Americans should expect to be flush with cash next year, with fat tax-refund checks and more take-home pay in their pockets, says a top contender to become President Trump’s next Federal Reserve chair.
“We are going to see the biggest refund cycle ever in the history of America, and people are going to get massive refund checks,” boasted National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett this week in an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.”
“We’re expecting just that part of it alone to be worth a couple-thousand-dollar refund … the numbers are striking.”
Hassett’s comments Thursday came a day after Trump predicted “the largest tax refund season of all time” next spring and that many families would save between $11,000 and $20,000 each year.
During the segment, Hassett also threw shade on a recent Fox News Poll that found 44% of Americans saying they are falling behind financially, and 74% viewing the economy as “not so good” or “bad.”
“You saw in the jobs report that … wages for the typical worker were up 3.7%, ” said Hassett.
“So if you’re running 3.7% wage increases at 1.6% core inflation, then real wages are growing at a rate of about 2 [to] 2.5%. By our estimates right now, blue-collar workers have already seen an almost $2,000 raise this year after inflation, because wages are growing so much faster than prices”
“I think that what happens in the end — and this is what happened in the first [Trump] term — is that people will see it in their wallets,” he added.
“We didn’t pass the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ until the middle of the summer. And so a lot of the tax changes, which affect last year, weren’t in any tax forms that people filled out at the beginning of the year.”
The NEC director is on a shortlist for contenders to succeed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump has frequently criticized due to his reluctance to lower interest rates.
