The Facts Don't Back Up Making Guaranteed Income Checks Permanent Policy

Fox News reported this week that five officials tied to the guaranteed-income movement won higher office in the Nov. 3 midterms, and that the movement's leader wants the incoming Democratic Congress to make no-strings cash payments permanent. The best evidence does not support that idea.

According to Fox News, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a founding member of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and a former Atlanta mayor, was elected governor of Georgia. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti won House seats in Illinois' 9th and Pennsylvania's 8th districts. Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller won Illinois' 2nd District, and Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando was elected county executive in Maryland; both are tied to the mayors group's sister network for counties.

The coalition's pilots generally give eligible residents up to $1,000 a month with no limits on how it is spent, and the group says more than 100 pilots have launched since 2018. Cook County set aside $7.5 million in its 2026 budget to keep its program going after federal pandemic money expired, which Fox described as the nation's first permanent county-level program. Michael Tubbs, the coalition's president, said he hopes the new Congress will "make guaranteed income a permanent policy for Americans".

In the largest study of its kind, people who received $1,000 a month spent more on food, rent and transportation, gave more financial help to relatives, and some started businesses, The 19th reported. University of Michigan researcher Luke Shaefer said the results rule out the idea that people simply quit working when they are handed cash. Those are fair points, and the desire to help struggling families is a good one.

But the same study cuts the other way. OpenResearch, a nonprofit lab founded by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, enrolled about 3,000 low-income adults in Texas and Illinois. One thousand received $1,000 a month for three years, while 2,000 in a comparison group received $50 a month.

According to the latest revision of the research, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, recipients' own income, not counting the checks, fell by about $1,900 a year compared with the control group. Labor force participation dropped 4.2 percentage points, and work hours fell by one to two hours a week, with partners cutting back by a similar amount. The biggest change in how recipients spent their time was more leisure, and the researchers found no improvement in the quality of people's jobs. The 19th also reported that the money did not improve overall physical or mental health.

In other words, $12,000 a year in no-strings cash led people to earn less on their own, not more.

In the 1970s, the federal government tested a negative income tax in Seattle and Denver, enrolling about 4,800 families, according to a Health and Human Services overview of the final report. In the second year, husbands' annual work hours fell about 9 percent, wives' about 20 percent and those of women heading families about 14 percent. Federal analysts also found higher rates of marital breakup in several groups and concluded that a national program would be unlikely to leave marriage stability untouched. Two large randomized trials, five decades apart, point in the same direction.

Many local pilots were paid for with federal pandemic relief, and Fox noted that money has run out, leaving open whether local governments can sustain the programs through taxes. Any permanent program would be paid for by working taxpayers.

Christian teaching honors both charity and work. In Genesis, God places man in the garden to work it and keep it before the Fall, and the Apostle Paul told the Thessalonians that anyone unwilling to work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Scripture also commands generosity toward the poor. The real question is how to help: through family, church and community aid that strengthens work, or through permanent checks that the evidence shows pull people away from it.

NPR reported in 2024 that Iowa became the fourth Republican-led state, after Arkansas, Idaho and South Dakota, to ban guaranteed-income programs that lack work requirements, while Democratic governors in Wisconsin and Arizona vetoed bans passed by their legislatures. Texas state Sen. Paul Bettencourt said: "You just can't give out money on the street like popcorn". He persuaded the state attorney general to challenge Harris County's $500-a-month pilot under the Texas Constitution's gift clause, and the Texas Supreme Court temporarily blocked the payments a day before they were to begin. In June 2025, county commissioners voted to end the program and shift more than $18 million to rental help, homelessness services and nutrition programs, while Commissioner Rodney Ellis defended it and criticized officials who favor tax breaks for the wealthy.

Next comes the fight in statehouses and the new Congress. Fox reported that more than 60 cash-payment bills have been introduced across 15 states. Compassion that keeps people tied to work, family and community will do more lasting good than a check that quietly asks less of them.