What, a bribe?

When I was a kid, I never thought much about an allowance. I knew my parents had a hard time getting by, so they didn’t have any spare change for me. I also knew my father, under the thumb of his bosses at work, was in charge at home. If I needed money, I had to ask. Usually he said no, and that was that.

As parents, we gave our daughter an allowance, believing it was a way to help her learn to make decisions and live with them. The money wasn’t tied to specific chores — if you clean your room, you can have a cookie; if you help with the yard work, you’ll get 50 cents; if you’re polite to your cranky auntie, we’ll slip a dollar your way. We wanted to avoid teaching bribery as the way of the world.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s first definition of bribe is, “money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust.” Stopped by the highway patrol, the driver attempted to bribe the officer to avoid getting a speeding ticket. The father bribed his daughter with candy to finish her homework.

At the recent Republican National Committee’s midterm convention, President Trump pledged to give $5,000 to each of the nation’s 270 million adult citizens if Republicans keep control of both the House and Senate in the upcoming elections. The president called his pledge a “Trump dividend” to be given as a result of the administration’s “tremendous economic success.” He compared it to the cash dividends corporations pay to shareholders. As if being a citizen is being a shareholder and as if the nation is a corporation. He also noted that the $5,000 could only be spent within the country. How you gonna police that one?

It’s estimated that the total of the $5,000 payments would add up to about $1.2 trillion. Where would that money come from? The president has said there’d be no need to use tax funds, that some of the money could come from the $100,000 fee he’s demanding of visa applicants and some from the profits from tariffs. He claimed the country has taken in “trillions of dollars in tariffs and other things.”

Treasury Department data cited by the Bipartisan Policy Center shows that tariffs have provided about $341 billion in net revenue, $166 billion of which the Supreme Court has ordered to be refunded. The remaining $175 billion is 14.6% of the $1.2 trillion needed to pay us each $5,000.

George Washington University law professor Paul Berman has commented that even if there were enough tariff revenue to cover the cost, “that’s money that goes back to the public fisc,” that is, back to the total pool of money the government holds and manages. Brennan emphasized that the president can’t unilaterally make such payments, as Congress holds the power to appropriate funds. The executive branch can’t spend public money without approval from Congress. 

While many commentators have weighed in on the president’s proposal, few have said out loud what the proposal is — a bribe. In offering each adult citizen $5,000 if Republicans maintain control of Congress in the upcoming elections, the president has made what is typically understood as the classic form of bribery — the payment of money or anything of value or the offer of such payment in exchange for casting or withholding a vote. By federal law, such a promise or payment is illegal.

State law also prohibits bribery. Title 6, Chapter 5, Article 1, Section 6-5-102 of the Wyoming statutes states that a person commits bribery if, “He offers, confers or agrees to confer any pecuniary benefit, testimonial, privilege or personal advantage upon a public servant as consideration for the public servant’s vote, exercise of discretion or other action in his official capacity; or, while a public servant, he solicits, accepts or agrees to accept any pecuniary benefit, testimonial, privilege or personal advantage upon an agreement or understanding that his vote, exercise of discretion or other action as a public servant will thereby be influenced.”

We commonly think of an individual bribing an elected official — a public servant. But President Trump’s proposal turns things upside down. He is the individual offering the bribe, and we are all public servants sworn in our official capacity to uphold democracy. As such, we must not sell our votes.

In Wyoming, the punishment for a bribery conviction is imprisonment for not more than 10 years, a fine of not more than $5,000, or both. If convicted, I can use the president’s $5,000 check to pay my $5,000 fine. The prison time’s another matter.