Trump Reaffirms He’ll Send $5,000 Dividend Payments

President Donald Trump on Monday reaffirmed that he is still aiming to send Americans a $5,000 dividend payment if Republicans win the November midterm elections.

“We’re taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of profits. It’s one of the reasons I can offer if Republicans win the House and the Senate, $5,000 to every adult,” Trump told reporters at the White House, citing his administration’s tariff policies.

“We can do it and the Democrats can’t, because the Democrats don’t have any income and they’re going to drive us into a depression. They won’t have any money.”

Trump first made the proposal earlier this month during a speech to a Republican Party convention in Dallas in a bid to boost voter turnout ahead of the midterms.

Some GOP members of Congress have signaled that the dividend proposal would need congressional approval first.

In his speech, Trump said the payments would be sent only if Republicans retain control over the House of Representatives and the Senate during the midterms.

Other than that, the administration has provided few details about the plan.

“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” the president told the audience, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

He called it the “Trump dividend.”

Days later, Trump told CBS News that he believed that the White House doesn’t need Congress to send the payments, although House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said it would likely need legislative action.

Around the same time, Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NBC News on Sept. 10 that the payments would not be derived from taxpayer funding and that the administration would be able to “earn the money” to support the measure, “not from the deficit and not from taxpayers.”

Democrats have sharply criticized the proposal, saying it would increase the national deficit.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) wrote on X that the payment would “explode the deficit, drive up the cost of home and auto loans, and send inflation skyrocketing.”

He said that Trump’s promise is a bid to “pay off” people to vote for Republicans in November.

Think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warned that the proposal would cost $1.2 trillion and “explode” the national deficit and “worsen inflation.”

“If the goal is improving affordability, we need policies to reduce deficits, not expand them,” the think tank said earlier this month, responding to the president’s proposal.

“Thoughtful deficit reduction is the best way to fight inflation, temper interest rates, boost income growth, and save Social Security and Medicare for future generations.”

Trump this month announced the White House would send a $500 rebate payment to people who he said overpaid on insurance premiums through health insurance marketplaces.

“Our administration is doing the right thing and giving the money back to the people who were wrongly ripped off,” Trump said in a video on Sept. 10, saying those payments would be going out in the coming days.

The president added that Americans were unfairly paying more under the Biden administration, also chiding Democrats for backing major insurance companies.