President Donald Trump said that it will be “not a very big problem” for his administration to pay the cost of giving every adult citizen in the United States $5,000 if the Republicans win the midterm elections.
Trump made the promise on Wednesday night at the Republicans’ first-ever convention ahead of a midterm election in Dallas.
On Thursday, after the two-day rally concluded, Trump told reporters the “tremendous growth” the U.S. economy has seen in the last year would pay for the $5,000 dividend.
“We have growth like no country has ever seen before,” Trump said. “We have trillions of dollars coming in, and that will end up being not a very big problem at all.”
“And I think our people deserve it,” he said. “Don’t forget, they’re investing. They’ll be reinvesting it in our country.”
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Impact on Deficit and Debt
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimated there were 245 million adult U.S. citizens in the country as of 2024, meaning the payouts could cost about $1.3 trillion.
A reporter asked him if he was worried about the impact on the deficit, which currently stands at $1.78 trillion for the fiscal year.
“No, I’m not at all,” Trump said.
Another journalist pointed out the national debt is over $40 trillion, and asked Trump why, if the economy is doing so well, Americans needed an incentive to vote.
“I didn’t do it for turning out the vote,” Trump said. “I did it as a reward for people having to put up with five years, or four years, of a horrible situation caused by Biden.”
“I mean they had to put up with the four years, and they carried on for at least a half an additional year with just a horrible thing that Biden did to our country,” he said.
“And it’s not only just from an economic standpoint,” Trump said. “You look at the border, you look at the crime, and now we’ve got it under control.”
Gasoline prices are seen at an Exxon gas station in Houston on Aug. 25, 2026. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
Trump was then pressed on the Iran conflict and its impact on oil prices.
He said as soon as the United States wins the war the prices would go back to what they were before the conflict.
“There’s no cost-cutter like me, but Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
Gas Prices
He predicted the conflict would end either before or just after the midterms, and the price of gasoline would fall to $2 a gallon.
On Sept. 7, the price of gas varied from $3.68 to $5.36 a gallon.
A reporter asked him how he could be so confident.
“For gasoline I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty good at it,” Trump said, before saying that if he had to run the conflict with Iran again he would do it “exactly the same.”
He said that in February, the day before Operation Epic Fury was launched, he was in Iowa, and saw the price of gasoline was as low as $1.85 or $1.95 a gallon.
“And I think it’s going to match those numbers, maybe even be at some points below those numbers,” Trump said, referring to after the conflict ends.
On Wednesday night, shortly after the $5,000 dividend was announced, Vice President JD Vance defended the proposal, telling Fox News’ Bret Baier he did not think it was a “controversial idea.”
Vance called the amount of revenue made from tariffs “extraordinary.”
“What the President is just saying is, if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you’re going to share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we’re creating in the United States of America,” he said.
“Will post-conservative Republicans also try to defend Trump’s $5K ‘dividend’ socialist vote-buying scheme that would cost nearly $1 trillion?” he wrote.
“Trump proposes to give out more stimulus $$ than he & Biden did during COVID, which caused the current inflation, high interest rates & affordability crisis,” Good stated in another post. “This while the debt today is $40T, compared the $27T it was at the start of COVID.”
