Trump’s $5,000 Dividends for Americans Won’t Rely on Taxpayer Funds, Lutnick Says

President Donald Trump’s plan of sending $5,000 dividend checks to Americans would not be funded by taxpayer dollars, said Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in an interview Thursday.

“It’s not tax money,” Lutnick told NBC News at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, adding that the administration would be able to “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers.”

Trump, in a Dallas speech on Wednesday, unveiled his plan to send the money to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans can retain control of both the House and Senate during the midterm elections in November.

Like Trump in his speech on Wednesday, Lutnick told the outlet that Republicans, should they win in Congress, are “going to deliver that plan and we’re going to pay that money to the Americans, and not from taxpayer money.”

A few of Trump’s allies publicly embraced the idea, including Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who said he would prepare legislation for the payments in a post on X. Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) said “it was the first I heard of it last night” but called it good economic policy.

“If it can be done, the American taxpayer deserves the benefit of having more in their pocket than the government,” Walberg said ahead of a brief session in the Capitol on Thursday.

With the midterms only a few weeks away, Republicans hold small majorities in both the House and the Senate. Trump and Republicans held the party’s first-ever national midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday and Thursday, in a bid to boost GOP voter turnout.

Democrats in Congress were critical of the move, with some mocking the president’s announcement.

“If Democrats flip the House and Senate everyone will get a $10,000 dividend, and a pony, and free ice cream for life,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote on social media.

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,” and alleged the speech promise is a bid to “pay off” people to vote for Republicans.

At the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based left-leaning think tank, analysts said the move would have a significant impact on the deficit, costing $1.2 trillion.

“With the economy already operating near potential, this cash infusion would boost demand and likely generate additional inflation,” the group said in a blog post Thursday. “The policy would also likely boost interest rates, as the Federal Reserve responded to higher inflation and the markets to higher debt.”

On the Republican side, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the payments would increase the national debt and inflation, suggesting that surplus revenue should be used to cut taxes instead.

Meanwhile, Trump said in an interview with CBS News on Thursday that the administration believes it doesn’t need Congress to act before it can send out the payments.

“We think not. 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,” Trump said, saying that trillions of dollars have been invested in manufacturing plants and other industries in the United States alongside other boosts to the economy.