Newly launched coalition with ‘affordability agenda’ vows to attack guaranteed income programs
A newly launched conservative nonprofit with an "affordability agenda" vows to fight back against policies like guaranteed income programs that are being implemented in cities and counties across the country.
"They're going to put us in a fiscal hole," Chuck Flint, who is the executive director of the new group the Coalition for Affordability & Prosperity (CAP), said.
Flint, who served as former chief of staff to Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, launched CAP last week and said the group is "dedicated to advancing policies that lower costs for American families."
SEN CORY BOOKER PROPOSES ‘KEEP YOUR PAY ACT,’ ELIMINATING FEDERAL INCOME TAX ON FIRST $75,000
"In order to create those programs, what do you have to do? You have to raise taxes, and what does raising taxes on people do? It's going to push them into a more difficult financial position. It's not going to make things more affordable because they are going to have less money," Flint told Fox News Digital. "And every time the Democrats say, 'Well, we're going to tax the rich.' That never holds true. It's the middle class that ends up paying for it. It's always the middle-class."
CAP aims to serve as a "leading voice for solutions to the affordability crisis" using policy research, national polling, public media campaigns, and lobbying lawmakers.
Flint argues that the recipients of guaranteed income programs are "victims" because cash assistance programs drive inflation.
"These people are actually victims of these policies of government overspending that drive inflation, of regulation that killed the housing supply, of a healthcare system that the government broke," he argued. "They need to rely on all these subsidies now. They deserve real solutions, not political management of a desperate financial situation that those policies have put them in."
The organization comes amid growing momentum of guaranteed income programs being enacted in various cities and counties across the country.
In Illinois, Cook County, the second-largest county in the country, is enacting a permanent basic income program. The program launched in 2022 with the aid of COVID-19 relief funds using $42 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. The Cook County Promise Guaranteed Income Pilot provided monthly payments of $500 to 3,250 households for two years, with no strings attached.
Cook County commissioners previously told Fox News Digital that the decision to extend the program into permanence was based on findings from a survey on the county's pilot program. The program is scheduled to hand out funds to recipients later this year, after the rules and guidelines for the program are finalized.
MAYORS PUSHING FOR GUARANTEED INCOME PROGRAMS DECRY THE DISMANTLING OF FEDERAL AID PROGRAMS