GOP lawmakers pump brakes on Trump's $5K check promise: 'Where are you getting the money?'
President Donald Trump's promise of a big payout for Americans if Republicans win the midterms is getting a rocky reception on Capitol Hill.
Several Republicans outright oppose the $5,000 check promise, while others offered tacit support in comments to Fox News Digital but hesitated on whether it could actually be delivered. It's a sign that the GOP will have an uphill fight to get the "Trump dividend" approved by Congress — with the president and lawmakers divided over whether it even needs the legislative branch's green light.
"I disagree with it. It's pay-to-play," Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital. "You shouldn't pay anybody to vote your conscience. Plus, where are you getting the money? I think we're in debt $40 trillion."
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., whose powerful committee would likely play a major role in crafting the $5,000 stimulus if it did run through Congress, said he was "skeptical" it could be achieved.
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"Take a billion dollars ... I'd rather use it to either bolster defense or save Social Security. I think that's a better use of the money. But again, we have to see what we're looking at. Right now, we don't have a bill," Cole told Fox News Digital.
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He added more optimistically, "We just have an idea that we want to get money back to the American people. I like that."
Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., said he could support the idea if the sudden injection of cash wouldn't send inflation rates soaring.
"But it ought to be limited — people that are working, people that are paying taxes. I don't think we should just send paychecks out to everybody willy-nilly," Rutherford told Fox News Digital.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, simply said, "The devil's always in the details. I prefer to look at ways of getting people job opportunities."
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Rep. Brad Knott, R-N.C., praised Trump's candor but signaled he was not enthusiastic about a stimulus without guardrails.
"If we can structure tax incentives, if we can do some type of — whether it's a cut, whether it's a rebate, something in that vein, I think it's probably a little better policy than mailing people a check just because they're here," Knott said.
But the idea did find support from others, like House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md.
"I think that hardworking Americans, probably taxpayers, deserve a tax rebate, we’re going to have to discuss how large a rebate that’ll be," Harris told Fox News Digital, suggesting the $5,000 figure should be up for negotiation. "That’s a good idea."
He added that it should go through Congress, potentially through the same mechanism that Republicans used to pass the "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act."
"It would probably have to go through reconciliation," he said.
Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, suggested the money could come from what the federal government recovers in efforts to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
"Why don't we continue the president's approach towards fraud, and give a dividend to the people of this great country who that money was stolen from?" Pfluger posed, arguing that hundreds of billions of dollars were lost to fraud in the last administration.
Giving $5,000 to every American adult could cost at least $1 trillion by some estimates, a significant portion of the U.S. annual budget. A price tag that big historically, would be subject to congressional approval, but the president may disagree.
"I think they will do it if we needed it, but I think not," Trump told CBS News when asked if Congress would need to approve the stimulus.
But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told CNN's "State of the Union" earlier this week, "I would assume, yes, he'd need Congress to act."