Daniel Biss wants the rest of America running his guaranteed income program.
The federal money that funded his pilot runs out by the end of the year.
Now the Evanston mayor running for Congress says the whole country should get paid.
Inside the $350 Billion Universal Basic Income Experiment That Proved Nothing
More than 100 American cities have launched guaranteed income pilots since 2018, many of them blending private donations with emergency COVID stimulus money.
The deal's simple: no application, no work requirement, no strings attached.
Evanston, Illinois is sending $500 a month to selected households.
Cook County, Illinois just approved $7.5 million in local funding to keep payments going now that the federal money is gone.
The Economic Security Project, the group that helped launch more than 100 of these programs, just published a report calling the payments a "legitimate policy tool" and pushing to make them permanent government policy.
Their pitch is that the COVID-era checks proved the idea works.
It didn't.
The Three Year Guaranteed Income Study That Gutted the Whole Argument
The most rigorous study of guaranteed income ever conducted followed 3,000 people in Illinois and Texas for three years.
Recipients getting $1,000 a month ended up working fewer hours, dropped out of the workforce more often, and saw their household income fall compared with a control group that wasn't getting the guaranteed income.
The Heritage Foundation reviewed four similar controlled experiments run across six states between 1968 and 1980 and found the identical pattern: every extra $1,000 in benefits cost recipients roughly $660 in lost earnings, so it took $3,000 in government payments just to raise a family's income by $1,000 net.
The programs don't lift people out of poverty.
They make people more comfortable staying in it.
Democrats Admit the Real Plan for Guaranteed Income
The Economic Security Project's director of cash initiatives told Fox News Digital that families need guaranteed income now more than ever because the safety net is being torn apart.
There's your tell.
That's the left's way of describing Trump cutting the bloated bureaucracy that handed out COVID cash with zero accountability.
The House Oversight Committee found that between $100 billion and $135 billion in pandemic unemployment payments were fraudulent.
The Department of Labor's Inspector General estimated that up to $191 billion in pandemic payments were improperly made.
That is the program these mayors want to make permanent.
They burned through your money during COVID with minimal oversight, produced fraud on a historic scale, and now want to lock the same structure into city budgets using local tax dollars instead of federal ones.
A congressional campaign built around a $500-a-month check is not a fringe idea anymore – it's the platform.
One Heritage Foundation analysis found that paying every working-age adult $1,000 a month nationwide would cost roughly $1.1 trillion a year.
Half of all federal income tax revenue.
Gone.
The Permanent Universal Basic Income Machine Cities Are Building as ARPA Funds Expire
The COVID money expires December 31, 2026, and the mayors who built political careers on handing out checks are staring at a cliff.
They cannot go back to their constituents and explain why the payments stopped.
So they're rebranding the handout as a transition tool, arguing cash works best during life changes like having a baby, moving, or getting out of prison.
That covers most of adult life.
The strategy is identical to every other government entitlement program in history: launch it as an emergency, prove it with friendly pilot data, then dare the next politician to take it away from people who've built their lives around it.
California already has more than 60 active cash pilot programs and is laying groundwork to fund guaranteed income permanently at the state level.
Once cash handouts become a line item in a city budget, they don't disappear – they grow.
The two most rigorous American studies on guaranteed income both found the same thing: less work, more dependency.
Democrats are not confused about that.
They know who votes for the party that signs the checks.
Sources:
- Joshua Q. Nelson, "As Americans are crushed by affordability, mayors push cash handouts as the answer in growing trend," Fox News, September 12, 2026.
- Staff, "Progressive Mayors Push to Keep 'Free Cash' Programs Alive After Federal COVID Funds Run Out," American Greatness, May 21, 2026.
- Robert Rector and Mimi Teixeira, "Universal Basic Income Harms Recipients and Increases Dependence on Government," Heritage Foundation, February 14, 2018.
- Staff, "The harm of guaranteed basic income," Badger Institute, 2024.
- Staff, "Universal Basic Income—Not the Panacea It's Advertised As," Heritage Foundation, 2024.
- Staff, "Oversight Committee Releases Report on Rampant Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Pandemic Unemployment Relief Programs," House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
