Trump’s $1.2 trillion election dividend is desperate and dangerous

President Trump is at it again, making big time promises without thinking through their ramifications. At the Republican convention that just concluded in Dallas, Trump said that every adult U.S. citizen would collect a cool five thousand bucks if Republicans hold both chambers of Congress.

The announcement is astounding, audacious and altogether crazy.

For one thing, I wonder if at some point in the lead-up to his promise Trump and his gang of sycophants actually took out a calculator and figured how much it would cost.   

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget did just that and came up with $1.2 trillion,which is about 3.5% of our country’s GDP. 

That’s just plain crazy. CRFB notes that “this proposal is fiscally dangerous, economically backwards, and fundamentally unserious.”

That’s putting it mildly compared to my take, which is so crowded with expletives that I can’t in deference to good taste post them here.

More to the civilized  point is the fact that Trump has already promised dividends that he has yet to pay out. The guy’s a welsher.

• Tariff dividends that he promised last year have yet to materialize.

• DOGE dividends from cash saved by the budget cutting frenzy early on in his administration have yet to materialize.

• Dividends are supposed to accrue from expiring ACA subsidies. Though still in its larval stage, I’m dubious about this promise, given his track record.

Given the huge hole in our federal budget, it’s hard to see how those dividends will ever get paid. I wonder if anybody listening to Trump’s attempt at election bribery actually believes he'll come across this time.

The fiscal damage that the payout would cause is hard to overstate. I haven’t found a supportive economist to weigh in on this looney-tunes proposal. All I’ve found are harsh critiques.

Those critiques focus on the fiscal madness of further increasing our national debt and the inflation that would result from $1.2 trillion that would suddenly be injected into our economy.

Trump’s promise isn’t just dangerous demagoguery. It’s insanely illusional.  

The GOP hasn’t got much to brag about on the policy front. If it has to resort to bribery as a means of propping up support, Republicans are in sad shape.

John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.     

Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons

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