Trump’s Conditional Pledge To Send $5,000 Rebate in Exchange for Republican Majority Puts Budget Watchers on Edge

President Trump’s promise to send $5,000 checks to every American should Republicans keep control of Congress offers the lure of instant cash, but it is quietly meeting resistance from the legislative branch’s spending authorities as well as some fellow Republicans who question whether it is the best approach to spending America’s largesse. Mr. Trump has a history of promising direct payments to voters. In 2020, he twice signed legislation that sent eligible adults $1,200 and $600, respectively, in response to the Covid pandemic. His successor, President Biden, also provided stimulus rebates of $1,400 per adult to restart the economy after the pandemic-caused work stoppage. For the past 18 months, Mr. Trump has said that he is considering a kind of “tariff rebate” check amid elevated prices and increased revenue due to the import taxes. Mr. Trump made his promise during a primetime address to the party faithful at the Republicans’ midterm convention at Dallas Wednesday. The promise of a direct deposit, however, comes with a special condition — voters would have to turn out for the GOP in this year’s midterm elections. “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, because of our tremendous economic success … I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” he said to raucous applause during his speech Wednesday night at Dallas.If the $5,000 checks were to be sent out, bean counters estimate it could cost the Treasury about $1.3 trillion. That’s more than the Pentagon budget or annual interest payments on the national debt. It would be on par with capital expenditures planned for next year by the top five AI hyperscalers, according to Nvidia’s estimates. However, Mr. Trump’s goal to put more money in people’s pockets would create some real world, though variable, benefits. A check worth $5,000 represents about 10 percent of annual household income in Mississippi. It’s only about five percent of annual household income in Maryland. At today’s national average of $4.12 per gallon of gas, drivers could pay for more than 1,200 gallons, which in a car with an average 25 mpg would get them more than 30,000 miles. For the “tax the rich” crowd, it would be the equivalent of wiping out all of the wealth and then some of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Democrats were quick to point out that it would require an act of Congress to pass such legislation, and that the president would not be able to send the checks unilaterally. While current GOP budgetmakers remained publicly silent about the plan, some outgoing and former Republican lawmakers balked at the idea, pointing to the whiff of payola. “Will post-conservative Republicans also try to defend Trump’s $5K ‘dividend’ socialist vote-buying scheme that would cost nearly $1 trillion?” a former House Freedom Caucus chairman, Bob Good, who lost his GOP primary last year, asked on X. “Sadly, most ‘conservatives’ don’t even know (or care) that the president doesn’t have the constitutional authority to spend $$, or send out ‘dividend’ checks without Congress. But he said last night ‘only I can do it,’” Mr. Good wrote in another post. “I don’t know about you all, but frankly I’m insulted by the notion that my vote this November could be bought for 5k. Not to mention the inflation this would cause,” joked Congressman Thomas Massie. “All things considered, I cannot in good conscience accept a penny less than 10k!”Asked on Fox News Wednesday night whether the proposed disbursement could be paid for using revenue garnered from tariffs, which only comes out to less than $300 billion, Vice President JD Vance spoke to the spirit of the proposal rather than the details. “The president is saying, ‘If you keep us in power, then you will share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we are creating,’” Mr. Vance said. Offering additional cash-in-hand on Thursday, the White House released a video recorded in the Oval Office in which the president announced a $500 refund to nearly one million Americans in 30 states who bought insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. “Our administration is doing the right thing and giving the money back to the people who were wrongly ripped off,” the president said, pointing to overpayments to insurance companies as a result of user fees charged by the exchange passed off as higher premiums. “We will stop all payments to big insurance and give the money directly to the people who will then be able to buy better health care at a much lower cost and keep the money and keep the difference.”

Trump’s Conditional Pledge To Send $5,000 Rebate in Exchange for Republican Majority Puts Budget Watchers on Edge

Trump’s Conditional Pledge To Send $5,000 Rebate in Exchange for Republican Majority Puts Budget Watchers on Edge

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