Bessent casts Trump accounts as ‘triumph of capitalism over socialism’
President Donald Trump scoffed at the word “affordability” as a political message during a campaign rally at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, on Wednesday, describing it as a term concocted by Democratic political consultants to criticize his presidency. Even as he dismissed the notion, Trump devoted much of his speech to promoting the administration’s newly funded “Trump accounts,” which establish tax-free investment funds for every child born through 2028, seeded with $1,000 from the federal government.
“Look around our campuses and classrooms today — apart from those here at Wheeler, of course — you will find that our students are being sold the seductive lie that government can solve every problem, redistribute every dollar and supplant its judgment for our own,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said before the president’s remarks. “In New York, the current mayor rose to power by repackaging failed ideals of the past as a moral cause of the future. But in Georgia, you know that beneath that youthful veneer lies the oldest impulse in politics which is to concentrate power and then to call it compassion.”
Americans are broadly disappointed with Trump’s handling of the economy, with just 33% of voters approving in a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll, an assessment that could hurt his party’s hopes of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump, who earlier in the day attended the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for U.S. service members killed in the conflict with Iran, cast higher prices today as a lingering effect of the Biden administration. “So I just want you to remember that if you’re paying a little bit more — a lot of it’s come down now, we got it coming down very rapidly actually,” Trump said in Marietta, an Atlanta suburb. Inflation currently stands at about 3%, with a decrease of 0.4% last month driven primarily by a nearly 10% drop in gasoline and oil prices following the short-lived truce in the Iran war, according to the source. Core inflation was flat for the first time in five years. But gas prices have again risen above $4 a gallon in the U.S., according to AAA tracking, a direct result of oil prices climbing after reawakened hostilities with Iran and the contested Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global oil and gas shipments.
Several Republican candidates joined Trump at the event. The president likened U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat seeking re-election in one of the cycle’s most closely watched races, to the character Pee-wee Herman, portrayed by the late actor Paul Reubens. Polling shows Ossoff with a lead over the Republican nominee in the Senate race, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, who was in Washington where his vote was needed to help pass a budget bill to fund the Iran war and other White House priorities.
Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson, founder of the medical staffing company Jackson Healthcare with a personal net worth estimated at more than $3 billion, pledged to ask the state legislature to match the $1,000 federal contribution to childhood Trump investment accounts if elected. If the legislature failed to do so, Jackson said he would match the figure himself. In 2024, Georgia recorded more than 126,000 live births, which equates to $126 million in annual contributions for Trump accounts. Georgia began the 2026 fiscal year with an unprecedented budget cushion of about $15 billion in the bank, with $9 billion in unrestricted funds, a surplus resulting from conservative budgeting that began in 2021 as a reaction to pandemic pressures. That money has become an intense political question, with Republicans looking for ways to provide property tax relief while Democrats advocating for broader investment in health care and child care support.
Parents, friends, and employers will be able to deposit as much as $5,000 a year into the Trump accounts, which will be controlled by parents and guardians until the children turn 18, after which the account holder gains control and can use funds for college, a home purchase, or to start a business. The $1,000 contributions will cost the government $17 billion through 2028, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump increased the national debt by about $8 trillion in his first term, more than any other president on an inflation-adjusted basis and nearly as much as the government accrued during Barack Obama’s two terms in office, according to the source. Spending during Trump’s second term is on pace with his first-term mark, with an additional $3 billion accrued so far.
“For decades, Washington politicians gave our children absolutely nothing but debt,” Trump said. “But the Trump accounts, we’re finally seeing and ensuring that every young American gets a great start in life and a really fair shot at the American dream, which is what we all want. They all aspire to that.”
Trump also continued to claim that his policies have drawn pledges of $19.2 trillion into the U.S. economy, a figure that economists from the libertarian Cato Institute and elsewhere consider inflated by illusory investment promises.
The family of 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, accompanied the president on Air Force One to Georgia and attended the event in Marietta, Trump said. Feehan was among the service members killed in the Iran conflict.