Last month, I shared some charts from the Congressional Budget Office showing an ever-rising burden of government spending in the United States, along with an ever-rising burden of debt.
I augmented those charts by explaining that government spending is America’s fiscal problem and that debt is a symptom of that problem.
The bottom line is that the United States is stumbling towards a fiscal crisis and it seems nobody in Washington cares.
But it’s worse than that. Not only do they not care, they want to make a bad situation even worse.
Consider President Trump’s goofy new proposal to send every American adult a $5,000 check.
This is a stupid and shallow gimmick, and I’m not alone in my assessment.
Here are excerpts from the Washington Post‘s editorial.
Socialism will not be stopped with more socialism. President Donald Trump’s proposal to pay every adult citizen $5,000 if the GOP holds the House and Senate this fall is a desperate gimmick that betrays a profound lack of seriousness about the looming fiscal crisis. …Trump said revenue from tariffs would cover what he branded a “dividend,” but the government refunded more money from tariffs it collected illegally than it brought in from legal ones in May, June and July. The taxes on imports that remain in effect are expected to generate less than $200 billion this year. …But don’t count on checks in the mail. Trump has repeatedly promised payments that never materialized, including from savings that the U.S. DOGE Service was supposed to identify before its failure. Last November, Trump called for a $2,000 check funded by tariffs. …After Trump’s speech, Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Vice President JD Vance to respond to critics describing the checks as bribery that would bankrupt the country. Vance replied that tariffs are creating “incredible wealth.” That might be true for lobbyists and lawyers who specialize in seeking exemptions for their clients, but they’re raising prices for everyone else. …Pandering politicians routinely promote expensive ideas in the months before elections. …The electorate has become habituated to promises of “free” buses, “free” child care and “free” medical coverage, as well as student loan debt cancellation. Trump’s checks-for-votes scheme is just more explicit.
And here is some of what the Wall Street Journal wrote in its editorial.
A Trumpian classic is his promise Wednesday night of a $5,000 “dividend” for every U.S. adult citizen if Republicans retain control of Congress in November. …There are roughly 240 million American adult citizens. Multiply that by $5,000 and you get about $1.2 trillion. The amount is so preposterous that you’d almost think Mr. Trump is trying to show voters the absurdity of such income redistribution. It’s the reductio ad absurdum of welfare state politics. …Vote buying has a long political history, and Democrats are professionals at the game. They do it by passing programs in the name of some high-toned principle, like income equality or “fairness.” Mr. Trump’s cynical genius is that his political bribery is running naked in the street. Elect my party, get a check. …Mr. Trump is resorting to this because voters are unhappy about inflation and don’t think his economic policies have helped them. His tariff tax increases are a big part of the reason. If he repealed those, he’d give the country an economic dividend without spending a dime.
Both editorials make solid points, so the only analysis I’ll add is to explain that a $5,000 handout from Uncle Sam is not a dividend, and it’s not a tax cut.
It’s more wasteful spending, no different in principle than Kamala Harris’ proposal for per-child handouts.
Heck, it’s akin to the “demogrant” proposal of the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern. Except McGovern was even more profligate since his scheme for universal $1,000 handout would be almost $8,000 today after adjusting for inflation.
