President Donald Trump’s newest wacky idea – a $5,000 bribe (sorry, dividend) issued by Uncle Donald to every American adult – emits a scent of desperation so foul that even his most ardent supporters, including Fox News, have dumped on it.
It’s obvious that the leader of the Republican Party, and the free world, is trying to pay off voters in a lame attempt to halt the GOP’s depressing march toward Election Day disaster.
But for all the progressives cackling over Trump’s latest big, bad idea, here’s a mirror. You can use it to see the face of hypocrisy. Trump’s dividend idea isn’t just absurd. It’s also in step ideologically and practically with leading Democrats’ socialist agenda.
The idea that the government should bail out Americans, even when
we aren’t asking for it, must come from somewhere, but it’s definitely not in the manual that made this country the strongest economic engine in history.
Trump’s handout would add more than $1 trillion to the budget deficit, which would pour gasoline on the fires of inflation and push interest rates even higher. But, hey, what’s one more spending spree we can’t afford when we’re already $40 trillion in debt?
Fiscally irresponsible may be the kindest way to describe the Trump dividends. The same should be said of the ideas the socialist branch of the Democratic Party is pushing.
Democratic socialists' failing plan could cost at least $71 trillion
Democrats have long been the tax-and-spend party of American politics, but the democratic socialist candidates who have captured progressives’ imagination this year make old-school Democrats look like misers.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, estimates that socialists’ core proposals such as universal health care and reparations would cost at least $71 trillion over the next decade.
Democratic socialists say they’ll pay for all this new spending by taxing wealthy Americans and large corporations at higher rates. If you believe that the new taxes would stop there, the Trump family has some crypto to sell you.
Democrats’ turn toward full-scale socialism has come at the same time European socialists are trimming government handouts because they are unsustainably expensive.
But facts don’t seem to matter when there’s an election to buy and voters to fool.
The economy doesn't need Trump's dividend bribery
It’s ironic that the politicians’ competing promises to fuel prosperity by burning tax dollars have overshadowed a new Census Bureau report that shows how well most Americans are doing financially – and without the handouts Trump and the socialists are dangling in front of voters.
In 2025, median household income hit $87,460, the highest ever recorded. Median income rose 4.8% for Black households and 3% for White households.
The poverty rate fell to 10.2% – it’s declined 19.7% since 2016. And the child poverty rate and the Hispanic poverty rate fell to record lows.
All of which, along with a raft of other strong economic indicators, point to the Trump dividend as superfluous.
Yet, as bad as Trump’s ploy is, it wouldn’t be nearly as disastrous as the democratic socialists' economic agenda.
Trump frustrates me. The socialist rise in the Democratic ranks scares me because of the lasting harm it could do to our nation and Americans’ standard of living.
Thankfully, Election Day is drawing near, and the season of promises made that candidates can never keep will once again end.
It can’t get here soon enough.
Tim Swarens is a former deputy opinion editor of USA TODAY and former opinion editor of The Indianapolis Star.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump, democratic socialists are both trying to bribe voters | Opinion
