Reality check -- you probably won't get a $5,000 Trump check: ANALYSIS

President Donald Trump's surprise proposal during the Republican midterm convention Wednesday night to offer $5,000 "dividend" checks to every American if Republicans win the midterm elections not only faces political and financial hurdles, but it fits a pattern by the president of unfulfilled promises of big cash payouts, sometimes ahead of consequential elections.

The major hurdles

To pay every American adult $5,000 would cost close to $1.3 trillion, based on an estimate gathered from census data. The president did not say how he'd pay for it, but in the past, he's suggested payments to Americans could come from tariff revenue.

But even if the government saved up every dollar collected from the president's tariffs, that wouldn't amount to enough to cover $5,000 checks for every American.

Even the most generous accounting, such as Penn Wharton's Budget Model, estimates the tariffs brought in roughly $300 billion. And that's not counting the money the Treasury has had to pay back to American companies after the Supreme Court ruled Trump's tariff regime illegal. As a result of those debts, the government is currently paying out more in tariff revenue than it is collecting.

The White House issued a press release on Thursday that suggests the checks could come from commitments the Trump administration has received from companies to invest in the private sector. It's unclear how those investments, which have not yet materialized, would be made into dividend checks for Americans.

Congress has the power of the purse

There is also no indication Congress would approve Trump's plan. It would require 60 votes to pass the Senate -- and Democrats, critical to its passage, are signaling they would strongly oppose such a measure.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons put it this way in a statement on X: "Trump's $1.3 TRILLION attempt to pay off voters would explode the deficit, drive up the cost of home and auto loans, and send inflation skyrocketing. Americans already think Trump's economy is a disaster. Now he's trying to make it even worse."

Outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie said he fears the payments would cause more inflation and accused Trump of trying to buy votes.

"Frankly, I'm insulted by the notion that my vote this November could be bought for 5k," Massie wrote in a post on X.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is facing a tough re-election battle in Maine, said the payments would be "extraordinarily costly" and said tax and spending decisions "should not appear to be tied to election results."

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune was asked on Fox News whether he could get enough votes to pass $5,000 dividend checklist to Americans.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Thune said, adding that Trump's mission is to "put more money in the pockets of the American people."

Trump said on Thursday that he doesn't think he needs Congress to approve his plan, telling CBS News that he thinks Congress "will do it if we needed it. But we think not."

"We think it's something that's really good, popular, and it's a great infusion," Trump added later.

Trump's pattern of payment promises

The bottom line is that this proposal appears unrealistic and could join the line of Trump's payout promises that have never come to be.

In 2018, just before his first midterm election cycle, the president caught fellow Republicans by surprise when he announced middle-class Americans would receive a 10% tax cut.

"We're putting in a resolution sometime in the next week-and-a-half, or two weeks," he told reporters as he left for a campaign rally in Texas. That was late October, and the proposal never came up again.

In 2025, Trump endorsed a proposed "DOGE Dividend" -- money that was to be dispersed to Americans that came from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency budget-cuts project. Those payments were never made and a Government Accountability Office report released in August determined that some of DOGE's savings estimates "are incorrect or lack supporting evidence."

Just last year, the president declared that every American would get a $2,000 rebate check paid for by tariff revenue.

"A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone," he wrote on his Truth Social platform in November of 2025. That has not happened yet.

This is not to say none of his financial promises have come true. He passed major tax reform in both his first and second terms, which, for instance, made good on his promise to remove tax on tips and created Trump Accounts, the IRA-styled program for children tied to the stock market.

Under the new program, the Treasury Department will deposit $1,000 for each enrolled child born in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2028.

And his administration sent out $1,400 congressionally approved stimulus checks (with his name on them) to Americans reeling from the economic shock of the COVID pandemic in his first term.