Before House lawmakers headed home for the final stretch of campaigning on Wednesday, Northwest Republicans expressed lukewarm support for President Donald Trump's latest electoral gambit: offering voters $5,000 apiece if they help Republicans retain full control of Congress.
In the middle of a marathon speech at the GOP's midterm convention in Dallas on Sept. 9, the president said he would "issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000" if voters elect enough Republicans to keep majorities in both the House and Senate.
"So if the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000," he said. "We'll call it the Trump dividend."
When he returned to the Capitol on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Congress would need to approve such payments — which would cost American taxpayers themselves more than $1 trillion, adding to the nation's $40 trillion debt — and pledged his support for making it happen. In interviews at the Capitol this week, Republicans from Washington and Idaho voiced mixed feelings about Trump's proposal.
"My initial reaction would be: It would be very difficult, given the fiscal situation in America and the need to upgrade our military," Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, said Tuesday.
"I certainly am in favor of lowering taxes to Americans," Baumgartner added. "I'm a little less comfortable with — I mean, I know politicians make lots of election-year promises on things, but the nature of 'Hey, if you do this in the election, you'll get $5,000.'"
The U.S. government hasn't had a balanced budget since 2001, the last fiscal year of the Clinton administration, when the national debt was below $6 trillion. Since then, successive administrations and congressional leaders have routinely spent far more than the government collects in revenue, leading the national debt to reach $20 trillion by the time Trump began his first term, then doubling to $40 trillion in the past decade.
As a result, $970 billion of Americans' tax dollars went to pay interest on that debt in the last fiscal year — more than the government spent on defense. Only Social Security and Medicare cost taxpayers more that year.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee responsible for federal spending, dismissed Trump's proposal as a distraction.
"He makes promises every day like that, that he never keeps," Murray said Thursday. "The Republican Party is the party yelling about debt, as we all should be. This is outrageous at this time when we need to focus on the things that are real to people."
Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, called Trump's proposal to pay voters with their own money "fiscally dangerous, economically backwards, and fundamentally unserious."
"It's hard to understand how anyone could look at our current fiscal and economic situation and think we need to borrow another $1.2 trillion to send everyone cash," MacGuineas said in a statement. "While pandering is all too tempting to politicians, the reality is that the more goodies politicians promise, the more ordinary Americans will pay the price at the grocery store, on their mortgage statements or in the burden they leave their children."
Vote-buying is illegal under U.S. law, although the country has a long history of politicians trying to influence voters with gifts or even cash, going back to George Washington buying large quantities of alcohol for voters when he ran for Virginia's colonial legislature in 1758. In modern times, the practice has allegedly been used by foreign leaders like Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Trump's fellow octogenarian president.
Rep. Russ Fulcher, a Republican whose district includes North Idaho and most of the state's western half, said Wednesday he could support payments in the form of a tax credit but he wouldn't want the government to send checks to Americans.
"The reason is because I believe in the supply-side economic thing," he said. "If you put more money in people's pockets, they are going to pump it back in the economy in the form of investment or spending, or both."
Issuing a fully refundable tax credit to Americans would have the same effect on the nation's budget deficit as sending checks. Some GOP lawmakers have said they wouldn't want such payments to go to the richest Americans, but Fulcher said he wouldn't want to apply such a "means test," only to ensure the payments are limited to adult U.S. citizens.
Congress sending payments to Americans in the form of tax credits based on the outcome of November's election may fall into a legal gray area, though it would likely be challenged in court. But Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who is in charge of writing tax legislation as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the president hadn't asked him to start that process.
"I haven't seen the details of what he's talking about, and I thought somebody might ask me about it," Crapo said Tuesday. "I haven't been asked by him to help put that plan together yet."
As for whether he would personally support such payments, Crapo said it would depend on the specifics. To the prospect of paying Americans based on the outcome of the election, he said, "You don't pass bills that say that kind of thing."
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