Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the Trump administration will not use tax dollars to pay the $5,000 dividends President Trump promised U.S. adults if the Republicans win the November midterm elections.
“Together we’re going to deliver that plan and we’re going to pay that money to the Americans and not from taxpayer money,” Mr. Lutnick told NBC News in an interview.
“It’s not tax money,” he added.
Mr. Lutnick said there are plenty of ways for the administration to cough up the cash necessary to cover the estimated $1.2 trillion cost of paying $5,000 to roughly 270 million U.S. adult citizens.
He said the administration could “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers.”
Mr. Lutnick cited the money that could be generated from the Trump Platinum Card, which has not launched. The program requires immigration applicants to pay a $15,000 processing fee and an additional $5 million contribution to the U.S. government to be guaranteed citizenship.
“We have a waitlist of more than 100,000 people who want to come,” he said. “That’s $500 billion.”
He also said the funds could come from the money the federal government made after Mr. Trump bought a stake in tech company Intel. Mr. Trump said that stake has generated more than $30 billion for the government over the last several months.
“Everybody knows we got just about 500 million shares, and the stock was $20, and now it’s $100, so we’re up $50 billion,” Mr. Lutnick said.
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that the $5,000 payout can be done “in a fiscally responsible way.”
Mr. Hassett said one possibility was to fund the payouts through a reconciliation bill, a legislative mechanism that the majority party in the House and Senate can use to approve a fiscal package while bypassing the need for votes from the opposing party.
When pressed on what type of offsets would be necessary in the reconciliation bill to fund more than $1.2 trillion in new spending, Mr. Hassett said that would have to be “negotiated with Congress.”
Mr. Trump proposed the dividend while speaking at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. He said it would be paid to U.S. adult citizens if the GOP wins both the House and Senate.
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