Mayors vow to launch guaranteed income programs

SACRAMENTO (AP) — A growing number of mayors across the country support giving cash to low-income families with no restrictions on how they can spend it — part of a growing movement to establish a guaranteed minimum income to combat poverty and systemic racism.

Mayors in at least 25 cities — from Los Angeles to Paterson, New Jersey — have pledged to support such programs as part of the group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. They are led by Michael Tubbs, the 30-year-old mayor of Stockton, who launched one of the country’s first guaranteed income programs last year with the help of private donations from Silicon Valley.

The idea of guaranteed income programs has been around for decades, but it got a lot of attention in the US as the centerpiece of Andrew Yang’s failed bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Critics have scoffed at Yang’s plan, which would have cost $2.8 trillion a year while giving every American $1,000 a month. Pilot programs launching in some cities across the country are covering just a few hundred people at most.

The goal, Tubbs said, is to convince the federal government to launch a guaranteed income program by providing “the stories and the cover to do what is right.”

“It has to be a federal solution,” he said Wednesday. “We understand that a guaranteed income is not a panacea for everything (but) is a powerful tool that provides a floor for everyone.”