MAGA Sen. Ron Johnson delivered a blunt reality check to President Trump’s plan of handing $2,000 to American citizens, insisting, “We can’t afford it.”
The 70-year-old Johnson, a Trump loyalist from Wisconsin, said reducing the U.S.’s deficit was more important than giving Americans free money during a Monday episode of Mornings With Maria on Fox Business Network.
“We’re $38 trillion in debt,” he told anchor Maria Bartiromo. “We’ve averaged $1.89 trillion deficits over the last five years. In the next 10 years, the projection’s about $26 trillion from accumulated deficits.”
Johnson warned that the country is on “borrowed time” with its “deficit problem.”
“So many people are whistling by the graveyard. If we’re bringing in revenue through the tariffs, that oughta be applied to reduce the deficit, not just making a cash payment to Americans.”
When asked by Bartiromo if he would vote “No” on legislation to give Americans $2,000 checks, he said, “We can’t afford it. I wish we were in a position to return the American public their money, but we’re not.”
Trump, 79, announced in a Truth Social posting spree earlier in November that “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
The promise was slipped in as Trump defended his tariffs, which are being argued before the Supreme Court. In his post, Trump also said that revenue from the tariffs would begin to address the national debt.
The proposal immediately sparked division within the GOP, as top Trump officials cast doubt on the notion that the checks would be released simply because Trump said they would.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month that the idea would need to pass Congress. The White House has pushed Congress to vote on the checks so that they could come out “by the middle of 2026”—just before the midterm elections—but Republican Senators John Thune, Bernie Moreno, Shelley Moore Capito, Rand Paul, and now Johnson have all voiced their opposition to the idea.
Bessent insisted the $2,000 check was less of a literal check and more of an abstract benefit to Americans.
“The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms and lots of ways. It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Deductibility of auto loans,” he said on ABC.
Experts say the checks could cost the U.S. government between $200 billion and $300 billion, depending on who the Trump administration designates as eligible. The Bipartisan Policy Center found that the U.S. has brought in $226 billion in gross tariff revenue so far in 2025.
Should the checks be quashed by Congress, it would be the second time the GOP shut down Trump’s desire to give out $2,000 to Americans. The GOP previously killed Trump’s push to send out $2,000 COVID stimulus checks in December 2020.
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