California Nonprofit Pushes to Make Guaranteed Income Programs Permanent, Funded by Taxpayers

What's Happening

The Economic Security Project (ESP), a nonprofit founded in 2016, has spent nearly a decade building the infrastructure for guaranteed income programs across the United States. According to Fox News, which published an examination of the group on Saturday, ESP has launched more than 100 pilots nationwide involving direct, unconditional cash payments to individuals.

Now ESP's California affiliate, Economic Security California (ESC), is pushing for the next step: a permanent, taxpayer-funded guaranteed income program in the state.

California already leads the country with 60 pilot program launches, according to Fox News. The state is also carrying an estimated $1.3 trillion in total debt, a figure cited by Fox News in its reporting.

The Specific Programs

The most prominent example is Los Angeles County's "Breathe" program. In 2022, it randomly selected 1,000 participants to receive $1,000 per month for three years, funded by taxpayers. In 2023, the program expanded to include an additional 200 former foster youth from the county's Department of Children and Family Services, also at $1,000 per month for two years, according to the LA County website.

Many of these pilots in California and elsewhere were seeded with money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the Covid-era spending bill. That funding is running out. ESP's stated goal, per its website language quoted by Fox News, is to shift programs toward "dedicated local taxes" and move "affordability-focused investments into direct cash supports."

Cook County, Illinois — the second-largest county in the country — went further in November 2025. Its board of commissioners voted unanimously to approve $7.5 million for a permanent guaranteed basic income program, following a 2022 pilot.

The Case For It

Proponents have a coherent argument and it deserves a straight hearing. Michael D. Tubbs, former mayor of Stockton, California, and president of Mayors for Guaranteed Income, told Fox News Digital earlier this year that "regular cash infusions are necessary to help low-income Americans stay afloat amid high costs for basic expenses like rent, groceries, and gasoline."

Tubbs isn't wrong about the cost pressure. Inflation since 2020 has measurably eroded purchasing power for lower-income households. The core claim from guaranteed income advocates is that unrestricted cash lets recipients address their most urgent needs without bureaucratic gatekeeping. It may cost less to administer than a patchwork of means-tested programs.

Stockton's own pilot, which Tubbs championed while mayor, was frequently cited by proponents as showing that recipients spent the money on food, utilities, and other basics rather than frivolous purchases.

The Legitimate Fiscal Concerns

The counterarguments are equally grounded in real numbers.

California's $1.3 trillion debt load is not an abstraction. The state has faced consecutive budget shortfalls in recent years and has had to make cuts to other social services. Adding a permanent cash entitlement, funded by new dedicated taxes or redirected spending, competes directly with existing obligations.

ESP's own language acknowledges the transition challenge. Its website describes moving programs from philanthropy-funded pilots to "public funding mechanisms" — meaning taxes. What sounds modest at the pilot scale (1,000 participants in LA County) becomes a different fiscal proposition when scaled statewide or nationally.

There is also no long-term data yet on what happens to labor participation or public benefit dependency when unconditional cash becomes permanent rather than time-limited. The Stockton and LA pilots are still generating research. Declaring the model ready for permanent institutionalization before those results are fully analyzed is a policy leap the data hasn't yet cleared.

This article relies almost entirely on Fox News's framing, which focuses on fiscal risk and ESP's advocacy ambitions. Missing from that account are any independent assessment of the Breathe program's outcomes data, any comment from California state budget officials on whether permanent funding is feasible, and any response from ESP or ESC directly addressing the fiscal sustainability question. Those omissions don't make Fox News wrong on the facts it reported, but they mean the picture here is incomplete.

What Comes Next

The unresolved question is whether Cook County's November 2025 unanimous vote for $7.5 million in permanent funding becomes a model other jurisdictions copy, or a cautionary example, depending on what its outcome data shows over the next two to three years. California has not yet passed any legislation making a statewide guaranteed income program permanent, and ESC's push is currently at the advocacy stage. The next concrete decision point will likely be whether California's 2026-2027 budget cycle includes any allocation toward permanent direct-cash infrastructure, which the state legislature is expected to debate later this year.