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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., based his new bill to send $600 tariff rebate checks to Americans off of an idea from President Donald Trump. It’s still running into friendly fire from his fellow Republicans.
Hawley told Semafor he faces long odds but argued the politics would be on Republicans’ side. “It probably would be the most popular thing that this Congress would do. Which means, of course, Republicans would be against it,” he said.
In interviews on Tuesday, several GOP senators — including one who generally aligns with Hawley on tariffs — said they couldn’t support the proposal while the country is running $2 trillion deficits.
“Oh god no, insane. Two reasons. Number one, we have a $37 trillion debt … number two, it’s extraordinarily inflationary. It’s fiscal stimulus,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, arguing those checks would drive up prices for working-class people.
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Hawley has offered a blitz of legislation this year to try and reshape his party to mixed results; on Wednesday his stock-trading ban is supposed to get a committee vote. And he tried to scuttle some of the tax cut bill’s Medicaid cuts — and still is — but ultimately voted for the bill after a rural hospital fund was doubled to $50 billion and he received a long-sought nuclear compensation provision.
The direct payments to Americans are square in his wheelhouse: In Dec. 2020, he was trying to send $1,200 payments to Americans with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. That didn’t attract much support in the GOP — and neither are the tariff payments.
“Once we’re down to a surplus that’s fine. We’re about $2 trillion away from that. So no, I would oppose it. People love spending money and granting new tax cuts when we can’t afford it,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “We’re $37 trillion in debt and running $2 trillion a year deficits, some time this madness just has to end.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a like-minded conservative, was slightly more charitable: “We ought to do everything we can to give money back to the American public. But we’ve got to first balance our budget.”
Of course, Congress is nowhere near balancing the budget. And that means Hawley’s tariff rebates don’t have much of a path right now in the Senate.
But Hawley warned that, if Republicans don’t course correct, “these guys are gonna go get their butts kicked in this midterm election pretty soon, because the stuff they’ve been doing is unpopular.
“I mean, they want to go out and cut Medicaid, which is stupid. They don’t want to do anything for working people,” Hawley said. “They ought to be listening to what President Trump ran on and do that. And by the way, this [tariff rebate] is Trump’s idea. I’m just the first one to introduce it.”
