By Preston Brady III
(MobileTribune.com)When President Trump delivers his televised speech to the American public tonight, he is likely to mention the “trillions of dollars” the country has collected in tariffs, and how he is working on a deal to give each American (who qualifies) about $2,000 each.
Such a plan is supposed to be reviewed by Congress, and if a majority agree, the payments could go out next year. However, in a classic Trump move he might bypass all the red tape and just have the Treasury cut the checks.
Throwing out some numbers: if 300 million Americans qualified for the gift, that would amount to six hundred billion dollars. Some economists are skeptical. Even if Trump did give this money to the public, it could trigger an unwanted inflation event: everybody’s got cash so why not raise prices a bit and forget to lower them when all the quick cash is spent?
Obviously, very few possible recipients of such a gift are going to bother themselves with those unnecessary details. If the government wants to send you free money, no strings attached, most people are going to say do it.
Trump says he is a fan of putting money directly in the hands of the American people, but so far these ideas have been in the brainstorming stages. For example, instead of extending Obamacare, the president would like to send healthcare premium subsidies directly to the public. The details are still in infancy, and no one is sure how this would play out or affect the ACA marketplace. Currently, the premiums are sent monthly to health insurance companies.
The danger of sending premium subsidies directly to recipients is they could use the funds for non-ACA policies, destabilizing the ACA marketplace and resulting in much higher premiums for those who remain in ACA.
Insurance premiums are a funny thing. You have to pay them even if you are not going to use the coverage. Let’s say you didn’t get sick all year. You still had to pay your monthly or annual premiums. If the president really wants to give more to the public and less to insurance companies, (whom he criticizes regularly) he might address the issue with the actual need for premiums in cases where insured are in such good health they are hardly if at all using the insurance. In breaking news today, 6 Republicans in the House crossed party lines and say they will vote on extending the ACA subsidies. However, the Senate has already voted a resounding no on the subsidies. It almost makes you wonder why we even need the House?
Both of the president’s ideas sound good on paper. Will they ever come to fruition, or is he just stringing people along until the country gets past the midterms? A good strategy for him and Republicans would be to offer up the $2,000 as a sort of Christmas present next year, to be paid very soon after the November 3 midterm elections.
Of course if Republicans lose control of the House or Senate the checks may not go out to some blue cities or blue states.
In the style of Trump-speak he might say “The Democrats don’t deserve a rebate. We’re only paying our people. Only our own. If you don’t like it, move to Somalia. Heck, we might even charter a few planes to help you out. Sean, do we have some extra planes we could spare? What do you think? Okay, Sean is nodding. I take that as a yes.”
Preston Brady III is editor and publisher of MobileTribune.com