(NEXSTAR) — Waiting for a stimulus cheque funded by the cuts the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) says it's making? It could beryllium a while.

While speaking successful Green Bay, Wisconsin, connected Sunday, Elon Musk was asked whether helium had immoderate update connected "DOGE checks" being sent retired to Americans.

He noted that though it is "somewhat up to the Congress and possibly the president arsenic to whether circumstantial checks are cut," reducing "wasteful spending" volition permission the system "better off."

He claimed this would beryllium the lawsuit "whether a cheque is chopped oregon not."

"As authorities spending is made much businesslike and spending is reduced, the taxation by ostentation is reduced," helium tells the crowd, arsenic seen successful video shared by USA TODAY. "So 1 mode oregon another, you volition efficaciously beryllium amended disconnected if resources successful the United States are not wasted."

"We've made a batch of advancement but there's inactive a tremendous magnitude of enactment to do," Musk continued.

DOGE stimulus checks: Trump teasing the idea

President Donald Trump and Musk person been teasing the idea of turning DOGE's reported savings into stimulus checks for Americans for months.

James Fishback, the CEO of concern steadfast Azoria, has been credited with spurring the idea of sending $5,000 "DOGE dividend" checks to Americans. He told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that the dividend programme “is wholly reasonable” and would motivate citizens to study wasteful spending to DOGE, with larger imaginable payouts tied to greater savings found.

Trump besides suggested utilizing the savings to wage down the national indebtedness successful mid-February. That's successful enactment with Fishback's archetypal connection of turning 20% of DOGE's savings into stimulus checks and utilizing the remainder to wage down the nationalist debt.

Receiving a $5,000 cheque would trust connected DOGE cutting capable to scope its $2 trillion extremity — a extremity that Musk antecedently said was the "best lawsuit outcome." As of Tuesday, DOGE claims it has saved $140 cardinal (though immoderate of its reported cuts have been questioned), equating to little than $870 per taxpayer.

Would each American person a DOGE check?

While DOGE says the savings would payment an estimated 161 cardinal idiosyncratic national taxpayers, it's imaginable that not each American would person a check, should they go a reality.

The checks, nether Fishback's proposal, would lone spell to American households that wage income taxes. As NewsNation antecedently reported, astir 40% of households did not wage national income taxes successful 2022 (this is typically owed to a constricted oregon deficiency of income).

Some, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), person besides spoken retired against cutting checks for Americans.

“But if you deliberation astir our halfway principles, right, fiscal work is what we bash arsenic conservatives," Johnson said successful precocious February. "That’s our brand. And we person a $36 trillion national debt, we person a elephantine shortage that we’re contending with. I deliberation we request to wage down the recognition card, right?”

Preston Brashers, a taxation argumentation probe chap astatine the Heritage Foundation, called "stimmy checks" a "bad idea" astir the aforesaid time. He warned that specified payments would pb to ostentation returning "with a vengeance."

Fishback antecedently argued, however, that if the checks are "deficit-financed" and funded by "DOGE-driven savings," they would not beryllium inflationary.

Others said the payments whitethorn not adjacent beryllium ample capable to marque an impact.

“I can’t ideate they’d beryllium inflationary due to the fact that I can’t ideate they’d beryllium large enough,’’ Elaine Kamarck, elder chap successful governance studies astatine the Brookings Institution, told The Associated Press.