(The Center Square) – About 180,000 people applied for the Los Angeles County guaranteed-income program in the spring of 2022. But there were just 1,000 spots available.
It was a sign of high demand for the $1,000-a-month no-strings-attached stipend from the government.
New guaranteed income programs are popping up across the country as governments are using the stockpile of federal COVID-19 emergency money to fund them.
Mayors For A Guaranteed Income is a collection of mayors from some of the largest cities in the country orchestrating the long-term development of guaranteed income plans.
The city of St. Louis approved spending $5 million of its federal COVID-19 recovery money on Dec. 13 to pay for its guaranteed income program that will give 440 households $500 a month for 18 months.
But what happens to these projects once the one-time federal emergency funds from the COVID-19 pandemic response dry up?
“It seems highly unlikely that these programs could be funded absent either a dramatic shift in funding from existing anti-poverty programs or a huge, permanent increase in federal spending,” said Kyle Wingfield, CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. “A shift is pretty improbable in the current political climate. Given that Congress is already borrowing at a large scale to pay for other programs, this increase would lead to more federal taxpayer debt.”
The national deficit was $336.4 billion for fiscal year 2023, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Veronique de Rugy, the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center, said states would likely have to help fund these programs moving forward, as federal money begins to run out.
“When the money is gone, state budgets will have to pick up the tab,” de Rugy said in an email. “I assume that when COVID money is gone, some states will give up the programs while others will keep them going.”
Other guaranteed income programs are already funded by cities, states, or private foundations. LA County’s program is funded by the government and philanthropic organizations.
The city of San Francisco announced on Dec. 6 that it received a $5 million grant from the state to expand its guaranteed income program for pregnant Black women. That $5 million will pay an additional 425 mothers $1,000 a month for 12 months. The initial program had 150 recipients.
The city of Providence’s guaranteed income program serves 110 households and the participants, on average, had an income of about $13,100 a year. Those recipients will receive $500 a month for 18 months. The Providence program, and is funded entirely by private money and costs $990,000.
Guaranteed income for self-proclaimed losers who by their own social acts of government forced money and life force taking of others, define themselves as unfit to exist in an exceptional country designed only for the self-governing, who should be sent back to whatever dark nation or planet they arrived from. Guaranteed incomes for guaranteed failures will result in a celeritous guaranteed end of a once prosperous nation who used to seek and celebrate exceptional successful people of integrity with the ability to give a hand up to others, now overrun with exceptional failures who can only put a hand out to take and steal our American exceptionalism as readily as they take the financial handouts. If California ever had the ability to print and devalue their own money they could really be dangerous for the accelerated destruction of the American economy but was this Crypto-Ponzi scheme just that very thing disguised in another deceptive form? The individual people of nations become and aspire be, that which their collective government encourages. We are now being led by collectives of fools and will only become that which we financially and immorally support,,,,in this case people of poverty who when the Democrats have succeeded in making the majority of us poor in failed policies and independence killing illegal immigration, will make us all a nation of criminals, now being run by criminals unfit to be named MAGA unles it means “Making America Gag” Again.
WHY ARE OUR tax dollars being wasted like this?!?! WE tax payers need to go on a NO TAX STRIKE.
“New guaranteed income programs are popping up across the country as governments are using the stockpile of federal COVID-19 emergency money to fund them.”
How about paying down the national debt and let these entitlement seekers get a job since there are “Help Wanted” signs all over the place.
AND if they refuse to GET work.. ***** to be them.
I’ve got an idea how everyone can have a “guaranteed income” …..
Get a damn job !
Welfare, guaranteed income, whatever you wish to call it. It turned from a temporary program to get people by, to permanent socialism Expense that NEVER ends.
MadeinAmerica33: “to get people by, to permanent socialism”
This is the exact intensions of this treasonous, destructive, unethical, immoral, socialist Democrat Party.
This Treasonous, dishonest, destructive, Socialist Democrat Party’s objective is to deliberately lie, cheat and steal. To disregard the U.S. Constitution and our laws, in order to take total control of the American people by their restricting U.S. citizens their constitutional rights and freedoms. Stopping oil production, increase Spending, Taxes and the inflation cost of everything and bring American commerce and economy to its knees and to promote Socialism, enforced by their political DOJ and their FBI and IRS police gestapo.
Then access power and retain it by any means available –
No matter the costs to the people, the government or the nation.
This treasonous, hateful, destructive, immoral, socialist Democrat Party, their RINOs and their corrupt, demented puppet president has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!
I wonder how many poor white people got the Guaranteed income ?? What none ???
You can bet, NOT ONE Of these GIP’s, ever give money to whites…
Do you remember John t Kennedy said” ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for you country” . He is rolling over in his grave .
There was a piece on today’s Fox, where they discussed welfare/unemployment, and how in some states, someone living off WE the tax victim, CAN RAKE IN over 100k a year, MORE THAN they would if they actually got a job!