A right-wing think tank is using its influence with Republican lawmakers to prohibit guaranteed income programs that provide no-strings cash to people with very low incomes, despite the broad popularity of such programs as a poverty reduction strategy. This advocacy is leading to conflicts between more progressive localities seeking to implement these programs and the GOP-dominated state legislatures that oppose them.
Just this year, bills to prohibit counties and cities from operating guaranteed income programs have been voted on in Arizona, Illinois, Mississippi, West Virginia and Wisconsin. In 2023, Arkansas was the first state to implement a ban on such programs, followed by South Dakota, Idaho and Iowa. Advocates for guaranteed income say these bans are part of a broader effort to prevent localities from implementing any policies to benefit poor people, and that if these preemptive bans succeed, cities and counties will lose an effective tool for combating poverty. The Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), which is spearheading efforts to ban the programs, has harnessed the same arguments that conservatives have used against other anti-poverty programs: that they discourage work and foster dependency.
