We Love DOGE but...Dividends Might Not Be Coming – Top 3 Takeaways – February 26th, 2025
- 70-something. What’s that? No, it’s not a Golden Girls reboot. My top takeaway today is also not about a mediocre grade...although speaking of mediocre grades – it is the score of election integrity within the United States according to Harvard’s most recent Electoral Integrity Project report (the US scored a 71 – which tied us with Bhutan for 37th in the world – because you know – providing solid election integrity is just apparently so hard – although not for Europe, as every European country currently ranks ahead of the US). No, the 70-something is the number of lawsuits Democrats and related leftist interest groups have already filed against President Trump’s administration. I say 70-something because it’s constantly subject to change as literally an average of two lawsuits are being filed per day. After having failed miserably to lead this country for four years, the left has taken to do everything, they can do to attempt to obstruct progress as opposed to looking for opportunities to find common ground to work with the Trump administration to make America great again – which is clearly what most Americans would like to see. President Trump wasn’t just elected in November with a larger mandate than his first time around. President Trump continues to sport a significantly higher approval rating than he had the first time around with net positive approval across an average of all accredited national polls after his first month plus in office. This means the historic volume of lawsuits seeking to obstruct the historic pace with which President Trump has been working, and that most Americans approve of, is squarely against the mandate Trump was elected with and most importantly the will of the people. To paint the picture, consider this view of how Americans feel after Trump’s first month. President Trump’s net approval rating is 20-points higher than Biden’s and Americans are 33% more approving of the direction of the country. In what’s been a closely divided country politically for quite some time this type of turnaround and those numbers after Trump’s first month plus in office are nothing short of remarkable. Speaking of remarkable, so is DOGE’s work which has saved taxpayers nearly $52 billion, or $345 per federal taxpayer to date. Who wouldn’t want to pay $345 less in federal income taxes and less federal waste? And that’s part of a larger point.
- DOGE, as constructed, is overwhelmingly popular. This week’s Harvard/Harris Poll found 72% of voters are supportive of having a DOGE task force in place. 72%! That included nearly 90% of Republicans but even 60% of Democrats. It turns out that despite the media’s endless efforts to attempt to demonize Elon Musk and team DOGE – it's one of the most politically unifying things in society. How many issues do 72% of Americans still agree on? DOGE is one of them. Here’s another not-so-insignificant ditty. 83% of voters say the federal government should reduce spending as opposed to raising taxes. Almost everyone but the six-masked hermit from the pandemic gets it. Btw, when that came to mind, I looked up the DeSantis quote from 2021 and it’s just as good today as the day that he said it. The full quote was (when asked to address unvaccinated people who were allegedly spreading COVID): I’m sick of the judgmental stuff on some of this stuff. Nobody’s trying to get ill here, OK? There’s people that were hermits for a year and a half, that wore six masks and did that and still contracted it, OK? So let’s just be real here, and let’s not indulge these things that somehow it’s their fault for not doing it. That quote has aged far better than even DeSantis at the time probably imagined. But anyway, back to the matters in play. With an average of two lawsuits aimed at stopping DOGE’s efforts per day, supported by elected Democrats – the left is going against even what a solid majority of registered Democrat voters want. It’s a true sign of what the party’s priorities are and they most certainly aren’t yours. They want your tax money. They want to spend it. They want to funnel it to their preferred union and NGO partners who in turn funnel it back to them. This has been true for some time however it’s never been quite so clear. Speaking of being clear...
- About that DOGE dividend. The right isn’t entirely united around DOGE either right now, but it’s not due to the cutting but rather the expectations that are being set that may not be realistic to achieve. At issue in the House Republican conference right now is the debate about working DOGE dividend checks into the budget. The overarching issue...the numbers don’t work. As I mentioned in a recent Q&A in addressing how a DOGE dividend would work, I said this: It’s only possible to use 20% of the savings towards debt reduction if there are significant revenue surpluses. A quick analysis of the situation shows that’s highly unlikely to be the case. The federal deficit over the past year was $1.83 trillion. Even if DOGE achieved $2 trillion in savings, which is what Elon Musk called the “best-case scenario”, there wouldn’t be a $400 billion surplus to be able to use to pay down the debt. In reality, even under the most optimistic cost savings objective, 80% would go towards cost savings with the ‘DOGE dividend’ likely to tip the country into deficit territory for the year. With the federal debt now exceeding $36.5 trillion, the third largest expense is paying interest on the federal debt – which accounts for 13% of total federal spending. That immovable object significantly limits what we’re able to do fiscally without further adding to the deficit. And that’s currently at the heart of a House debate. We’re nowhere close to having projected budget surpluses meaning that any DOGE dividend at this stage would be additional debt spending. Georgia House Republican Austin Scott said that there needs to be better communication between DOGE, the president and the House – because House members are being left out of the conversation before it’s happening publicly. So basically, now constituents are asking House members when they’ll be getting DOGE dividend checks, and the reality is that there’s no money for a dividend – only fewer IOUs. As I’d mentioned originally, the idea of the DOGE dividend is a good one. It’s an idea that takes what’s happening in Washington D.C. which feels like a world away for most people and makes it tangible to them. The issue is that this country has been so fiscally irresponsible for so long that we don’t have the opportunity to do fun things with cost savings because for now the savings only means we’re running up our credit card debt a bit more slowly. My takeaway for you on this at this stage...don’t bank on those DOGE dividend checks coming anytime soon. I’m not sure if there’s the political will or actually money for it coming anytime soon.