As Cities Test Guaranteed Income, Congresswoman Pushes for a Federal Pilot

In 2018, Moriah Rodriguez was in a car accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury and unable to work. A few years later, she and her four children were on the brink of homelessness when she enrolled in the Denver Basic Income Project.

Rodriguez, who now serves on the DBIP Board of Directors, used the unconditional cash transfers provided through the program to find a place to live and pay off debt. She believes that, if not for the program, her life would be fundamentally different.

“I don’t believe that the way that the system is set up is giving people the opportunity to be successful,” Rodriguez said.

The Denver Basic Income Project is one of many city- and county-wide guaranteed income pilot programs throughout the country. These initiatives, which gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, are experimental and provide cash payments to specific groups for a limited time to study their effects.

In October, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) introduced federal legislation to establish a guaranteed-income pilot program. The congresswoman has advocated for the initiative in past legislative sessions, citing rising economic inequality as proof of the program’s necessity.

“The greedy are getting the majority and the needy are becoming even more needy,” Watson Coleman said. “That’s un-American as far as I'm concerned.”

Watson Coleman said that guaranteed income can lessen economic struggle by plainly distributing resources and avoiding government bureaucracy.

Researchers echoed this sentiment. They say cash is flexible, non-paternalistic, and efficient.

“People want guaranteed income to do all the things, right? And that’s really because cash can do all the things,” said Misuzu Schexnider, who works at UChicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab. “It’s really one of the few interventions that can help people achieve their goals, regardless of what the goal is.”

However, Schexnider said that this versatility can make the impact of these programs difficult to measure.

Benjamin Henwood, the director of the Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research at USC, expressed a similar concern. In a study exploring the impact of cash distributions to people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Henwood found that while recipients of the transfer were more likely to report not being unhoused, there was no statistically significant change that could be attributed to the cash transfer.

Henwood described the cash transfers as “incremental, not transformational” and said the small amount of money transferred and the short duration of the program might have limited the intervention's statistical efficacy.

Still, the Denver Basic Income Project, which to date has deployed $10.8 million to over 800 families and individuals, found that almost half of participants reported moving into stable independent housing within a year, a decisive success.

And, while the quantitative data from these pilot studies can be a mixed bag, the qualitative stories that these studies gather from participants, like Rodriguez, are “overwhelmingly positive,” Schexnider said.

Both Schexnider and Henwood also emphasized that their findings run counter to the stigma often associated with welfare programs.

Welfare is often mired in a societal belief that equates receiving assistance with personal failure, like laziness or irresponsibility. Some assume that participants will spend the additional money on what Henwood calls “temptation goods,” like drugs or alcohol.

The researchers said these beliefs are simply not true. In fact, Henwood noted that his study was just as much about proving that basic income did not lead to an increase in the purchase of temptation goods as it was about demonstrating the intervention's success.

Meanwhile, in a basic income study conducted by the non-profit OpenResearch, Schexnider said recipients worked fewer hours, but only by a few hours each week. She noted that most spent the additional time on childcare, transportation, or much-needed rest.

“For some in our country and globally, it’s a bit of a convenient myth — convenient for some — to paint people with low income as somehow lazy and deficient. And the data doesn’t bear that out,” said Elizabeth Crowe, the coordinator of the Elevate Boulder Guaranteed Income Program.

These researchers all welcomed the idea of a federal program, but highlighted the necessity for concrete, outcome-driven details in the project’s proposal.

Under the proposed legislation, the federal pilot program would last 3 years, and 10,000 participants would receive a monthly cash payment equal to the fair market rent for a 2-bedroom home in the ZIP Code where they reside. Watson Coleman said she would leave the details, such as who is eligible for the program, to “authentic technicians” or experts in the field.

Part of the researchers’ support stems from the fact that the program is not novel. Aside from initiatives like the Denver Basic Income Project, cash transfers are often considered the standard in charitable giving. And Schexnider said there are already successful federal programs that are essentially cash transfers, such as the Child Tax Credit.

For Gwen Battis, the project manager for the DBIP, the federal pilot program is an “inevitable need.”

“As AI takes jobs, we’re going to need a way to participate in the economy and pay for things,” she said.

In highlighting the effect of AI on employment, Battis hits upon a key driver in the movement for basic income.

Not only is the country experiencing record income inequality, but there are also questions about how artificial intelligence will negatively impact the job market.

Technology executives have indicated that they aspire to create artificial general intelligence, a machine capable of performing all the economically valuable work humans do on a day-to-day basis.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI start-up Anthropic, told Axios that AI could soon wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.

“Most [lawmakers] are unaware that this is about to happen," Amodei said. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it."

In recent years, Republican lawmakers at the state level have pushed back against guaranteed-income pilot programs.

Legislators in states like Arizona, Iowa, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin have all introduced bills to ban income programs. They say such programs make participants overly reliant on the government.

State Rep. John Gillette of Arizona told Business Insider last year that guaranteed income programs are “socialist” and a “killer for the economy.”

“Is money a birthright now?” Gillette asked. “Do we just get born and get money from the government? Because I think the Founding Fathers would say that is very contrary to our capitalist system and encouraging people to work.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a county in his state to block a basic income program. In the legal filing, he called the initiative a “socialist experiment” that was an “illegal and illegitimate government overreach.”

While their Republican counterparts in the U.S. Congress have yet to comment directly on the federal basic income bill, they have shown reticence toward more expansive welfare policies.

The House resoundingly passed a resolution on Nov. 21 that denounced the “horrors of socialism.” No Republican lawmaker voted against the measure, and 86 Democrats joined Republicans to approve it.

Some are also skeptical about the practical reality of the basic income proposal and other expansive welfare policies.

In his home state, Grady Lowery, a lecturer at the University of Tennessee, said politicians are actively presenting their state as a haven for those escaping the “socialist” New York and its mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani.

“Not only is there not support for Mamdani here, there’s active fear and hostility towards this kind of socialist dictatorial figure that he represents,” Lowery said.

Lowery said the bill might have potential if the legislators could avoid the “socialist pejorative label,” which they have already garnered.

Watson Coleman is undeterred. The bill is now pending in the House Ways and Means Committee.

“I don't care if we're in this administration that didn't want to shelter, didn't want to feed, and didn't want to give health care to (people),” Watson-Coleman said. “I’m still going to advance my legislation that I think is legitimate work for the federal government to do.”

Sophie Baker covers politics for Medill on the Hill. She is a sophomore from Utah studying journalism and political science at Northwestern University. On campus, she writes for The Daily Northwestern, where she has served as an assistant city editor.