Hello and welcome back to Receipts. This week’s edition looks at Trump’s favorite (and really, only) affordability proposal: sending out multi-thousand-dollar stimulus checks. Sometimes he says they’ll be funded by DOGE savings, sometimes by tariff revenue, and sometimes by sunsetting health subsidies. Of course those savings don’t actually exist, and the checks never materialize. Which, as I explain below, is actually a good thing—at least if you’re worried about inflation. Today’s full newsletter is for Bulwark+ members. I hope you’ll consider signing up to become a member yourself. You’ll be able to read today’s full newsletter—and all our locked content—and join in the comments section. You’ll get ad-free versions of our podcasts and videos. And your support will help us keep tracking the most ridiculous economic promises coming out of this White House. Not a bad deal—especially at 20 percent off the usual price: –Catherine Trump’s Magically Disappearing Stimulus ChecksI was promised cheaper groceries and tariff rebates and all I got was this lousy pogrom.
CHECK OUT THE NUMBERS: Hiring has slowed significantly. In fact, we had less job growth all of last year than we had in an average month during the Biden administration. Inflation is still too hot. Health insurance costs have spiked. And it turns out that, despite President Donald Trump’s promises that foreign companies would be paying for his tariffs, in fact it’s U.S. consumers who are paying 95 percent of the domestic cost, according to the Congressional Budget Office. No surprise, then, that Americans are big mad about the economy. So mad, in fact, that they miss Joe Biden’s economy, which as you may recall they very much despised. The Trump administration has a two-part strategy for allaying these concerns:
Previous editions of Receipts have covered #1, including Trump’s habit of calling affordability concerns a “hoax.” So let’s home in on #2, particularly since the president reiterated in his NBC News interview last week that he would send out $2,000 checks. “I’m the only one can do it,” he said, “because I’m takin’ in hundreds of billions of dollars of money from tariffs.” But the real record of his promises over the past year suggests otherwise... Join The Bulwark to unlock the rest.Become a paying member of The Bulwark to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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Trump’s Magically Disappearing Stimulus Checks
February 12, 2026
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