NYT (“Trump’s Dubious Midterm Pitch: Keep Us in Power and Everyone Gets Cash“):

President Trump took the stage at his convention on Wednesday and spoke for nearly two hours about the need for midterm voters to imagine that it was him, not other Republicans, up for election this fall.

“Pretend I’m on the ballot,” he urged. “I’m on the ballot. Just one more time.”

I suspect a lot of people will do just that. Which will win the election for sure, given how wildly popular he is with real Americans. (Ignore those lying polls.)

Facing dwindling weeks until the midterms, deepening unpopularity and darkening political prospects for his party, Mr. Trump interrupted his usual fare by tossing out a new idea: a $5,000 check for every American adult if Republicans keep control of Congress in November.

“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” Mr. Trump said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

Does it count if the Senate’s 50-50 and Vice President Vance can cast a tie-breaking vote? Or does it have to be a clean win?

It is not unheard-of for politicians to tie the possibility of an economic stimulus to an election’s outcome. In 2020, Democrats in Georgia pointed to $2,000 coronavirus relief checks if their party took control of the Senate.

Promising to pass a stimulus bill if elected isn’t exactly the same as promising to send out a check based on the election outcome, but okay: both sides do it.

But few have been as brazen as Mr. Trump, who often dangles the possibility of free money if it means achieving his political goals, even as he seeks to undermine public trust in elections. In the same speech, Mr. Trump insisted that he won the presidential election three times (he didn’t) and accused Democrats of trying to cheat in elections.

Talk about your non sequiturs. What I want to know is: when do we get our sweet, sweet cash?

In several cases, the money Mr. Trump has promised in the past has not materialized. He has proposed $2,000 checks based on tariff revenues (in an interview with The New York Times in January, he said that money could arrive by the end of this year). He has also floated $5,000 payments from money saved by eliminating thousands of federal jobs, and assorted payments to Americans from government health care subsidies.

I’m sure he’ll get around to it. I mean, he’s been busy starting wars and building monuments to himself.

Republicans did send Americans larger, direct payments this year in the form of heftier tax refunds. Mr. Trump and Republicans designed last year’s tax cut so that it would deliver bigger refunds, rather than slightly lower their payments over time. The hope was that one larger lump sum could help Republicans win the midterms.

Sweet, sweet cash.

But Mr. Trump’s latest notion would be exorbitantly expensive.

It would cost more than $1.3 trillion to send $5,000 checks to each of the roughly 270 million adults in the U.S., making such a plan almost prohibitively costly for a country with a $40 trillion national debt.

That’s even more than the Inflation Reduction Act. Or the proposed defense (er, War) budget.

Mr. Trump said that the money would come with just one caveat: It must be spent in the United States.

“We don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money,” he told the crowd. “We don’t want you going to China, to Germany. You got to spend the money in the United States of America.”

Done! I mean, it’s not hard to find Chinese goods without leaving the house.

Outside the cost and the complications of carrying out a plan that would track voter spending, Mr. Trump’s latest pledge could raise legal questions. Federal laws prohibit expenditures to influence voting, but he has framed his proposal as a promise that will be delivered upon later, as an economic incentive.

I’m sure the Justice Department will let it slide in any cash. I mean, who doesn’t love sweet, sweet cash?

Jessica Levinson, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that Mr. Trump’s statement did not seem too far afield from a promise to lower taxes.

Right? It’s essentially a sweet, sweet tax refund.

And Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Mr. Trump’s promise was protected speech under the First Amendment, pointing to Brown v. Hartlage, a unanimous Supreme Court decision from 1982 that struck down the application of a Kentucky law preventing candidates from making monetary promises in return for votes. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote in the court’s opinion that “so long as the hoped-for personal benefit is to be achieved through the normal processes of government, and not through some private arrangement, it has always been, and remains, a reputable basis upon which to cast one’s ballot.”

Suck on that, Democrats.

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that advises election officials, said that Mr. Trump’s proposal appeared to be part of a broader effort by the president to sow doubt about the country’s election systems.

“Whether it’s legal or not, it seems — just like with a lot of his election disinformation — it seems rather desperate,” Mr. Becker said in an interview. “Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the voters whether or not they trust this man to deliver on his promises.”

He added: “If I were a voter, I would be asking myself, why are you promising to do this in 2027? You control both houses now. Why not deliver on this promise now?”

You know why, Becker. Don’t play dumb with me.

The president did not seem particularly concerned about the details of the plan, but he was sure about what he would call it: The $5,000 payments would be known as Trump Dividends.

Damn straight.

In related news . . . .

Axios (“Exclusive: Trump plans to send $500 Obamacare rebates before election“):

The Trump administration plans to send $500 rebate checks to as many as 1 million people who it says were overcharged for their coverage under Obamacare, Axios has learned.

The direct-deposit payment would be sent to people in 30 states before the Nov. 3 midterm election, as Trump touts savings from his tax-cut legislation and prescription drug plan.

The payments also underscore a tenet of Trump’s idea for remaking the health care system, which involves subsidizing more Americans directly for their coverage instead of paying health insurers.

Trump plans to mention the rebates in his speech Wednesday night at the Republicans’ midterm convention, which he’s hosting in Dallas.
Zoom in: The money for the rebates would come from what the White House says is a $500 million fund of excess fees paid by Affordable Care Act recipients who were overcharged by insurance companies during the Biden administration.

The excess fees were rendered back to the government, officials said. “That money was over-collected and just sitting there” in government accounts, a U.S. official told Axios.

Officials say the refunds are available to Obamacare enrollees who don’t receive premium assistance under the insurance program. Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Delaware, New Hampshire, Texas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri were specifically mentioned as states with relatively large numbers of recipients who are due refunds.

I don’t live in any of those states or get my coverage from ObamaCare. So, I guess I’ll have to settle for that sweet, sweet five grand.