Whenever Donald Trump gives a speech, it’s filled with so many lies and self-serving exaggerations that when he does utter something true, I see that as a sort of marvel. That’s what happened nearly an hour into Trump’s marathon speech last Wednesday at the Republican midterm convention, when he declared: “Only I can make this promise to you.” Trump said that just before he made a promise that was so shameless and irresponsible that what he said was indeed true: only Donald Trump could make such a preposterous promise.
Feeling very generous with other people’s money, Trump promised to give $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in November. It certainly looked and smelled like a bribe.
I guess that when you’re fearing an electoral debacle because your public approval ratings are in the toilet, because people are furious about your disastrous war of choice against Iran and because so many Americans are hopping mad that inflation has risen even though you promised to cut prices, then you might feel the need to take desperate measures, and that’s what Trump did by offering to stuff $5,000 in every adult’s pocket to help sway them to vote Republican.
Since there are an estimated 240 million adults in the US, Trump’s plan would cost a colossal $1.2tn – that’s more than the Pentagon’s budget and nearly what the US will spend on Medicare this year.
Many Republicans and Trump donors rushed to criticize Trump’s $5,000 plan. Joe Lonsdale, a tech billionaire and Republican donor, said he was “strongly against bread and circus bribes”, while Representative Bob Good of Virginia, former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, called Trump’s promise a “socialist vote-buying scheme”.
What angers me most about Trump’s promise isn’t that it would increase the enormous $40tn federal debt even though Trump once promised to eliminate the entire federal debt. Nor am I angriest about the fact that Trump is essentially seeking to bribe the nation’s entire adult population for short-term political gain while in effect passing the cost on to our children and grandchildren. Trump is unconscionably seeking to finance his bribery by borrowing from future generations.
But here is what makes me angriest: Trump evidently believes that millions and millions of Americans are such rubes that he can bamboozle them into voting Republican because they would want to get their hands on $5,000. I like to think that Americans are smarter than that and won’t be fooled.
When Trump made such a shameless proposal, I couldn’t help but wonder: are there no adults in the room with Trump? Is there no one with a sense of shame or fiscal responsibility who will tell him, “Don’t offer this $5,000 bribe. It stinks to high hell, and it’s grossly irresponsible.”
Some brutal mockery came from Trump’s one-time ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former House member from Georgia. She hasn’t forgotten that Trump promised last fall that thanks to his tariffs, every American, except for high-income people, would receive “a dividend of at least $2,000”. That didn’t happen. Greene also remembers that when Elon Musk said that Doge would chop the federal budget by $2tn, Trump suggested that a sizable chunk of those savings could go directly to Americans. That didn’t happen either.
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Greene taunted Trump by writing on X, “$5,000 for the peasants will be in the mail after the election only if you vote Republican, along with those DOGE and tariff money checks.”
Trump egomaniacally called the $5,000 payments a “Trump dividend”, saying the money was available “because of our tremendous strength and success economically”. But Trump is embellishing big time here; there really hasn’t been economic success during Trump’s second term, other than the much-detested datacenter boom and the stock market hitting repeated records. Inflation is higher than when Joe Biden left office, GDP growth is slower, the trade deficit has jumped over 60% since April, the nation has lost 35,000 factory jobs since Trump’s inauguration, and average monthly job growth is less than one-third what it was during Biden’s last two years in office. So, no, this $5,000 bribe is not a dividend resulting from economic success; it’s a loan from future generations.
After Trump’s plan faced an avalanche of criticism, administration officials rushed to insist that the $1.2tn wouldn’t come from taxpayers or deficit spending. JD Vance claimed that much of the money would come from tariff revenues, while commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said something even more far-fetched: that lots of the money would come from charging wealthy foreigners for visas and from the administration’s investments in Intel and other companies. If you believe that, I own a club in Mar-a-Lago that I’d be happy to sell you.
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Unfortunately for Trump and every American, Trump’s promise to stuff $5,000 in every adult’s stocking will clash with one of his main promises – the $5,000 payments will increase consumer demand and that will inevitably push up inflation even though Trump repeatedly promised to cut prices.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, issued a stern warning about Trump’s $5,000. “Debt is now as large as our entire economy, deficits are running $2tn per year, inflation is about 3.5%, and the 10-year Treasury yield is approaching 5%,” MacGuineas said. “This half-baked political scheme would make this all worse – exploding the deficit, ginning up inflation, and further driving up the cost of borrowing throughout the economy.”
Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, voiced even more alarm, telling PBS, “The US is already running an unsustainable deficit. This would only blow [it] up even more and increase the already high odds of a debt crisis over next five years.”
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With his $5,000 “dividend”, Trump is being his impulsive, myopic and reckless self, just like he was in plunging the US into war against Iran, leaving the nation’s economy and global relations in considerably worse shape than before the war. Trump’s $5,000 promise also risks spooking financial markets and nudging up interest rates.
Every American – Republican, Independent or Democrat – should see through Trump’s shamelessness. If his plan comes to pass, it might be a nice sugar high for many Americans, but it will do real economic damage – to inflation, interest rates and the nation’s debt – and it will also impose an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren.
