On orders from President Donald Trump, tech billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team have been reportedly saving tens of billions of taxpayer dollars thus far in uncovered wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive federal spending, with some projections suggesting DOGE could save upwards of $2 trillion over two years.

A proposal to refund a portion of those projected savings to U.S. taxpayers in the form of a "DOGE Dividend" check next year has been floated, and both Musk and Trump have suggested that the idea is worthy of consideration, according to Forbes.

The suggestion for what to do with some of the DOGE savings received a mixed bag of reactions on social media, however, as some were fully supportive of the plan for taxpayer refund checks while other critics worried such checks could increase price inflation or instead surmised that the entirety of the savings should be put toward reducing the national debt.

Musk responds to idea of DOGE tax refunds

It was on Tuesday that James Fishback, the CEO of investment firm Azoria, outlined his "DOGE Dividend" tax refund checks for U.S. taxpayers in an X post that tagged Musk and garnered plenty of views and replies.

Based on the assumption that DOGE will save around $2 trillion in eliminated federal spending before its authorization expires in July 2026, that proposal called for just 20% of that total -- with the remainder going toward paying down the debt -- to be divided up equally among the estimated 79 million taxpayer households in the U.S., which would be roughly $5,000 per household.

In response to being tagged in that post, Musk replied to Fishback, "Will check with the President."

A short time later, in reply to a reporter's post about the idea as though it was already a done deal thanks to Musk, the tech billionaire clarified, "Obviously, the President is the Commander-in-Chief, so this is entirely up to him."

Trump suggests idea is "under consideration"

It would appear, according to the New York Post, that President Trump was made aware of the "DOGE Divided" proposal at some point within the past few days, either by Musk or somebody else, as he made mention of it during a business-focused speech in Miami, Florida, Wednesday evening.

Speaking of the efforts by DOGE to save billions, if not trillions of taxpayer dollars in cuts to unnecessary federal spending, Trump said, "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."

"The numbers are incredible, Elon, so many billions -- hundreds of billions -- and we’re thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens," the president added.

DOGE claims at least $55 billion saved thus far

Also on Wednesday, per the Post, Musk attempted to rein in some of his overly excited followers by more thoroughly clarifying that the proposal was still just an idea under consideration that had not yet been finalized.

"I never mentioned a specific dollar figure," Musk wrote. "Just said that I would see if the President wanted to consider a tax reduction linked to DOGE savings. He may or he may not."

"The amount would therefore obviously be proportionate to how much savings DOGE actually achieves. More savings would mean a bigger tax reduction!" he added. "The top DOGE priority remains however reducing the deficit to stop inflation and lower people’s interest rates."

According to the DOGE website, updated as of Monday, the group has claimed to have saved at least $55 billion so far via "fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings," which puts DOGE on pace to save nearly $1 trillion over its 18-month authorization.