Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has been accused of hypocrisy for dismissing the idea of distributing $5,000 DOGE checks to Americans when she has previously favored some form of reparation payments.
Elon Musk, who runs the Department of Government Efficiency, recently showed support for issuing DOGE dividends to taxpayers made up of the $55 billion the unofficial agency claims to have saved from cutting government waste.
James Fishback, the CEO of investment firm Azoria, was the first to pitch the idea of giving 20 percent of all DOGE savings to Americans.
He said if Musk is able to reach his stated goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending, each of the roughly 79 million American taxpayers could be given a $5,000 check.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he was considering using 20 percent of the money recovered from DOGE to give directly to Americans, while an additional 20 percent could go toward paying the $36 trillion national debt.
With Trump’s potential endorsement of this plan, Crockett, 43, was asked whether she thinks redistributing DOGE savings is a good idea.
‘What they’re going to do is say, “Hey, we want to give you a refund, but Congress won’t let us because they already know that there’s just no money for that,”‘ the Texas Democrat said.
‘We are not in the business of giving out money, and honestly, I don’t know what $5,000 will do for you if you are unable to find a job because I am telling people, we are headed towards a recession,’ she added.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, said she doesn’t support the idea to redistribute 20 percent of the savings from cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency
Her comments came after President Donald Trump said he is considering sending DOGE checks to individual American taxpayers
Crockett also deflected by suggesting Trump had little to do with the $1,200 COVID-19 stimulus checks that were part of the CARES Act, a bill Trump signed into law on March 27, 2020.
Crockett’s comments sparked outrage on social media, with right-wing internet personality Nick Sortor pointing out on X that she has ‘spent YEARS demanding “reparations”’ for descendants of American slaves.
‘I’ll have her check. Jasmine knows that $5k will mean more to people than empty rhetoric from the Dems,’ one person replied to Sortor’s post.
‘“I don’t know what $5,000 will do for you…” is clearly some elitist trash politician talk. $5,000 is absolutely life changing for most Americans,’ another person wrote.
Crockett has been supportive of studying ways to feasibly give reparations to black Americans.
In January 2023, days after she was sworn into Congress, she joined 130 other Democrats to cosponsor a bill that would have established a commission to develop reparations proposals.
That same year, Crockett declined to sign on to a largely symbolic bill introduced by former Democratic Representative Cori Bush that would have officially declared that the United States has a ‘moral and legal obligation’ to provide reparations.
On a podcast appearance in April 2024, Crockett signaled support for the idea that black people shouldn’t have to pay taxes to compensate for what their ancestors went through as slaves.
If DOGE dividends were sent now, based on the $55 billion Musk claims has been saved through eliminating fraud and canceling costly contracts, Americans would get checks for a little over $139
‘One of the things they propose is black folk not having to pay taxes for a certain amount of time because…that puts money back in your pocket,’ she said on an episode of the Black Lawyers Podcast.
‘If you do the no-tax thing for people that are already, say, struggling and aren’t really paying taxes in the first place, it doesn’t really matter,’ she added. ‘This is something that definitely needs to be thought through.’
If DOGE dividends were sent now, based on the $55 billion Musk claims has been saved through eliminating fraud and canceling costly contracts, Americans would get checks for a little over $139.
The largest cuts DOGE has made so far have come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
