Trump floats giving Americans cash for health care and tariff dividends

President Donald Trump this weekend floated directly paying Americans for their health care costs and giving out $2,000 dividends from tariff revenue, ideas that administration officials later said were not formal proposals being sent to the Senate.

In one Truth Social post on Saturday, the president wrote, “I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE.”

The following day, he again posted that Republicans should give money directly to people’s health savings accounts, which allow people to save pretax money that can be used for certain medical expenses.

Referring to his tariff agenda, Trump wrote, “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the president’s recommendation to Senate Republicans on health care was not yet fully worked out.

“We don’t have a formal proposal,” Bessent told ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “We’re not proposing it to the Senate right now, no.”

Bessent said any such proposal was contingent on ending the government shutdown, which on Monday will stretch into its 41st day.

“The president is posting about it, but again, we have got to get the government reopened before we do this. We are not going to negotiate with the Democrats until they reopen the government. It’s very simple,” he said.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, similarly downplayed the idea on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning.

“He’s brainstorming and trying to help the Senate come up with a deal that can get the government open,” Hassett said.

“Everybody believes that people should have health care, and so why not take the people who have higher health care premiums and just mail them a check and let them decide,” he added.

Hassett said the idea hasn’t been widely discussed within the Senate or the Trump administration.

“The president started this idea yesterday. I don’t think that it’s been discussed widely in the Senate yet. It’s the weekend,” Hassett added. The Senate remained in Washington over the weekend, gaveling into rare Saturday and Sunday sessions to continue discussions about how to end the shutdown.

Bessent was also asked on ABC about Trump’s proposal to give people a $2,000 tariff “dividend.” He said he hadn’t yet spoken to the president about it, but that it “could come in lots of forms.”

“It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans,” he said. “So those are substantial deductions that are being financed in the tax bill.”

The idea of sending tariff rebate checks came up earlier this year as well.

After Trump in July said he would favor sending tariff rebate checks to Americans, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced a bill that would provide $600 checks to American adults and children using tariff revenue. The Senate has not yet taken up that bill for a vote.

Trump’s posts came as Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill remained in a stalemate over the ongoing government shutdown, with no clear path to a deal.

An NBC News poll released earlier this month found that Americans blame Republicans more for the shutdown than they do Democrats.

Democrats swept Tuesday’s elections, winning by larger-than-expected margins in key races in New Jersey and Virginia. Exit polls found that voters in those states generally disapproved of Trump’s job in office so far and were sour on the state of the U.S. economy.

Since then, Trump has doubled down on his insistence that the economy is strong. In one of the Truth Social posts on Sunday, the president wrote, “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. 401k’s are Highest EVER.”

Still, the posts this weekend seemed to be an acknowledgment that Republicans may need to do more.

In a memo Friday, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called Tuesday’s elections “an unequivocal Blue Sweep” brought about because “Donald Trump and the Republicans are screwing Americans, while Democrats are fighting for them.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com