During the president’s rambling speech on the opening night of his midterm convention, he unveiled yet another gimmick in a desperate attempt to avoid what is shaping up to be a pretty disastrous midterm cycle for his party: a $5,000 check to Americans if Republicans keep a majority in both the House and the Senate. At the level of intended psychological impact, it’s a clear attempt at vote-buying, clear enough that even National Review, which has never been accused of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” is willing to call it bribery. And the proposal would be incredibly costly and economically damaging.
The Associated Press, via Fortune, explains:
The dubious promise would most likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.” He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically.”
Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal, at least in part, by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures.
Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said Trump has no authority to send money to Americans without approval from Congress. Goldwein added that dividends are something that companies pay when there’s a surplus, but the U.S. is running $2 trillion annual deficits and has $40 trillion in debt. “The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,” he said. “We don’t have surpluses to give away.”
This isn’t the first time this president has promised to send money to the American people, including payouts based on supposed savings from DOGE cuts and from tariff revenue. Neither of those payouts ever materialized. So there’s not much reason to believe these checks would ever be sent, even if Republicans did somehow manage to hang on to both houses of Congress after the midterms. But that doesn’t make his attempt to buy votes by using taxpayer dollars to bribe taxpayers any less pernicious.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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