How Trump's $5,000 check promise is supposed to work

Catch up quick: Trump first announced the "dividend checks" Wednesday night during the first night of the GOP's midterm convention in Dallas, suggesting the checks would arrive only if Republicans keep the House and Senate this fall.

• He said Americans deserve the checks "because we've done so well, and because our country is making so much money."

White House's pitch for the $5,000 check

Zoom in: The White House offered four arguments Thursday for why the checks can happen:

1. Trump's push for private investment, crackdown on government waste and other economic policies created new wealth that Americans should benefit from.
2. The checks are "the next chapter" of Trump's push to put more money in Americans' pockets, following tax cut policies.
3. The capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the recent Venezuelan oil deal are evidence that Trump can pull off things Washington once thought impossible, and the $5,000 checks are his next big swing.
4. The White House says the checks would depend on Republicans controlling the House and Senate, arguing Democratic policies would leave American families worse off. That echoes Trump's claim that Democrats wouldn't support the payments.

The hurdles facing Trump's $5,000 checks

Reality check: Some lawmakers are already skeptical of the $5,000 check idea, suggesting it would only increase the federal deficit, which is already running around $2 trillion a year.

• The checks would cost an additional $1.3 trillion, Axios' Neil Irwin writes.
• So even if the GOP controls Congress after the midterms, lawmakers would have to agree to add another trillion in spending, or identify ways to cover the costs — something they've been unwilling to do before.

Flashback: Trump has floated or backed checks for Americans in the past, including tariff rebates of up to $2,000 and $5,000 "DOGE dividend" checks. None were issued.

• Those checks faced the same problem this new proposal does: Federal payments require Congressional approval.
• Republicans balked at $2,000 tariff-check proposal last year, arguing the money should go toward reducing the deficit opposed to Americans' pocketbooks.
• The DOGE checks never materialized as Congress would have needed to approve massive spending cuts beyond the savings via DOGE cuts.

How the $5,000 checks could happen

Zoom out: It's unclear how the government would pay for the checks.

• Trump told CBS on Thursday that he wouldn't need Congress to send them, even though the Constitution requires federal spending to be authorized by law.
• Vice President Vance suggested tariff revenue could fund the checks, framing them as a benefit for Americans brought on by Trump's trade policies.
• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NBC News Thursday that taxpayer dollars would not fund the checks and that the administration would "earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers."
• Lutnick also referenced the Trump Platinum Card program — a visa program for wealthy foreign nationals with a $5 million price tag — as a potential source of $500 billion.

Yes, but: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told Fox Business on Friday that the checks would come through a budget reconciliation bill passed by Congress.

• He said Republicans would "work with the White House to come up with a way to get some of the riches that have basically been pouring into the United States back to the American people in a fiscally responsible way."

The bottom line: The White House is all-in on promising these $5,000 checks. How the promise turns into payments remains unclear.