Monday, October 5, 2026
President Trump continues to promise every adult citizen in the United States $5,000 if Republican control of the House and Senate survives the mid-term elections.
Forget for the moment that bribing people for their votes is illegal. Or that he’s not authorized to give you money Congress would have to approve, but wouldn’t if he bothered to ask. Let’s just focus on where the money would come from if giving it to you for some other phony-baloney reason were legal and had Congressional support.
How much money are we talking about? Well, round numbers, there are 245 million American citizens who are eighteen or older. Times $5,000 is $1,225,000,000,000. That’s 1.225 trillion dollars.
The Trump government is “deficit spending.” It’s already spending way more than the total tax revenues it collects. As a nation, we are, in other words, flat out broke. Every additional dollar we spend has to be borrowed by selling interest-bearing notes to individuals, various financial institutions and other countries – and then borrowing more money later to pay principal and interest on those notes. Not incidentally, some of those “other countries,” like China for example, on which we depend to finance our government, are our adversaries. For the Trump government to pay every citizen eighteen years or older $5,000, we would have to borrow the total $1.225 trillion – on top of the over $40 trillion we already owe. And by “we,” I mean you and me.
That’s right, Trump is promising to give us $5,000 that he wants us to borrow for him. $5,000 that we’re going to have to pay back, with interest, through the taxes we pay – and in lieu of important government services those taxes might fund. We’re going to borrow $5,000, a whopping $1.225 trillion all total, and then he’s going to do us a favor and give it to us. He’s going to reward us for keeping the Republicans in power by giving us our own money that he wants us to borrow. That’s what he’s promising us.
Trump is a multi-billionaire, due most recently to billions he’s managed to obtain as President by highly questionable means. He doesn’t need the $5,000 nor does he care a wit about our national debt.
When Trump took office in 2017, our national debt was already huge, but only $20 trillion. Note that it took 240 years – including two world wars, several other significant military conflicts, the Korean War and Viet Nam among them, The Great Depression and COVID contagion – for us to accumulate that national debt. Four years later when Trump left office in 2021, our national debt was $7.8 trillion higher, an increase of 39%. Biden added $8.4 trillion to fund his COVID economic recovery programs and other expenditures. Since taking office for the second time, just 2 years into his second term, Trump and his Republicans in Congress have already added another $3.8 trillion to the national debt which is now over $40 trillion. Yes, our national debt has doubled in the past nine years. …Both parties, Democrats and Republicans alike, should be ashamed of themselves.
So, he wants to give us $5000 which we’re then going to have repay, eventually, with interest at the rate of over 3% that we pay on our national debt. 3% on $1.225 trillion is $36.75 billion per year. Where is our government going to get that $36.75 billion to pay the interest? We’re all going to have to pay higher taxes and/or borrow the money to pay the interest we owe.
Our country is already dangerously over-leveraged. Trump, who doesn’t actually work for a living because he finds it easier to steal his billions, doesn’t care. He’s just playing us for suckers with the hope that enough voters will buy into his grift to keep the Republicans in power – so that he can avoid impeachment and spending what’s left of his life in jail where he belongs.
