$5,000 DOGE Stimulus Checks, Timing, and DOGE Problems.

All right. So, what do we have here?

Doge dividend. Uh James Fishbach, who's

been pushing for the Doge dividend of

$5,000 to individuals, has given us some

updates on his POV with an interview he

just did with Newsweek on the Doge

dividend. He suggests that in talks with

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, both are

still open to issuing a Doge dividend.

And this time, he says that the Doge

dividend would actually be different

than normal stimulus checks. that normal

stimulus checks were also open to

illegal immigrants, mostly because

anybody with a taxpayer identification

number in in some cases were eligible

for certain COVID stimulus checks. Uh

whereas others warrant. Uh however, the

Doge dividend will explicitly exclude

any undocumented or illegal immigrants

and verify immigration status. Uh James

Fishbach suggests that legislation is

expected to include the Doge dividend to

be determined when uh it's unclear as to

whether or not the Doge dividend could

be included in a uh you know budget

reconciliation process. It's possible.

We saw that during COVID. We expect that

Donald Trump's tax plan later this year

will be passed through budget

reconciliation which does not require

any Democrat votes and so it can be done

and that's why the law you know it takes

time to draft the laws and to be

reviewed and debated and all the

nonsense but it'll likely get passed

through party lines. Unclear if the Doge

dividend will be able to fit in there.

But what you really need, in my opinion,

economically is you need stimulus in

this bill that comes, whether that's a

Doge dividend or more tax cuts, I don't

know. But you need something because you

really got to get growth in the economy

again.

So, can that come from fiscal spending?

Yeah. Could that expand the budget debt

and potentially undo the goals that

Donald Trump is looking for? Sure. But

is the goal to avoid a recession or to

go through a nasty detox actual

recession where you know we triple down

on tariffs to to to tax other countries

and uh increase the uh burden on the

global economy. United States being a

massive part of that. So it's going to

be really interesting. But I expect

towards the end of this year we're going

to get this budget reconciliation tax

cut. Whether that includes no taxes on

those making under $150,000 to be

determined. But it is likely to extend

the 2017 tax cuts. Uh it is likely to

bring back many capital expenditure uh

immediate depreciation write offs. Like

for example in 2022 you could buy a

plane and write off 100% of it. Today I

think you can only write off about 50%

of it or less. It sort of phase it out

over time. The Trump tax cuts might sort

of renew that. But it's not just that.

It would also be for machinery for

businesses or other types of investments

that you make. But beyond just sort of

continuing those tax cuts to prevent

basically a tax hike, we obviously

expect no taxes on social security tips,

overtime, maybe a salt tax expansion,

and potentially some new tax cuts that

could incentivize

uh basically people to spend on the

economy. These new tax cuts should be

stimulative. The question is when are

they going to hit? See, excuse me. Even

if we get this Doge dividend that James

Fishbach is pushing, excuse me, which

they're looking for a full $5,000 Doge

dividend, which is is basically, you

know, a proportion of the $2 trillion of

savings Doge is trying to achieve.

Keeping in mind that so far Doge claims

they've saved about $15 billion.

Journalists argue that about 40% of

their claimed savings are fugazi fugazi,

maybe even more because only a fraction

of that $15 billion on the Doge websites

actually has

receipts. They say they're working on

providing more receipts, but even the

receipts that they do provide are being

questioned. So, it's unclear. You know,

everything's sort of a work in progress.

At least somebody's working on cutting

waste, right? Again, how much waste gets

cut? TBD. But I think whether or not

Doge cuts a full two trillion dollars

doesn't even matter so much. I think

there's actually a likelihood that you

could get a Doge dividend check, except

they'll just rebrand it like a Doge

stimulus check because I think we're

more likely to go into a recession than

not. And that's going to have a lot of

people suffering. And I think they'll

actually be a bipartisan push for some

form of stimulus in 2026 right before

the midterm elections. Trump will put

his signature on it and you'll be right

back to sty checks. You know what

Kevin's talking about? Kevin's talking

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before before it does, and then you'll

be able to lock in your price. And I

think you could potentially just create

this cycle of inflation and deflation,

inflation and deflation, which isn't

great, but I think this time there's a

chance it could actually culminate in an

actual like full-fledged recession

where, you know, 10 million more

Americans are unemployed than

previously. I hope that doesn't happen.

But I mean, look at this. Bloomberg

Intelligence. We talked about this

earlier, but just to remind you,

Bloomberg Intelligence has this argument

that the federal government cutting as

much as they are from software seats

could lead to about

40% of all software contracts being cut.

Now, this would be your app market. So,

think about this. 40% of the application

software market is exposed to doge cost

cutting. That's Microsoft, Oracle, ADP,

Autodesk, you know, Service Now, Cyber

Security, doesn't matter. All of them

could be

hit. Excuse me. Technically, the

government is only about only makes up

about 5% of our our software spend,

but all of the other businesses or

contractors that rely on the government

spending that get

cut could make up the other 35% of

software multiples that basically get

cut. You know, software contracts that

get cut. So now instead of, hey, we

have, you know, a million users for our

software and we're growing 20% a year,

so next year we have 1.2 million. You

might actually be at, oh crap, now we

only have 800,000 users, which isn't

great for software multiples because you

basically put them into a growth

recession or likely the whole economy

into a real recession. So Bloomberg

Intelligence is making this estimate.

it's not coming from me. But those

downstream effects are just one of the

side effects of cuts to spending in

addition to obviously longer wait times

on the phone if you're trying to call

social security. But that needs some

modernization anyway. We'll talk about

that in just a moment. But, you know, I

I think it is more likely that Doge

stimulus checks come than Doge dividend

checks is I just don't I'm not convinced

yet that Doge is going to be able to cut

as much as they're claiming. But that's

okay because again at least somebody's

working on it. However, it is also going

to lead to some disruptions. See into

it, I was reading the in it earnings

call this morning and in it IT says that

hey, it's really good that somebody's

focusing on the elimination of tax

fraud, waste, and overhead costs at the

IRS. Totally agree. I don't think any

American disagrees with that. And uh

into it says they're helping the

administration in this and they don't

see any risk to the IRS providing

services. Well, good for them. But the

Washington Post has a piece where they

say the Social Admin Social Security

Administration website has crashed four

times in 10 days this month because the

servers were overloaded, blocking

millions of retirees and disabled

Americans from logging into their online

accounts. In the field, office managers

have resorted to answering phones in

place of receptionists because so many

employees have been pushed out. Amid all

this, the agency no longer has a system

to monitor customer experience because

that office was eliminated as part of

the cost cutting efforts led by Elon

Musk. All right. So now you're actually

like cing out things that people rely

on. Now it's probably at least in part

because the goal is to try to make

things more efficient. That's the whole

point of Doge anyway. Right now, it

takes an average of 233 days to review a

Social Security claim, which is kind of

crazy that it takes that long. But you

have a lot of people who work inside of

these administrations who were promoted

to look for cut costs, cut contracts,

offer early retirement, buy people out,

consolidate programs, consolidate

offices, and that's going to have

downstream effects for the economy. But

it's also going to piss people off who

have to wait on hold even longer.

Although probably some of this probably

just needs to move all online anyway.

Like for example, you know, if if you're

going to be in a place

where you're relying on phone calls,

like the Washington Post is like, "Oh my

gosh, people are waiting on hold."

Shouldn't we be in a place where we're

able to do whatever we need to do with

social security over the like over over

the internet rather than over the phone?

I mean, I personally think so. It seems

pretty straightforward. I don't know,

maybe it's not. But, you know, if you

need to talk to a person, certainly

email is a tool that is substantially

more efficient than phone call. Uh,

that's my opinion. I think phone calls,

unless you're trying to build rapport

with a client, I think for transactional

things like IRS work or social security

work, I mean, forgive me, but I don't

think you actually need to be on the

phone with people. So I do think that

there are a lot of opportunities to find

efficiency here, but they are going to

have some pretty frustrating impacts in

the short term for people who rely on

these services and then in the longer

term, yeah, I mean Bloomberg

Intelligence could be correct that you

could end up crashing even some portions

of the software market that's been

relying on these growth rates that are

in part led by the government wasting

money on even sometimes unused

subscriptions. And so as a result of you

know the Atlanta Fed real GDP now gold

adjusted estimate sitting at just 02%

which is likely going to revise us into

a recession if this continues. I

personally think a Doge stimulus is more

likely than a Doge dividend. But it is

interesting to see that you've got James

Fishbach pushing with Trump and Musk uh

to get the Doge dividend included in

legislation and that illegal immigrants

will not be eligible for it. So, it's

something interesting uh to keep in

mind. So, uh somebody here Russ Moments

says, "That doesn't sound good for my

Salesforce stock." Yeah, it's a good

point. I mean, look, I I I don't have

anything bad to say. Well, I mean, I

have my own personal experiences with

Salesforce, but we'll keep that aside.

I'm not trying to like single out any

particular kind of, you know, CRM or

software company or whatever. Uh but uh

yeah, I mean when you have to keep this

in mind if if the economy goes into

recession, everybody's going to look for

places to cut everyone. Everybody's

going to look and go, "Do we really need

that many Adobe Premere subscriptions?

Do we really need that many AutoCAD

subscriptions? Do we really need to host

all of these Matterport, you know, scans

from 10 years ago?" Probably not, right?

Like all of those little

cuts are things that just add up. And

then remember a recession, all a

recession technically is is negative

growth. You just had a cycle of some

cost cutting that happened. Like this

this idea that we should always grow at

2 or 3% and never have a negative year

is is not realistic in history, right?

Uh so I find that very interesting. Uh

okay, cool. So, uh, Doug Ha, uh, Doug

Hoppy says, "People are doing business

every day. Borrowing money from the bank

at 6% plus." Yeah, even like seven,

eight, n%, construction projects are

like 11, 12%. Giving back 5% is cheaper

for House Hack and better for you.

Bingo. See, now that that is a logical

comment here is a human being that

actually has a brain. Wow. House hack is

I mean, if you think about it that way,

House hack's basically financing the

acquisition of of wedge deals at 5%.

That's a great deal in this environment.

That's a fantastic deal, but it's a win

for all sides. So, uh yeah, that's a

that's a great way to put it. I like it.

Uh so, anyway, this is uh this is

interesting. Uh uh you know, uh Scott

here says, you know, you have to also

remember the the older folks who have

difficulty using the online services.

This is true. And and unfortunately, you

know, what happens when you shrink the

government is you basically privatize

the aid that older individuals need. So

if you're in a care facility, the care

facilities are going to have to set up a

tech support to help all the seniors

send their emails about their social

security. Okay? But that cost is going

to be be paid by someone. The care

facility has to pay for it and then

guess what? They're going to build the

customers for it. So it's not free,

right? These cuts are not free. Somebody

has to pay to help older folks who can't

use the internet use the

internet. Again, it's not free.

Somebody's got to pay for it. So, uh

yeah, the equity itself can be generate.

House hack properties are wedge deals.

They're equity in itself can generate

much higher yields than 5%. Exactly.

Like, you know, you get a million

dollars worth of wedges, you get a

$200,000 wedge. You know, that that pays

for a lot of 5%.

Um especially if you cycle nut. So I

appreciate that. We not advertise these

things that you told us here. I feel

like nobody else knows about this. We'll

we'll try a little advertising and see

how it goes. Congratulations, man. You

have done so much. People love you.

People look up to you. Kevin Praath

there, financial analyst and YouTuber.

Meet Kevin. Always great to get your

take.