Phoenix to test Andrew Yang's universal basic income idea in new federally funded pilot Lottery-based pilot will give Phoenix families $1,000 in taxpayer funding a month in 2022.

One thousand lucky Phoenix families will get $1,000 in taxpayer funding a month in 2022 under a universal basic income pilot program.

The Phoenix City Council has approved the $12 million “Financial Assistance for Phoenix Families Program,” a lottery-based program that will begin in January 2022, if not sooner.

The concept of universal basic income was popularized during the 2020 presidential campaign by unsuccessful Democratic candidate Andrew Yang, who called it a Freedom Dividend,

The program will send 1,000 families a monthly stipend of $1,000 for all of 2022. According to a city document, the funds would be limited toward “basic household necessities” such as housing, childcare, food and other staples.

The city would load money onto a debit card that wouldn’t allow the purchase of a list of forbidden items like alcohol and tobacco.

All low-income families making up to 80% of the area median income – a sliding scale that would be just over $63,000 for a family of four – would be eligible. A representative of the city said in the Tuesday session that anyone on public assistance, in public housing, or receiving public housing vouchers would qualify.

“We’ve seen a lot of cities across the country doing this direct assistance and I’m glad that we’ll be joining them in giving money to folks,” Vice Mayor Carlos Garcia said. “It’s not just for rent or utilities, but if they do have child care needs, if they do have to get medicine, whatever it is, I think people know best what their needs are.”

The program is paid for by the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The city received $196 million this year and will receive another $196 million next year.

City documents say staff would recommend continuing this program with the second payout of ARPA funds in 2023.

Phoenix joins a handful of other cities to test out the premise of universal basic income. California’s most recent budget includes $35 million to pay for a similar program. The cities of Los Angeles, Compton and Richmond, Virginia, have approved similar programs.

Phoenix to test Andrew Yang's universal basic income idea in new federally funded [??? emphasis added pilot Lottery-based pilot will give Phoenix families $1,000 in taxpayer funding a month in 2022.

FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument

Politically correct, Democratic vote-winning interpretations of the Constitution's General Welfare Clause aside, patriots are reminded that the states have never amended the Constitution to make things like universal basic income (UBI) a constitutionally enumerated right.

"Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

So the federal government's involvement in the front-ended "Arizona" UBI experiment amounts to an unconstitutional expansion of the already unconstitutionally big federal government's powers imo.

In fact, Justice Joseph Story had appropriately noted that the care of the poor is uniquely a state power issue.

"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"The power to regulate manufactures is no more confided to congress, than the power to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws of the states [emphases added]." — Justice Joseph Story, Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2, 1833.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.

In fact, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had reflected on Story's clarification of the fed's limited powers by emphasizing that the Founding States had trusted the states, not the feds, with the care of the poor.

”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)

Justice Louis Brandis later introduced his "laboratories of democracy" metaphor to emphasize the unique 10th Amendment-protected powers of the states to explore new ways to care for the people.

"[...] a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Laboratories of Democracy.

The bottom line is that, depending on the threshold of pain of a given state's taxpayers, the states are free to use their 10A-protected powers to repeatedly prove that socialist utopian UBI doesn't work, federal government funding in such time and money wasting experiments unconstitutional imo.

Insights welcome.

The ultimate remedy for unconstitutionally big, alleged election-stealing, Democratic-pirated federal government that is oppressing everybody under its boots...

Consider that all the states can effectively “secede” from the unconstitutionally big federal government by doing the following.

Patriots need to primary federal and state elected officials who don't send voters email ASAP that clearly promises to do the following.

Federal and state lawmakers need to promise in their emails to introduce resolutions no later than 100 days after start of new legislative sessions that proposes an amendment to the Constitution to the states, the amendment limited to repealing the 16th and ill-conceived 17th Amendments.

Again, insights welcome.

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