Guaranteed Income Advocates Push to Make Pandemic Cash Programs Permanent Policy

As federal pandemic relief money runs out, a coalition of guaranteed income advocates is pushing a new strategy: embed cash assistance into the existing machinery of government rather than build something entirely new. The Economic Security Project, a research and advocacy organization founded in 2016, published a report in mid-August laying out the case for what they call "no-strings-attached" cash assistance woven into programs Americans already know—unemployment insurance, child welfare, workforce development. The timing is urgent. Cities across the country that launched guaranteed income experiments during the COVID years are hitting a wall. Federal law required municipalities to legally obligate their American Rescue Plan Act funds by the end of 2024, and most of those dollars must be fully spent by the end of 2026. That deadline is closing in fast.

More than 100 U.S. cities have launched some version of a guaranteed income or universal basic income pilot since 2018, many of them funded by a combination of private philanthropy and emergency federal stimulus. Now those wells are running dry. Evanston, Illinois, recently announced it would expand its guaranteed income program using whatever ARPA money remained before the clock stopped. Cook County, nearby, has already moved to fund similar efforts through its own tax base. The question facing dozens of mayors is no longer whether these programs work—it's how to keep them alive when the federal money vanishes.

The Economic Security Project's report, titled "Right on Time: How Cash Helps Families Move Through Life's Transitions," draws on data from more than 250 cash and guaranteed-income pilots across 40 states and Washington, D.C. The researchers—Shafeka Hashash, Maya Tellman, and Rayan Semery-Palumbo—argue that direct cash transfers have proven themselves as a legitimate policy tool. They point to the pandemic itself as evidence: the federal government moved money to households at speed and scale through direct checks, and it worked. But rather than push for universal, unconditional cash payments to everyone, the authors propose something narrower and, they argue, more politically viable. Tie the cash to specific moments of transition—a job loss, the birth of a child, leaving foster care, post-incarceration reentry, housing relocation. Cash works best, they write, when it bridges short gaps and gives people time to make strategic decisions instead of desperate ones.

This framing is deliberate. The authors note that Americans already accept large-scale government benefits when they understand them as earned or triggered by a bounded, verifiable event. Social Security works because workers paid in. Unemployment insurance and paid family leave work because they're tied to a specific disruption—a layoff, a birth. Cash delivered at a moment of transition borrows that same political logic. It's not a handout; it's a response to a recognized life event. The report argues this makes the programs easier to sell to skeptical voters and easier to fund through existing budgets.

The broader movement includes Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, led by Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California, who launched one of the nation's earliest municipal cash experiments. Tubbs has long contended that federal tax dollars should fund income supplements to help lower-income Americans manage rising inflation, rent, and grocery costs. Now advocates face the harder work: turning pilot projects into permanent, taxpayer-backed line items in government budgets. The Economic Security Project argues it's more practical to integrate cash into existing programs—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, child welfare budgets, workforce development, higher-education access funding, disaster relief—than to launch an entirely new, open-ended cash program from scratch. Many of these transitions already command public funds and public understanding. The money is already there; it just needs to be redirected.

California is moving fastest. Economic Security California, an arm of the national organization, is laying groundwork for state-funded guaranteed income programs. The state already hosts more than 60 cash initiatives, more than any other state. To sustain these efforts long-term, the Economic Security Project recommends that local and state governments establish dedicated revenue streams from local taxes rather than rely on donor funding or federal emergency dollars. The question now is whether lawmakers will embrace this strategy before the ARPA deadline passes and the experiments simply end.