The Ninety-Dollar Bribe

Donald Trump tried to bribe me this week.

Not with a suitcase full of unmarked bills. That would have suggested a certain respect for the transaction. No, the president offered me ninety dollars. A one-time Medicare rebate, payable to some 20.8 million Americans, conveniently arriving less than a month before the midterm elections.

I was outraged, naturally. I have reached an age at which a man should be able to take offense at being purchased with his own money.

The money comes from the Medicare Improvement Fund, established by Congress to improve Medicare. The administration says that handing the money directly to beneficiaries is itself an improvement. (Tell that to the 2.6 million who lost health care under this admin.)  It is an argument with the elegance of a landlord insisting that repainting the lobby counts as fixing the elevator.

Some will object to my use of the word “bribe.” Mainly the ignorati, for whom a red hat has apparently become a substitute for critical thinking. Fair enough. Nobody has demanded a photograph of my Republican ballot in exchange for the payment. But even the ignorati ought to recognize that the timing is peculiar, and the president followed the announcement with an email to Medicare enrollees congratulating himself on his health-care achievements. It takes a practiced politician to put his name on a government benefit and then send the recipient the campaign literature.

The arithmetic is less charming. Ninety dollars multiplied by 20.8 million recipients comes to $1.872 billion. Nearly $1.9 billion in public money, extracted from a fund of a little over $2 billion. KFF says the payments will largely empty it. Should Medicare require those resources for actual improvements later, someone will have to find new money or abandon the improvements. The nation’s seniors get a check today; their children will get the invoice tomorrow.

And that is before the more immediate double whammy. The standard Medicare Part B premium is $202.90 a month, meaning my presidential benefactor has not even offered to buy half a month. KFF projects that annual premiums will rise by $79 in 2027. If that projection holds, the grand ninety-dollar gesture will leave eleven dollars after next year’s increase. Eleven dollars! Enough to purchase a heartfelt thank-you card, provided you do not insist on very fine stationery.

Yet none of this is what offended me most.

What offended me was the size of the bribe.

Ninety dollars? Really? I realize inflation has made everything more expensive, but it appears to have spared the price the White House places on an American citizen’s gratitude.

Consider what ninety dollars buys in the United States today. Four people going to the movies in New Jersey, where the average ticket is about $18.49, will spend nearly $74 merely getting through the door. That leaves sixteen dollars for popcorn and four drinks. Perhaps the children can share a straw and inhale the aroma of popcorn carried over from the next row.

Gasoline? At roughly $4.37 a gallon, filling a twenty-gallon tank consumes almost the entire presidential windfall. Drive an SUV with a twenty-five-gallon tank and the ninety dollars will not finish the job. You can either get home or celebrate your new prosperity by running the air conditioning. Choose wisely.

Then there is the electric bill. The average American household’s monthly bill is around $158. The ninety dollars won’t cover it. Meanwhile the data centers required to power our glorious AI future are helping drive demand higher, so machines can write increasingly convincing emails telling us to consume less electricity.

Ninety dollars will also buy a few bags of groceries, a mediocre dinner for two (if neither diner orders drinks and you split dessert) or a surprisingly short encounter with a plumber. The American dream is alive and well, though increasingly available only in trial-size packaging.

Normally I would not complain about free money. If somebody presses ninety dollars into my hand, I don’t lecture them on fiscal policy until after I have counted the money and put it in my pocket. But this isn’t free money. It is ours to begin with, and the president is offering to return a sliver of it as though he’d discovered a forgotten twenty in his tuxedo.

And what makes this ninety-dollar exercise in presidential generosity especially galling is how magnificently the people distributing it have been doing for themselves.

Forbes estimated Donald Trump’s personal fortune at $7 billion in September, about $2.7 billion more than when he won the 2024 election. His extended family’s combined wealth, including Jared Kushner, was estimated at roughly $10 billion in September 2025—nearly twice its pre-election level. Call that an increase of about $5 billion, give or take a yacht.

And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick? Forbes estimated his family’s wealth at approximately $7.3 billion this September, more than double its level when he entered government. Using an early benchmark of roughly $3.5 billion, that is another $3.8 billion in estimated appreciation.

Now I know that valuations are not bank balances. Some of this wealth exists on paper; some is held in family trusts. And calling all of it illegal graft would require evidence a columnist cannot manufacture. But there are questions worth asking when fortunes swell alongside ventures in cryptocurrency and businesses whose prospects can be affected by the very government these men help run.

Add the roughly $5 billion increase in Trump’s family wealth to Lutnick’s roughly $3.8 billion. That gives us about $8.8 billion. Divide it among the 20.8 million people eligible for the Medicare payment, and each person gets approximately $423.

That is about 4.7 times the ninety-dollar presidential offering. And it would not require raiding the Medicare Improvement Fund. It would merely require our public servants, and the families around them, to part with the wealth that has accumulated while they served.

And no, before the Republican talking points arrive by overnight delivery, this isn’t socialism. It is merely suggesting that people who have profited so handsomely during their time in public service might consider financing their own generosity instead of sending the bill to the taxpayers.

I do not expect this to happen. The rich have always been eager to teach the poor the virtues of sacrifice, preferably by providing demonstrations the poor can perform themselves.

So I suppose I should be grateful. I have been offered ninety dollars, a presidential message, and a splendid demonstration of MAGAnimity. The public finances the generosity, the well-connected count their billions, and the rest of us are expected to applaud.

My vote is not for sale. But if you’re determined to insult me with an offer, at least make it enough to take the family to the movies.

And buy the popcorn.

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