Over 80 Cities and Counties Used Federal Pandemic Aid to Fund Universal Basic Income Handouts
Jose Nino
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Currently, there are at least 82 municipalities in 29 states conducting universal basic income experiments. This includes over 70 pilot programs created during the past year per a coalition of over 100 American mayors pushing the UBI.
According to a report by John Haughey of The Epoch Times, Mayors for Guaranteed Income and its coalition members are calling on local governments to roll out pilot programs with federal pandemic assistance from a $350 billion fund for state and local governments within the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in March 2021.
This mayoral group was created by former Stockton, California Mayor Michael Tubbs in June 2020 following the city’s launch, and subsequent expansion of a guaranteed income project.
During a virtual roundtable discussion held on December 15, 2022, several municipal officials revealed that there is growing public support for basic income programs.
DePaul University’s Dr. Amanda Kass claimed that the ARPA state and local recovery fund is currently being used “as a seed for long-term policy change.” Kass studies how counties, municipalities, and states, spend federal pandemic aid.
Before the panel, Kass said that ARPA is the first federal program “that has ever produced this amount of highly flexible aid to nearly all governments in the United States—to tens of thousands of governments.”
Kass noted that due to “the unprecedented nature” of the 2020 Wuhan virus pandemic outbreak and Wuhan virus-connected legislation crafted in response to the pandemic, local governments are spending ARPA money in unconventional ways which makes it difficult to determine how the money was spent or intends to be spent.
Based on her analysis, Kass said there’s “not just one avenue” but “many different stories” in how municipalities and counties “with unique socio-economic conditions” are using ARPA funds to tackle “unique needs.”
Overall, such fiscal power grabs will enable the Left to continue its clientelistic practice of trying to buy votes through welfare programs. The UBI is just the latest scheme that the left-liberal establishment is promoting in order to pacify the public as they continue consolidating power.
The Left never sleeps and uses every opportunity to advance its technocratic agenda. The Right must always oppose power grabs coming from DC given how these expansions in government allow the Left to continue promoting further acts of behavioral control.
When the Left is even given an inch of power, they will end up taking the whole mile.
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