Ignoring Widespread Skepticism in Congress, Trump Administration Presses on With Promise To Disburse $2,000 Tariff Checks

President Trump’s administration says it is not yet giving up on the idea of sending out checks in order to help individuals and families struggling with high prices, despite there being close to zero appetite for such a policy in Congress. In order to get around that, some of Mr. Trump’s top aides have said they may be able to send out the money without congressional approval. Mr. Trump has long embraced the idea of sending money directly to taxpayers in order to make up for high costs. He has been pushing the tariff rebate payments idea for weeks after he started receiving poor marks from voters on the economy and the cost of living. “We have thousands of dollars for individuals of moderate income, middle income. We are going to pay down debt,” Mr. Trump told reporters last week in the Oval Office. “We have a lot of money from tariffs. If we didn’t have tariffs, this country would be in serious trouble.”Mr. Trump’s trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said Sunday that the administration may be able to send out money without congressional approval, though that would likely face significant legal challenges given Congress’s supremacy in spending federal money. “This is real money that’s coming in, and we get to decide what to do with it,” Mr. Greer told ‘Fox & Friends Weekend.’ “The $2,000 — that’s one option [that ]he president’s been very eager to discuss and explore.”Last week, a White House deputy chief of staff, James Blair, said that there is a possibility that such checks could be sent out without an act of Congress, though he conceded that the Article I branch will probably have to be involved. “I think we will look as hard as possible to see if there’s a way to do it without Congress because we’re circumspect about Congress wanting to [send checks],” Mr. Blair said at a Bloomberg event. He did say that the “most likely” outcome, however, would be legislation passed by Congress via reconciliation. The only Republican senator who has endorsed the idea of a tariff rebate check is Senator Josh Hawley, who over the summer introduced legislation to pay out tariff revenue to Americans on a graduated income scale. The checks would start at $600, and decrease based on an individual’s or a family’s income over $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for joint filers. Mr. Hawley’s bill has zero co-sponsors. The Senate majority leader, Senator John Thune, told reporters last week that he does not believe spending tariff revenue on checks for individuals is wise. “I think the amount of money coming in from the tariffs is considered to be substantial at this point and hopefully can be put to a useful purpose … one of which would be repaying the debt,” Mr. Thune said. Speaker Johnson also seemed to throw cold water on the idea this past week in an interview with Punchbowl News. The speaker said that the president would need to come to Congress for any such checks to be sent. If Mr. Trump were to do so, he would likely be pinched between conservatives wary of any inflationary spending policies and Democrats who may support the payments but do not want to give Mr. Trump a win headed into a midterm election year. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, the cost of the tariff rebate checks would vary wildly depending on what restrictions were put on eligibility, though no matter how strict those cutoffs are, billions of dollars would be added to the deficit. The president’s tariffs have so far brought in just about $120 billion as of September, though that revenue has certainly increased with higher tariffs having been put on the People’s Republic of China, among others, in recent weeks. The least expensive proposal for tariff rebates would be a $2,000 check per person for all individuals or households making less than $100,000 annually. That restrictive option would still cost $280 billion. The most generous proposal considered by the Tax Foundation would be a $2,000 per person phaseout for individual filers, non-filers, and dependents below $75,000 in income. That phaseout would begin at $150,000 for joint filers. Those direct payments would cost the government more than $600 billion in the coming fiscal year.

Ignoring Widespread Skepticism in Congress, Trump Administration Presses on With Promise To Disburse $2,000 Tariff Checks

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