Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis scolded President Trump on Thursday for offering $5,000 checks to all Americans if Republicans hold the House and Senate in the 2026 midterm elections, saying the payouts would cause inflation to surge.
DeSantis, who was a fiscal hawk when he served in the House from 2013 to 2018, rebuked the concept of the Trump dividends during a press conference in Miami — and suggested the president should instead consider additional tax cuts.
“If you are getting surplus revenue, you should cut people’s tax and return it to the people,” the Republican governor and 2024 primary opponent of the president said, according to Politico.
“What I don’t think you want to do is borrow another $1.5 trillion, and then just try to flood that into the economy, because that will lead to more inflation,” DeSantis added. “That will lead to more debt and more inflation.”
“The lesson of Florida is by creating a good economic environment, by having low taxes and no income tax, that has expanded our economic base,” DeSantis also said Thursday. “And so, even though you’re cutting taxes, you’re taking in more revenue because you have more economic activity. So it’s a virtuous cycle.”
The post-midterm, $5,000-per-American proposal caught many Republicans off guard when Trump announced it from the stage during a marathon speech at the midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday night.
“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our tremendous economic success,” he said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”
If 245 million American adults all got a check, it could cost taxpayers more than $1.2 trillion.
But Vice President JD Vance told Fox News in an interview later that the checks would be limited to the American middle- and working-class and the money for it would be taken from revenue generated by the 47th president’s tariffs.
“What the president’s just saying is, if you keep it going, to the American people, 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 on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
That would be complicated, however, by the Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs, since the 47th president’s administration has been forced to return the revenue from those duties.
The US also brought in just under $300 billion from the tariffs during fiscal year 2026 as of July 27, per to the latest data from US Customs and Border Protection.
Still, Republicans have remained skeptical of the proposal and its price tag given the ballooning, roughly $40 trillion in debt held by the US.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggested in an interview on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” that the giveaway could be “structured as a tax refund” for working Americans.
“If you’re working, you’re paying income taxes, you’re paying Social Security taxes; I would be all for structuring it as a tax refund,” Cruz said.
“But I think we should be incentivizing work; I don’t think we should be paying people that are not working, particularly those that are physically able to work but are choosing not to.”
