Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk said Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that President Donald Trump is in support of checks to American taxpayers as the department continues to cut government waste, calling out Democrats over their “lack of empathy” toward taxpayers.

Musk made a surprise appearance on the CPAC stage Thursday afternoon, interviewed by Newsmax’s Robb Schmitt about his involvement with the Trump administration and the pushback from Democrats over the past month. Since finding billions of taxpayer dollars wasted throughout the federal government, investment firm CEO and DOGE adviser James Fishback introduced the idea of “DOGE dividend” checks in a post on X Tuesday, to which Musk responded that he would check with Trump about the idea.

“It’s money that’s taken away from things that are destructive to the country and from organizations that hate you,” Musk said. “I mean, that’s glorious. That’s like the spoils of battle, you know?”

“I talked to the president, and he’s supportive of that. So it sounds like that’s something we’re going to do. So as we’re finding savings, that’s going to translate directly to reductions in tax,” Musk added.

In a PDF version of Fishback’s proposal, the adviser wrote that the dividend would take “20% of DOGE’s total savings ($400 billion) and return it to the ~79 million U.S. households that will be net payers of federal income tax in CY 2025 as a tax-refund check.” According to the adviser, if the department were to meet their target total savings of $2 trillion, millions of taxpayers could receive a potential $5,000 refund per household, “with the remaining used to pay down the national debt.”

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However, Democrats have consistently pushed back against Musk and DOGE’s involvement since the announcement on Feb. 3 that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would be upended and moved under the leadership of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett said Thursday on ABC News that she did not believe the $5,000 could help Americans, adding how Congress was “not in the business of giving out money.”

“People ask me, ‘What’s the most surprising thing that you’ve encountered when you go to D.C.? You know, when you’re in D.C.’ and I said, ‘Well, the most surprising thing is the scale of the expenditures and actually how easy it is to, just when you add caring and competence where it was absent before, you can actually save billions of dollars, sometimes in an hour.’ It’s wild,” Musk said.

“But, obviously, it just shows that they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who’s working hard, paying taxes,” Musk added. “Then and then they say, ‘Oh, a million dollars doesn’t matter.’ I’m like, ‘I think it matters a lot to people, you know? So what are you talking about?’”

After reports revealed that billions of taxpayer dollars were funding USAID programs involved in left-wing social engineering abroad — some of which also posed a high risk of falling into the hands of the Taliban or supporting organizations linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — Democrats took to the streets in Washington, D.C. Among them, Democratic New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver was seen screaming that they were at “war” and calling for the Senate to be “shut down.”

Despite lawsuits to halt DOGE’s review of the federal government, Trump and the DOGE team were handed a win on Saturday by federal District Washington, D.C., Court Judge John D. Bates, who ruled that a lawsuit attempting to block Musk’s access to the Health and Human Services Department, the Labor Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records did not meet the necessary standard.

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