President Donald Trump’s plan to send $5,000 dividend checks to American adults if Republicans maintain control of Congress would require a congressional act, said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sunday.
“I would assume, yes, he’d need Congress to act, and that’s a creative idea,” Johnson said in a CNN “State of the Union” interview on Sunday in response to a question about the payments.
Trump announced the payments during a speech at a Republican event in Dallas. Johnson said it was meant to boost turnout ahead of the midterm elections in several weeks.
“We have to figure all that out. But I think what he was articulating … is that he’s saying that, if you want more money in your pocket, you have to keep Republicans in charge,” Johnson said.
In a separate interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, when asked whether the payments would be sent, Johnson said that he would “commit that Congress will work through it and find consensus on that, like they have to do everything else.”
Johnson said that “it takes some time,” noting Republicans’ currently slim majorities in both the House and Senate. “I never go out and give big commitments on the front end because I’ve got to work through it, and that’s what we do every single day,” he added.
While he spoke to CNN, Johnson said that “pro-growth policies” backed by the Trump administration have led to tax cuts.
“They also have in additional take-home pay an average of $8,000 per filer. By the way, 97 percent of tax filers got a tax cut this year. We cut taxes on tips and overtime, Social Security, all those things,” he said.
Several Republicans publicly embraced the idea of sending the checks, including Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who wrote on X last week that he would prepare legislation for the payments. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) also said that “it was the first I heard of it last night” but called it good economic policy.
At the Republican midterm convention, Trump spoke to the crowd on both nights. On the first night, he promised to issue the $5,000 checks that he called the “Trump dividend” if Republicans perform well in the upcoming election.
Last week, the president told CBS News that he doesn’t think he will need Congress to act, adding, “I think they will do it if we needed it.”
The move sparked concern from Democrats and some Republicans who said that the payments would led to more debt and inflation.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said in a post on X that the payment plan would “explode the deficit, drive up the cost of home and auto loans, and send inflation skyrocketing,” and claimed the promise is merely an attempt to “pay off” people to vote for Republicans.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who ran against Trump in the 2024 presidential primary, told reporters last week that he doesn’t believe the payments are a good idea because they would lead to more inflation. Instead, he argued that surplus revenue should be used to cut taxes.
The payments, however, would not be funded with taxpayer-derived dollars, Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NBC News last week.
“It’s not tax money,” Lutnick said at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, explaining that the Trump administration would be able to “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers.”
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