Speaker Mike Johnson gave his reaction to Donald Trump’s promise to send Americans a $5,000 check if they protected Republican majorities in Congress during the upcoming midterm elections on Sunday. The speaker’s refusal to guarantee that such a measure could pass a Republican House and Senate was just one more sign that Trump’s latest Hail Mary was falling flat on Capitol Hill. Johnson was on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday to discuss the proposal, which Trump made at last week’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas.
The president told a cheering crowd of his supporters and Republican officials that every American adult would receive a one-time payment of $5,000 called the “Trump Dividend” if Republicans held both chambers of Congress in November, a promise that was immediately ripped as a bribe by his detractors online and in the media. Republicans currently control 53 seats in the Senate and a razor-thin margin in the House of Representatives, and have struggled to pass substantial legislation outside of the budget reconciliation framework. Welker asked why he wasn’t promising directly that such legislation would pass: “President Trump promised that to voters, though.
You’re not willing to double down on that promise?” “I’ll work with the president hand in hand, as I do all the time, and we’ll deliver for the American people. That’s the promise,” said Johnson. His remarks come as a number of other key Republican voices, like Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis and key conservatives in Congress, have reacted to the plan with emotions ranging from skepticism to full-on rejection.
"I would personally throw everything of my heart and soul to stop it, because it would actually do more damage to working people than would ever help them," Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican from Arizona, told . At a bruising debate with his Democratic opponent at the Kansas State Fair, Sen.
Roger Marshall — one of the early public supporters of the president’s idea — walked back his support for it. Ralph Norman, who just lost the South Carolina Senate primary to a Trump-backed candidate, Darline Graham Nordone, also came out in opposition last week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined to answer a question from a reporter last week on whether the $5,000 Trump Dividend could pass, responding only, “Good question.” On Fox News, he was just as evasive, telling Fox the Senate would “cross that bridge when we come to it.” Maine Sen.
Susan Collins, facing possibly the toughest re-election fight of her career, was outwardly opposed to it: “From the few details we have, it seems that the proposed $5,000 dividend would not have an income cap and would be extraordinarily costly,” she said. Steve Scalise, the number two Republican in the House, denied to CBS News that the money was a bribe. But he told the network: “It’s a reality to say Democrats are against this,” signaling his skepticism of being able to make legislation establishing the dividend pass the House and Senate without Republicans picking up more seats in both chambers.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
