By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-10-04 19:57:01 | Updated at 2026-10-04 21:21:40
1 hour ago
President Donald Trump renewed his pledge to send all adult American citizens $5,000 if Republicans retain both the House and Senate in the midterm elections.
The pledge, initially made during a Republican rally in Dallas last month, sparked concerns among Democrats and some Republicans that it would increase inflation and the national debt. But Trump administration officials have said it wouldn’t come from taxpayer dollars or deficit spending.
“Our country is doing so well under Republican leadership that only I can make you this promise,” Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social on Saturday. “If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate, I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000.”
Trump added that the payments are possible because the administration is “taking in massive amounts of money through tariffs and record-setting economic success.”
The “Trump dividend,” he said, would cost around $1 trillion, but that “a record-setting 21 trillion dollars” being invested in the United States over the last 15 months could offset the cost.
“So it’s actually a very easy thing to do for me, but the Democrats can never do it because they never brought the goods, and they never will,” Trump added. “So thank you, and I look forward to signing those checks.”
Conversely, Trump said that if Democrats take control of Congress during next month’s elections, their policies could lead to an economic collapse.
“It'll be a 1929 disaster if they get in,” Trump said, referring to the stock market crash during that year that led to the Great Depression. “So, if the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression, much like 1929.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said last month that the payment would likely require congressional action, although Trump has signaled that he may not need help from Congress to send out the payments.
“We think not,” Trump told CBS News. “I think they will do it if we needed it. But we think not. The country is doing so well, we’ve taken in trillions of dollars in tariffs and other things.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) announced after Trump’s initial announcement in September that he would prepare a bill to authorize the payments after the Nov. 3 election.
Democrats have questioned the cost of the proposal, with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) writing in an X post a day after Trump’s Dallas speech that it would potentially balloon the national debt.
Accusing Trump of attempting to buy votes ahead of the midterms, Coons wrote that the payments would “drive up the cost of home and auto loans, and send inflation skyrocketing.”
Some Republican senators have also said that they are unsure how Trump’s proposed payment plan could work.
“I haven’t seen the mechanism and mechanics around how we could get it done,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) told The Hill. “I do worry about the $40 trillion in debt that we have, and something like that would add to the national debt.”
But the payments would not come from taxes, said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in an NBC News interview on Sept. 10.
“It’s not tax money,” Lutnick said, adding that the federal government can “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers.”
Last week, Trump confirmed that $500 rebate payments were sent out to around a million Americans he said were overcharged under Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, health insurance exchanges during the Biden administration. He also said on Oct. 2 that $90 payments are going to be distributed to seniors to help them pay for their Medicare premiums as part of a separate initiative.
