If you got to this article by searching for "DOGE check," "DOGE dividend check" or "DOGE stimulus check," I have some bad news: Your check is not in the mail.
Each week, Americans take to the internet to search some variation of the words DOGE, stimulus, dividend, refund and payment to learn when they might get their share of the money supposedly saved by the Department of Government Efficiency as it has slashed and burned through Washington.
For several weeks, more people searched for "DOGE checks" than "tax refunds," which is a huge search term every year. (It's also led to a flood of news stories from outlets that write about trending topics, which only raises awareness and leads to even more internet searches.)
DOGE checks are not going to happen.
So let me be clear: as things look now in Washington, DOGE checks are not going to happen.
Instead, the DOGE checks are set to turn out the same way as Trump's failed promises to build a massive border wall with Mexico, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and end the Russia-Ukraine war on the first day of his second term. But as the online searches indicate, this failure will likely haunt Trump more intensely because the disappointment will be more personal.
The idea began, appropriately enough, on the internet. James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, said he had a dream about sending Americans checks for their share of the money saved by DOGE spending cuts. After some quick back-of-the-envelope math, he posted on X in mid-February that Trump should send each American household a "DOGE Dividend" check worth 20% of the savings, or what he estimated would be $5,000 apiece.
Billionaire federal contractor Elon Musk replied "will check with the president," and Trump called it a "great idea" the following day in impromptu remarks on Air Force One.
"I love it," Trump said. "A 20% dividend, so to speak, for the money that we’re saving by going after the waste and fraud and abuse and all of the other things that are happening."
The president recognizes a clever idea when he hears it. If he actually sent voters a sizable check, it would likely boost him in the polls.
Also recognizing the idea's potential are campaign marketers and other spammers. In the last week alone, I have received 14 emails from different Republican campaigns, with subject lines such as "DOGE CHECK: PENDING!!" and "5K Check for you???" and "YOU SAID NO TO DOGE CHECK!" There's also a phishing email circulating that touts "DOGE compensation to fraud victims." (You have to marvel at the diabolical ingenuity of that one.)
But almost everything that's happened since mid-February has cast doubt on the supposed DOGE checks.
First, despite the damage that DOGE has done to federal programs, it claims to have only saved $170 billion, far short of the $2 trillion goal Musk set before the November election. (Even those numbers are suspect, given the group's previous accounting errors, but we'll be generous and use them.) Using Fishback's math, that would amount to a much smaller $430 check per taxpaying household. And while DOGE claims a much higher $1,055 per taxpayer, the proposal was for 20% of savings to go only to the roughly 60% of households that pay income tax, which also means many lower-income Americans wouldn't get a check.
But wait, there's less. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce, estimates that paid leave, mistaken firings, multiple lawsuits and lost productivity from DOGE's activities mean it also cost taxpayers $135 billion. That would put the DOGE dividend at about $35 billion in net savings, or about $89 per household.
That seems like a paltry sum for less efficient federal agencies, lost government data, shuttered local libraries, neglected national parks, deteriorated veterans care, less research on cancer and Alzheimer's disease, more Third World children born with HIV, worse weather forecasts and poorer disaster relief — to name just a few effects of DOGE cuts.
Of course, Congress could just decide to send every taxpaying household a $5,000 check anyway, but that would be another $400 billion lawmakers would need to find in their next budget. That's a tall order considering that Trump also promised no more taxes on tips or overtime, an extension of his 2017 tax cuts and a repeal of the cap on the state and local tax deduction while not cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and spending $1 trillion on the military.And while congressional campaigns are hyping DOGE checks in fundraising emails, there's a telltale sign that the members themselves aren't serious about them.
Political science professor Lindsey Cormack maintains a public database of every official email newsletter sent out by a member of Congress. The number of times a lawmaker mentioned "DOGE checks" or "DOGE Dividends" in an official email to constituents this year: zero. If they were serious about sending them out, they'd have begun talking them up long ago.
The DOGE checks aren't coming. In all likelihood, they never were.
