
How Trump could run for a third term
While it’s currently prohibited for a person to run more than twice, a bombshell proposal put recently forward by US Representative Andy Ogles suggested changes to the 22nd Amendment so Trump could be president for another four years after his current term.
Ogles suggested that amendment be changed so that it reads: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
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It’s been suggested that Trump may try bend the rules to run again (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The wording for the proposal, should it go through, would allow Trump to run again, but not former presidents like Barack Obama as he ran for two terms consecutively.
Politico reports this proposal passing is an extremely unlikely scenario, with it requiring two-thirds support in both chambers of Congress, or two-thirds of the states to call for a constitutional amendment, and then three-fourths of the states would have to ratify it. US politics is currently too divided for this to happen.
Elsewhere, Politico has pointed out that there’s a bit of loophole in the 22nd Amendment because of its wording.
The amendment states that a person cannot be elected to run for a third term; but it doesn’t say anything about serving a third term.
With this in mind, it’s possible that Trump could work his way around such wording to find himself president again for another four years. For instance, he could run as vice president, have the presidential candidate agree to step down on day one, and he could find himself back in the White House post-2028.
John Fortier, senior research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has however said that there are laws that prevent this legal loophole from being exploited.
He told Sky News that a president or anyone in the line of succession for president ‘must meet the qualifications to become president’.
Trump, having severed two terms already, wouldn’t be eligible.
While the internet has joked Elon Musk is the ‘real’ president of the United States, Donald Trump has revealed exactly what the tech mogul’s responsibilities are for the federal government.
The pair had a bit of a rocky start to their friendship but grew closer over Trump’s campaign trial in 2024 which has ultimately bagged the billionaire tech aficionado a cosy spot as a special government employee in the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The department is tasked with cutting government costs, modernizing federal technology, ending fraud and a waste of taxpayer money while improving overall governmental productivity.
For instance, an audit revealed the Air Force spent more than $1,200 replacing 25 reheatable coffee cups, per cup.
Still, Musk’s position has sparked somewhat of a controversy with the internet creating memes depicting Musk as the ‘president’ and Trump the ‘vice president’ as some critics question who is really running the country, claiming they never voted for Musk.
Campaigners argue they didn’t ‘vote’ for Elon Musk as he apparently takes on a key governmental role (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Now, in an exclusive interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Tuesday (February 18), the pair talked about their friendship and exactly what Musk does for the federal government.
The Tesla CEO initially said he was just ‘tech support’ for the president, even going so far as to don a black-and-white t-shirt with the phrase emblazoned on, but the 78-year-old president clarified that Musk’s job is to take on the bureaucratic process and ‘get it done’.
As we know, Trump is clearly a big fan of executive orders, having signed dozens in a matter of days into his presidency, but suggested there has been a lag in how they’re adopted – until Musk streamlined the process ‘with his 100 geniuses’.
Musk initially said he was just ‘tech support’ for Donald Trump (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
In actuality, new White House documents reveal Musk, who is working for free in the department, isn’t technically part of it all, merely acquiring the title ‘senior advisor to the president’ which has ‘no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself’, reports AP.
Essentially, he’s not the key-decision-maker at DOGE that Trump made him out to be.
Still, the president also joked in the Fox interview that he picked Musk as his go-to man because he ‘couldn’t find anyone smarter’, going so far as to say the team even tried to find someone more intelligent than the SpaceX founder to no avail.
The pair recently spoke about their friendship (Fox News)
The pally interview also saw the duo compliment each other to the point Hannity said he felt he was ‘interviewing two brothers’.
So far, DOGE has cut billions in contracts to private firms that were awarded by the Education Department and the National Institutes of Health, which sits in harmony with Trump’s vision to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Musk also said: “I’m a technologist, and I try to make technologies that improve the world.”
“My t-shirt says tech support, because I’m here to provide the president with technology support,” he continued. “And now that may seem like, well, is that a silly thing? But actually it’s a very important thing, because the president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country, but then they don’t get implemented.”
Elsewhere, Musk added: “I love the president. I think President Trump is a good man.”
Trump also praised Musk, describing him as a ‘leader’ and a ‘brilliant guy’.
“He’s got tremendous imagination,” Trump continued. “But he’s also a good person. He’s a very good person.”
A lawsuit has lead to an Elon Musk-headed organization unable to access billions of dollars worth of cash.
In recent days, it was reported that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had been granted access to America’s Treasury Department payment system.
DOGE is a temporary organization set up by President Trump that to ‘dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies’.
He shared the news of its creation in November and named Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the two people that will lead it.
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President Trump appointed Elon Musk to head DOGE last year (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Since then, it’s been reported that the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, agreed to allow a team who works under DOGE to oversee the Treasury’s payment system, which is charge of distributing things like Americans’ tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal employees’ salaries – all of which equates to a flow of more than $6 trillion.
It’s believed these team members in question have been able to access the critical payment system since January 20 (the day Trump was sworn into office), but a federal judge has now temporarily halted this.
Today (February 8), US District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued the order in question, which also tells DOGE members to destroy any downloaded information from the payment system, CNN reports.
Englemayer said of his decision that ‘the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking’.
A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Friday, February 14.
The order comes after 19 State Attorney Generals filed a suit against the Trump administration and accused DOGE of engaging in unauthorized access to sensitive information.
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the suit yesterday, CBS News reports, with Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin also joining the petition.
