Less than a year after a program to study the impact of a guaranteed income in Iowa was launched in the Des Moines area, Iowa House Republicans approved a bill to prevent city or county governments from starting or supporting any basic income program in the future.
HF 2319 passed the House on Monday on a vote of 55-43. Seven Republicans joined all the chamber’s Democrats in opposing it.
UpLift — The Central Iowa Basic Income Pilot is a two-year program designed to document the effects of a guaranteed basic income on the wellbeing and financial security of 110 low-income households in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties over a two-year period. The households receive a direct payment of $500 each month to spend in any way they want for the duration of the pilot program.
It is one of 30 pilot programs around the country being conducted by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania to determine the effect of a basic guaranteed income on low-income households and their communities. Researchers at the Tom and Ruth Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement at Drake University are the local coordinators for the central Iowa program. Funding for the program is being provided by a partnership of local governments and nonprofits.
The cities of Des Moines, Urbandale and Windsor Heights, as well as Polk County, are using federal funds provided through the American Rescue Plan Act to support the program. The local nonprofits supporting UpLift include Mid-Iowa Health Foundation, Principal Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, Bank of America Foundation, the Director’s Council, Telligen Community Initiative and United Way of Central Iowa.
The average household size in the Central Iowa program is four people, including two children. The average household income is $24,542, while the average household income in the area for a family of four is $71,734.
The program is scheduled to run through April 2025, after which the data collected will be analyzed and compared to the data from the other pilot programs.
HF 2319 will eliminate the possibility of another guaranteed income program being launched in Iowa, without prior permission from the state government. It will also disrupt UpLift by prohibiting any city or county participation in an existing program after Jan. 1, 2025, four months before UpLift is scheduled to end.
Although most bills take effect at the beginning of the next fiscal year at the start of July, HF 2319 would take effect as soon as the governor signs it, because it is “deemed of immediate importance,” according to the text of the bill.
“Just as we do not allow cities and counties to have different laws on murder, we’re not going to allow cities and counties to murder our work ethic,” Republican Rep. Steven Holt of Dennison, the bill’s sponsor, said on Monday.
Holt, who calls guaranteed income programs “socialism on steroids,” said he believes “these programs will increase government dependency and poverty, as opposed to independence and prosperity.” Holt said he is worried that the real goal of “these pilot programs” is not to gather information but “to lay the groundwork for a massive expansion of guaranteed income programs.”
It’s unclear what programs he is referring to. Beyond pilot programs to study the issue, there are no guaranteed income programs in the United States.
To bolster his case, Holt referred to studies he said showed that receiving welfare benefits discouraged some people from seeking work during the 1960s and 1970s.
“No one can live on $500 a month,” Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, a Democrat from Ames, said during the floor debate. “But $500 a month might help ease some of the stressors of poverty, car repairs, furnace and other appliance repairs.”
That’s what guaranteed income pilot programs have indicated, NPR reported on Tuesday.
Peer-reviewed studies of early pilot programs, such as one in Stockton, California, found “the extra income makes people more financially stable. After about six months of payments, they also start to see ‘little glimmers of changes in a person’s psychology,’” Stacia West of the University of Tennessee, a founding director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and an author of one of the studies, told NPR.
“We see increases in a person’s psychological wellbeing, so a reduction in psychological distress,” West continued.
Holt and a majority of his fellow House Republicans are not interested in waiting to see the results in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties, or even allowing the pilot programs to proceed uninterrupted.
House Democrats pointed out that HF 2319 is another example of Republicans in the Iowa Legislature preempting the authority of the local government to impose their policy preferences, something Republicans have routinely done since taking control of both the House and Senate in 2017. Holt dismissed those concerns.
“In this case, the importance of protecting our work ethic and preventing an increase in government dependence trumps the local control argument,” he said.
