Donald Trump Tries to Buy Votes While Drowning in Debt

Can democracy survive once people realize they can vote themselves free money? Each American adult has already received $3,200, plus extra for dependents, in stimulus money through three covid stimulus checks. Now Donald Trump is promising $5,000 for every adult if Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate after midterm elections in November.

• It would cost America over a trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, America’s debt is spiraling out of control. In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stepped up his intervention in the bond market to try to keep U.S. interest rates under control.

• Bessent bought back long-term bonds, in effect paying those debts off early.
• But where does an indebted country get the money to pay off its loans? By incurring more debt, this time in the form of short-term loans.
• It helps lower the long-term interest rate America pays—but at the expense of the nation constantly having to go cap-in-hand to investors.

Bessent also had to bail out the Japanese yen to stop a currency crisis that would have forced Japan to sell some of its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds and spread that crisis to America.

These major interventions have accomplished little. Yields on U.S. treasuries are almost back to the 5.3 percent level they reached before Bessent bought the long-term bonds. And just days after Bessent’s “yentervention,” the value of the yen is sliding.

• Bessent was reduced to impotently threatening markets yesterday, declaring: “I am the house now. You can bet against me if you want.”

While Bessent risks his credibility, and perhaps his sanity, trying to keep the interest America pays on its debt down, Donald Trump is promising massive new spending: handing out free money as an election bribe.

• America suffers from high inflation; handing out cash to all will make the problem worse.

Perhaps the only silver lining is that President Trump has promised free money before, including a $2,000 “tariff dividend” last year, and hasn’t followed through.

• His new “Trump Dividend” requires approval from the House and Senate, which is unlikely even if Republicans retain or increase their majority at the midterms. He knows this—and is perhaps counting on it.

This has a “last days of Rome” feel to it. In fact, as the Roman Empire went through one of its greatest times of crisis in A.D. 193, the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the job of emperor, promising it to whoever gave them the most money. Already, the presidency often goes to the party that promises to borrow the most and hand out the most benefits for voters. Now this has degenerated to simple cash bribes ahead of elections.

“Empires fail when people sacrifice character for free stuff,” we wrote in our special Trumpet issue on the modern Romans. In U.S. politics, has there ever been a more naked example of this?