Chip Roy on Trump dividends: ‘Dependency is evil & soul-sucking in all its forms’

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) criticized President Trump’s Wednesday proposal to give every American adult a $5,000 dividend if the GOP wins the midterms, as other Republicans have also voiced skepticism about the pledge.

“Some of us think dependency is evil & soul-sucking in all its forms,” Roy wrote Thursday on social platform X , pushing back on venture capitalist Clint Brown’s defense of the president’s proposal .

On Wednesday, the staunchly conservative Texan estimated that giving every American adult $5,000 would cost the federal government $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2027.

“Dear certain friends… deficits aside – you could almost ZERO out taxes for married parents of dependents up to $200,000 over 10 years!” Roy wrote on X .

Trump made the promise Wednesday, saying he will send the dividends to every adult citizen only if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate in November.

“Because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” he said at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas.

There are roughly 270 million adults in the U.S. The president did not offer specifics on the proposal outside of saying recipients could only spend the money in the U.S.

“We don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money,” Trump remarked. “We don’t want you going to China, to Germany.”

It is unclear whether Congress would have to pass legislation approving the dividends. When the president proposed sending $2,000 tariff dividend checks to Americans last year, he claimed he didn’t “believe” he needed congressional approval to do so. The tariff dividend checks proposal never came to fruition.

Trump made Wednesday’s promise less than a month after the U.S. national debt crossed the $40 trillion threshold . The debt has increased by more than $3.8 trillion since the start of the president’s second term.

Roy’s estimated cost of the dividend is slightly less than the amount the federal government has paid in interest on the debt this fiscal year: $1.27 trillion . The U.S. government has paid more than $1 trillion in interest on the debt in each of the last three fiscal years.

Roy, who is departing Congress after losing the GOP primary runoff for Texas attorney general in May, was not alone among Republicans in opposing Trump’s proposal.

Former Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) called the idea a “socialist vote-buying scheme” early Thursday morning.

“Sadly, most ‘conservatives’ don’t even know (or care) that the president doesn’t have the constitutional authority to spend $$, or send out ‘dividend’ checks without Congress,” Good wrote later Thursday on X .