President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hosted Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Katie Britt (R., Ala.), Gov. Brad Little (R., Idaho), Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.), Brad Gerstner, Michael Dell, Kevin O’Leary, Nicki Minaj, and others at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium for a summit on Trump Accounts, which were a key component of the One Big, Beautiful Bill that Cruz worked extensively on.
Trump Accounts are historic investment accounts for American children that are now law thanks to Cruz’s successful push to include them in the OBBB last year.
From the summit’s main stage, Cruz explained how the idea came to be. “Brad [Gerstner] got on a plane, flew from Silicon Valley to D.C., pitched the idea to me, I said ‘I love it.’ We drafted the legislation, that is what is in the bill — that idea that came from a 2 A.M. poker game with Phil Hellmuth.”
Months ahead of the summit, Cruz joined President Donald Trump at the White House, where the Dell family announced a historic $6.25 billion investment in the Trump Accounts.
While there, Cruz put the impact of Trump Accounts in real-world terms, explaining that if you “take a little girl born next year; the accounts open, $1,000 is automatically seeded, her parents, her family, her employer puts $5,000 each year.”
Then, “assuming growth of S&P 500, which is 7 percent a year, by the time that little girl is 18, she will have $170,000 in that account,” Cruz explained. “If she keeps saving, by the time that little girl is 35, she will have $700,000 in that account.”
Bessent explained during the conference that Trump Accounts are part of the greatest merger in financial history: that between Wall Street and Main Street. Billionaire philanthropists Michael and Susan Dell, along with Harold Hamm, Gerstner and Ray Dalio, were some of the heavy-hitters who quickly backed the proposal with their own money, but Cruz noted that Trump Accounts are “game-changing” not only for “the children of Michael and Susan, the children of Donald Trump, the children the people of great success.”
“We’re talking the kids of a single mom waiting tables who could have $700,000 saved by the time she is 35,” he said. “That changes lives.”
Ever since the OBBB’s passage, Cruz has regularly reminded audiences that the bill contains some of the biggest conservative policy wins in history, and he noted that “the Trump Accounts legislation that Gerstner and I drafted is among the most important parts of the Working Families Tax Cut Act.”