What we know about rumor Musk makes $8M per day from US government contracts

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Musk's companies have received billions of dollars from federal contracts in recent years.

By Laerke Christensen

In February 2025, claims circulated on Facebook (archived) and X (archived) that billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who was hired by the Trump administration to root out government waste and fraud, was himself making $8 million per day from federal contracts.



Snopes readers also messaged us asking about a variant of this claim, saying they heard Musk was making $8 million a day for his job running the Department of Government Efficiency.

The "$8 million per day for government contracts" claim was originally made by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, during a House Oversight Committee subcommittee hearing on Feb. 12 (time code 1:10:35):

Casar claimed:

Do you know how much money a day Mr. Musk will receive from the federal government? The answer is $8 million a day. Just last year he was promised $3 billion from close to 100 contracts with the federal government.

The congressman's claim — that Musk was "promised" $3 billion from "close to 100 contracts" with the federal government — is mirrored in a 2024 New York Times report on Musk's federal contracts. The report looks at contracts from fiscal years 2013-23, with Casar's "last year" referring to fiscal year 2023.

Using The New York Times' figures, Musk's companies would have made roughly $8 million per day from government contracts in fiscal year 2023. These figures are backed by usaspending.gov data, which shows that SpaceX and Tesla alone received $3.1 billion in federal grants that year.

A White House official said Casar's claim was incorrect but didn't elaborate on why, or what a correct figure might be.

DOGE and public information

With regard to the inquiries we received from readers, it isn't possible to determine how much Musk is paid for his DOGE activities, or indeed whether he is paid anything at all. The department was established "in the Executive Office of the President" according to a Jan. 20 executive order, meaning that DOGE records also became presidential records, protected by the Presidential Records Act. This was confirmed by DOGE staffer Katie Miller on X (archived) on Feb. 6 and later reported by The New York Times.

Though it would normally be possible to seek information about federal employee salary through the Freedom of Information Act, DOGE's placement within the Executive Office of the President means the earliest its documents are subject to FOIA is 2034. We reached out to the White House for any information it might have on Musk's DOGE pay. A White House official made no comment on his pay.

The Trump administration hired Musk as a special government employee, a federal government role. Therefore, we also reached out to the Office of Personnel Management, which establishes policies for federal employee pay, to ask whether it was able to confirm or deny the claim. We'll update this report if the office responds.

Members of the public, including journalists, normally can access salary information about federal employees via a FOIA request. An example of where such requests are used is federalpay.gov. This website features an employee lookup function, where the website collates FOIA request results about federal employee pay. Musk is not listed on this site.

American Oversight, a nonpartisan accountability watchdog, sued DOGE on Feb. 11 over FOIA requests relating to Musk's "efforts to purge the federal workforce." The lawsuit will test whether DOGE records will continue to be exempt from FOIA.

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