Donald Trump has pledged to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, a move critics say would cost more than $1 trillion and has no clear funding source.
Trump unveiled the Trump Dividend midterm promise at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. ‘If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,’ he said. ‘It will be called the Trump Dividend.’
He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing what he called ‘our tremendous strength and success economically.’
Cost and Congress: the obstacles facing the Trump Dividend midterm promise
The proposal would require congressional approval. According to CNBC, there are roughly 245.3 million U.S. adult citizens, based on 2024 Census data, putting the potential total bill well above $1 trillion.
The White House has not confirmed a funding mechanism. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the administration was considering using a congressional reconciliation process to fund the payments, according to Newsweek.
Vice President JD Vance moved quickly to qualify the pledge, suggesting payments would not go to the wealthy and could be covered by U.S. tariff revenues. Tariff income falls far short of what would be needed, however, even before the Supreme Court last year struck down much of the president’s tariff programme.
The national debt last month topped $40 trillion for the first time. The U.S. is running annual deficits of around $2 trillion.
Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said Trump has no authority to send money to Americans without congressional approval. ‘The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,’ Goldwein said. ‘We don’t have surpluses to give away.’
Goldwein noted that dividends are what companies pay when there is a surplus, not when running $2 trillion annual deficits with $40 trillion in debt.
Legal standing and political backdrop
New Mexico-based attorney John Day said the proposal would be legal because payments would go to all adults regardless of how they voted, or whether they voted at all. ‘This is a campaign promise,’ Day said. ‘It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.’
Trump has discussed the idea before but had not previously tied it to his party’s electoral fortunes. Earlier this year he proposed a $2,000 dividend and said he did not believe he needed congressional approval. Last year, he gave members of the military a $1,776 payment he called a ‘warrior dividend.’
Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio pledged on X to have a bill ready immediately after the election. ‘Because Republicans (and America) will win!’ he wrote.
A $5,000 payment would give each American more money than they received in direct government payments from Covid-19 relief measures during Trump’s first term.
The political context is difficult for Republicans. Trump is unpopular, and Americans overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iran. The party is defending a narrow House majority and, according to the convention, even the Senate is now considered competitive. Trump has frequently complained that the president’s party almost always loses congressional seats at the midterms and has been seeking ways to reverse that trend. ‘We’re going to change that,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason for it.’
The White House did not respond to a request for details on the proposal.
