“If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” President Donald Trump promised last week before assembled Republicans at the party’s midterm convention as well as a national television audience. “It will be called the Trump dividend.”
The cost of making good on his pledge, bribe, deal? A cool $1.3 trillion.
I don’t believe Mr. Trump has that much money.
“Because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” intoned the president. “Very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders.”
Dividends are paid out of profits; this operation known as the federal government doesn’t turn a profit. Instead, it’s running past $40 trillion
Can we afford to go trillions further into the red? Or pay more in taxes for this additional trillion-dollar-plus giveaway?
As if trying to outdo the president in folly, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick declared “we’re going to deliver” but “not from taxpayer money,” detailing several precarious plans . . . to come up with less than half the needed dough.
On Fox News, Bret Baier brought the vice president into the conversation. J. D. Vance described the current deficit budget in terms of revenue — there is “an extraordinary amount of revenue,” he said — as if the revenue that is not extraordinary enough to cover all current spending is somehow enough to spend $1.3 trillion more without additional debt.
Eric Boehm at Reason says the $5,000 bribe shows that MAGA has run out of ideas.
In an election year when Democrats are featuring wannabe communists, why are Republicans demonstrating a similar lack of sanity?
I think the American voter might be more persuaded by even the smallest dose of common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Nano Banana
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