Apparently, the going rate for American democracy is now $5,000.
President Donald Trump has floated the idea of sending Americans a $5,000 dividend check if Republicans retain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Five thousand dollars. Courtesy of the federal government. Provided, of course, that voters deliver the desired political outcome.
Now, that sounds suspiciously like socialism from the party that has spent years warning Americans about the dangers of — checks notes — socialism. Funny how government handouts become patriotic dividends when the checks have Republican signatures.
Remember the DOGE dividend checks? The ones Americans were supposedly going to receive from eliminating government waste?
I’m still waiting for mine. Or the $2,000 tariff dividend checks, which apparently got lost somewhere between the Chinese factories paying those tariffs and the mailbox.
But there’s a more troubling question here.
Since when does a sitting president get to dangle taxpayer-funded payments in front of voters, contingent upon his political party winning an election?
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who got many sunburns visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, can say these checks won’t come at taxpayers’ expense, but I’ve got news for him: the federal government doesn’t generate any money of its own. Every dollar it spends comes from taxpayers, borrowing, or printing money and sooner or later, Americans foot the bill.
Congress controls federal spending, not the president. And while a broad promise of government benefits may not technically constitute illegal vote buying under federal law, surely we’re entitled to question whether this arrangement violates the spirit of our electoral system.
After all, if a candidate stood outside a polling place offering voters $5,000 to support his party, we’d have a considerably different conversation.
Does attaching a government seal and calling it a dividend suddenly make the proposition respectable? And why, exactly, must Americans deliver another Republican majority before receiving money supposedly owed to them?
But beyond the political hypocrisy, there’s something profoundly insulting about the entire proposition. Our constitutional republic was built, defended, and preserved through sacrifices of soldier’s lives that cannot be measured in dollars.
There are families across this country who have buried loved ones who died defending the freedoms we exercise every Election Day. Parents who lost children. Spouses who lost partners. Children who grew up knowing their mothers or fathers only through photographs.
Their sacrifices helped preserve a system in which the government answers to the people, not the other way around. And now we’re supposed to entertain the notion that a billionaire president can wave $5,000 in front of ordinary Americans and expect them to compromise their political convictions? What an extraordinary insult to those families, and to the intelligence of the American electorate.
The presidency is not a game show. Elections are not auctions. And citizens are not peasants waiting for a wealthy ruler to toss coins from the balcony.
Joshua Wade
