Josh Hawley’s rebate checks are just a Band-Aid for Trump tariffs | Opinion

We start today with two truths: First: Everybody likes to get a big check in the mail.

Second: Because of that, there is no percentage — none — in being the person who argues against getting a big check in mail. If you’re putting on a debate against free money, free money will win every single time.

Having said that: I am here to be the guy who argues against everybody getting a big check in the mail.

Really. Sorry.

This is necessary because Sen. Josh Hawley — fresh off the drubbing he’s been taking for his vote to cut Medicaid — on Friday announced he planned new legislation to, well, send a big check to everybody in the mail.

“Working people need relief now,” Hawley wrote on social media. “They’ve earned it. Let’s return their money to them asap.” Hawley’s bill, introduced Monday, would send at least $600 per adult and child to taxpaying households.

Which sounds great. Except for the part where it’s a terrible idea.

A Band-Aid for bad policies

Some context is needed here: Hawley didn’t come up with the “free money” out of the blue. It originated with President Donald Trump, who last week said his administration was considering a “rebate” to taxpayers of all the big money the government is collecting from all the tariffs he has imposed on foreign imports. “We have so much money coming in,” Trump told reporters, “we’re thinking about a little rebate.”

Now, it’s true that the tariffs are bringing more cash into the Treasury. The government has collected more than $124 billion in tariffs so far this year, up about a third over the same time last year.

You know who is paying that extra money? You.

Trump would like Americans to think that foreign countries pay the tariffs on the products they sell in America. They don’t. The consumers who buy those imported products — me and you — ultimately pay the extra cost.

Indeed, prices are starting to rise a little faster as a result of Trump’s tariffs. The Consumer Price Index — the government’s measure of inflation — was up 2.7% in June, higher than expected and the fastest pace of inflation since February.

Which means that the Hawley-Trump “check to everybody” idea is a Band-Aid for the harm being done by Trump’s economic policies. (Remember when Trump in his first administration sent huge amounts of taxpayer money — $23 billion — to farmers hurt by his tariffs on China? This is the same thing.) If working people “need relief,” as Hawley says, it might be easier and cheaper to just stop having bad policies.

Even worse? It’s a Band-Aid that might make the bleeding worse. Economists say the rebate checks would probably just accelerate inflation even more. Americans “will go out and spend some of that money, and that would further put upward pressure on prices,” Joseph Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told CNBC.

Like I said: Bad idea.

One Big Beautiful Bill adds trillions to debt

In my adult lifetime, there have been two types of events that caused the government to send out big checks to everybody.

The first happened in 2001: President George W. Bush — having campaigned on a promise to return the government’s budget surplus to taxpayers — sent every taxpayer at least $300 in the mail. They were called “Bush Bucks.”

But you may have noticed the government isn’t running a surplus right now. Indeed, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill — the one Hawley voted for — is expected to pile up more than $3 trillion in new debt. Sending everybody free money would just dig the debt hole even deeper.

Checks have also gone out when the country is facing a devastating economic crisis. That’s why Americans got money from the government in 2008, at the outset of the Great Recession, and again multiple times during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.

We’re not facing that kind of problem right now. At least, not yet.

So why do Trump and Hawley want to send out unnecessary checks that will grow the debt and accelerate inflation? Probably because it’s fun. Maybe because voters who get checks with Donald Trump’s name on the signature line might be inclined to reward Republicans during next year’s midterms elections.

And this is just a guess: Hawley might also be trying to earn back some of the working class credibility he frittered away with his Medicaid vote.

Everybody likes getting a big check in the mail, after all. The problem with Hawley’s proposal, though, is that it compounds the problems it supposedly solves. Free money is never free.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.