[Anchor]
Following his promise to give 5,000 dollars to every adult if the Republican Party wins the US midterm elections, US President Donald Trump has unveiled yet another cash pledge. This time, right before the elections, he announced that he would return 500 dollars each to one million people for health insurance premiums overcharged during the Biden administration. The opposition party strongly pushed back, accusing him of attempting to buy voters with money.
Here is a report from Washington correspondent Lee Hanseok.
[Reporter]
US President Donald Trump announced a new cash refund plan through a video posted on the official White House social media.
He stated that because health insurance premiums were unfairly overcharged through the Obamacare insurance exchanges during the Biden administration, he would return 500 dollars each, or about 670,000 won, to one million people across 30 states.
[Trump / US President: Our administration is doing the right thing and returning money to those who were wrongfully harmed.]
The White House emphasized that checks would be sent out immediately starting in October, just ahead of the midterm elections.
Previously, at a convention in Dallas the day before, Trump mentioned that if the Republican Party maintains its majority status in both the federal Senate and House of Representatives in the upcoming midterms, he would pay 5,000 dollars, or about 6.7 million won, to every American adult.
In response, Vice President JD Vance said that the funds for the dividend would be covered by tariffs.
Paying 5,000 dollars to 240 million American adults would require 1.2 trillion dollars, or about 1,600 trillion won.
This is an astronomical scale comparable to the total annual US defense budget or the total interest on the national debt.
The opposition party is pushing back.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a leading potential presidential contender for the Democratic Party, strongly criticized the move as the most corrupt attempt to buy voters with taxpayers' money.
Local media outlets are warning that amid a national debt already exceeding 40 trillion dollars, this is a fiscal disaster pledge that would skyrocket inflation and Treasury bond yields.
(Photo courtesy of Park Eunha | Video editing by Kim Jongmi)
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