President Donald Trump made one of his boldest promises yet on stage Wednesday night at the Republican midterm convention in Texas - he vowed to send $5,000 to every adult American citizen if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections. Now all we have to do, now all we have to do is win.” The pledge fits a pattern for Trump. Since returning to the White House last year, he has repeatedly floated proposals to send cash directly to tens of millions of Americans, whether framed as stimulus checks or dividends.
But 19 months into his second term, no such large-scale payments have been issued - and Americans are left waiting for his promises to be fulfilled. Early in 2025, when Elon Musk was slashing the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency, an investor floated the idea sending Americans $5,000 checks — funded by savings the cuts would accrue. It was their money in the first place,” the investor, James Fishback, wrote on X on February 14, 2025.
Musk said he would check with Trump on the idea. A few days later, the president expressed interest, bringing it up repeatedly. "We're considering giving 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% to paying down the debt," he said during a Florida event.
Later on Air Force One, he told reporters: “I love it. A 20% dividend, so to speak, for the money that we saving by going after the waste and fraud and abuse and all the other things that are happening.” Musk’s DOGE experiment, which polls showed was unpopular, did not end up reducing federal spending. And the so-called DOGE Dividend never materialized.
Later in 2025, after Trump unveiled his sweeping Liberation Day tariffs, the president vowed to send back some of the revenue generated by the levies to Americans. A New York Times reporter asked the president about the dividends in January — before the Supreme Court’s landmark decision — and he said those payments could potentially be sent out at the end of 2026, now only a few months away. In December 2025, Trump signaled his support for a GOP proposal that would have deposited checks of up to $1,500 into Americans’ health care accounts.
The proposal was unveiled by Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, to give certain Affordable Care Act enrollees a one-time deposit of either $1,000 or $1,500. An estimated 19.2 million people are enrolled in ACA Exchange plans as of February. Amid Trump’s multiple proposals to send out checks to Americans, the U.S. national debt continues to balloon to record levels, topping $40 trillion for the first time last month.
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