Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent chatted Wednesday with a group of House Republicans about how voters will judge the GOP’s tax and trade moves heading into the 2026 midterm elections, according to House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington.
During the private meeting Arrington hosted on Capitol Hill, Bessent discussed President Donald Trump’s economic policy strategy with Republican members of the budget panel, including steps to spurring economic growth and reducing the amount of red ink the federal government racks up each year as the national debt tops $38 trillion.
Bessent mentioned the “acid test of the midterms,” Arrington said, which is, “Am I doing better today than I did when we first elected this new unified Republican leadership in our nation’s capital?”
When tax refunds roll in this spring, U.S. voters are going to “see historic refunds” that put “more money in their pockets” thanks to the GOP megabill Trump signed into law in July, Arrington said. “And that was all part of the plan — of not just bringing prices down and growing the economy but making life more affordable for the American people.”
The group also discussed Trump’s proposal to send $2,000 rebate checks to Americans by tapping into the hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue generated by the president’s tariffs. Arrington is not a fan of the idea, like many other Republican lawmakers.
“The best way to put money in people’s pockets is to have good pro-growth policies, and to believe and trust that those policies will work to the end of more jobs and bigger paychecks,” Arrington told reporters after the meeting.
