Key congressional Republicans were blindsided by President Donald Trump’s pledge to send $5,000 stimulus checks to American households if the party wins the midterm elections, according to more than a dozen lawmakers, aides and policy experts.
At a midterm rally in Dallas, Trump announced Wednesday that Congress would approve a dividend payment of $5,000 to “every” adult citizen should Republicans keep the House and Senate in November. The president has made at least two other similar promises during his second term, none of which have been implemented.
The $1.2 trillion proposal came as a surprise to senior Republicans across Washington, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who had not been briefed on the idea by the White House or consulted ahead of the announcement, the sources told The Washington Sun.
The White House also did not appear to consult with leading conservative think tanks or advocacy groups, they said.
Trending
One person briefed on Trump’s pledge described the planning that went into the proposal as “not very vigorous.” Several people who spoke to The Sun requested anonymity to talk candidly about private discussions.
The White House has been looking for a way to reverse its declining approval ratings on the economy, which has been plagued by high gas prices and persistent inflation. Trump has long seen the political upside in calling for direct benefit payments to Americans, but congressional Republicans have traditionally opposed the concept as expensive and wasteful.
“Of course they didn’t know. No one knew it was coming. The Republicans on the Hill I talk to were not kept in the loop on this,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “It’s a bad idea. There’s no need for it economically and it looks desperate politically.”
Some Republican lawmakers have publicly embraced the idea since Trump’s speech. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said in a social media post that he “will get a bill ready so that we can get the Trump Dividend passed immediately after the November 3rd election.”
Vice President JD Vance also defended Trump’s proposal as a “dividend for American workers,” adding it was a way to help Americans “share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we’re creating in the United States.”
Still, the consensus on Capitol Hill was that Trump’s proposal was a last-minute political ploy with no chance of advancing even if Republicans do hold on to both branches of Congress.
One senior Senate Republican aide said “it’s not going to happen” and pointed to the inflation attributed to the stimulus checks approved by the Biden administration during the pandemic.
Republicans are also concerned about the plan’s impact on the deficit. Sending every American a $5,000 dividend would cost roughly $1.2 trillion in a single year, amounting to 3.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) criticized the plan on social media, arguing “dependency is evil & soul-sucking in all its forms.” Roy told The Washington Sun he had no advance notice of the plan.
Only one GOP lawmaker said he had talked to Trump about the idea. Another person in touch with several Republican congressional offices said, “If there was a heads-up, the circle was very small.”
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota), the House majority whip, pointed out that Trump has talked about sending Americans dividend payments since he’s been back in office. “Donald Trump thinks out of the box. He’s not a traditional policy-making legislator,” Emmer said. “And what I found so refreshing last night, while I had never heard the specific number, he wants every American to share in the success.”
Even some of the president’s allies criticized the plan. Stephen Moore, an outside adviser to Trump, agreed that the plan was likely to increase inflation and called on Trump to run on higher take-home pay from faster growth as the result of tax cuts and business deregulation.
“I think it’s not a very good idea,” Moore said. “I’d prefer the Republican plan B: ‘We’ll do more pro-growth thing and we’ll put more money in your pockets.’”
Trump has promised Americans a dividend, rebate, or check 15 times since returning to office, and none of those have materialized, according to a tally by Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning organization. The White House announced Thursday that roughly 1 million Americans would be getting $500 rebates starting in “a few weeks” to offset excessive Affordable Care Act fees.
“American voters can add their $5,000 checks to the growing list of empty promises from the president, right below lower prices and a cap on credit card interest rates,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, the organization’s vice president for policy, advocacy and research.
Wilbur Ross, who served as commerce secretary during Trump’s first term and is attending the convention in Texas, said it’s possible that Republicans will eventually come around to the idea, but it was too soon to say how the party would react. “It was news to everybody,” Ross said.
Authors
