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Farmers in Ukraine are assessing the damage after major dam explosion in the southeastern part of the country, which has been occupied by Russia.  

The critical Nova Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station sits on the Dnipro River. Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the dam while Russian officials blame Ukrainian bombardment for it in the contested area. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., affirmed in February that he intended to see a new farm bill passed before the end of the year with bipartisan support. But the conservatives’ outrage over the debt ceiling agreement, which is expected to increase, not reduce, the number of people getting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, and new demands for deep cuts in domestic spending will further test McCarthy’s command of the GOP conference heading into the farm bill debate.

That anger poses several challenges for farm bill writers: Getting Democratic support for the bill would mean SNAP can’t be cut, but leaving SNAP alone could risk inflaming conservatives further. Trying to pass a GOP-only bill wouldn't be easy either, since the GOP majority is so thin that any five Republicans could vote with Democrats to scuttle the legislation.

BUT FIRST: Before you dive into today’s newsletter, your MA team wants to hear from you. As farm bill negotiations heat up, we’re starting a new weekly segment called “Fielding Questions.” Have a burning question for a Capitol Hill lawmaker about the farm bill? Let us know, and we’ll do our best to track them down and ask them for an answer. We’ll feature one Q&A in each Monday newsletter until a farm bill is passed. Send questions to gdowns@politico.com.

DRIVING THE DAY

A federally subsidized farm safety net is a necessary tool to help protect farmers from the many risks of farming. Yet NSAC members have long supported and worked with farmers for whom crop insurance is inaccessible. Limited resource, small, beginning, diverse, and organic farmers find themselves choosing between either purchasing crop insurance each year, if a relevant policy is even available and advertised to them, or adopting on-farm conservation practices and diversifying production and markets to mitigate risk and improve long-term resilience against disasters. Almost invariably, they choose the latter.

If a farmer chooses to adopt conservation measures and diversification but then does not have enough remaining resources to be able to enroll in support of the farm safety net, it suggests that the program as it currently stands is not an effective tool that meets the needs of all farmers. No farmer should be forced to choose, and in fact, both strategies should be incentivized to help farmers manage risk.

Ongoing drought has farmers concerned about their crops and livestock this year, and the future may bring even greater disasters that could affect our sustainability. Inflation and interest rates have farmers concerned about inputs and land costs today — and how that affects their family farms tomorrow. The pandemic showed us how vulnerable our society is to food insecurity, even those who never faced it before.

There is no guarantee that we couldn’t see greater challenges in the next five years that would test the farm bill’s safety net functionality.

In Wichita, Kansas, Donna Pearson McClish, founder of Common Ground Producers and Growers, uses a “mobile food hub” model to move fresh food from local farms—both urban and rural—to low-income residents. Many use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and market vouchers to stretch their dollars, she explained in early February. In 2020, Common Ground from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to train entrepreneurs to grow and distribute food in low-income areas. In 2022, the organization partnered with the Kansas Rural Center to create a bigger food hub that will distribute local food in 12 counties along the interstate that runs from Wichita to Salina. That project will be funded by a larger $500,000 USDA grant. These efforts to feed people and distribute more local food in small but impactful ways are important to the state’s food system, yet they’re dwarfed by the scale of commodity farming in Kansas. In fact, between 1995 and 2021, the USDA also sent more than to wheat, sorghum, and corn farmers to continue producing commodities and $3 billion in payments to encourage conservation practices on those same farms. This funding—and the system it shapes—is determined by the federal farm bill, authorized by Congress every five years. Now, D.C. is abuzz with the start of 2023 negotiations, and Pearson McClish is one of many farmers and food advocates who are clamoring for change. At the summit, she likened the food system to critical infrastructure such as bridges and roads. “Food has to be a policy issue, not a profit issue,” she said. Over the course of this year, Civil Eats will report on a number of specific aspects of this important legislation. For starters, here’s an overview of the 2023 Farm Bill. What Is the Farm Bill? The enormous bill, which the Congressional Budget Office will cost about $700 billion over the next five years, is about both policy and profit. Depending on the year, the super-sized spending bill about a dozen sections, called titles. The largest titles authorize spending on SNAP benefits, subsidy payments for commodity farmers, crop insurance, and conservation programs. Agriculture Committees in the House and Senate hold hearings, negotiate, and then write drafts of the bill that eventually need to be reconciled into one. Usually, the bill is referred to as “zero sum,” which means lawmakers have a set amount of money to work with. That can lead to tense negotiations, especially now, when Democrats control the Senate and Republicans control the House, with demanded by a group of far-right lawmakers. What Will This Year’s Process Look Like? Some past farm bill cycles have taken years, and this one will, too. But many insiders say the evidence points toward swift negotiations and passage. GOP lawmakers typically spend time advocating for cuts to SNAP and stringent work requirements—and that effort has already begun—but newly appointed House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) has pushed back on some of his fellow Republicans’ rhetoric and expressed openness to climate-ag programs he once railed against. “Food has to be a policy issue, not a profit issue.” ~ Donna Pearson McClish Meanwhile, veteran Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow that she will not seek reelection next year; with this as her last farm bill cycle, she will likely up the ante on passing a farm bill that cements her legacy. “She’s going to do everything in her power—and she has a lot of power—to try to get it done,” said Ferd Hoefner, an agricultural policy strategist and consultant who has worked on nine previous farm bills. And the leadership recently announced that drafts of marker bills, the small bills that are used to create language to be added to the larger package, are due in mid-March (although that deadline may be extended). Whatever happens politically, it’s worth understanding what’s at stake beyond the negotiations and lobbying in D.C., and what the outcome of this policy process could mean for farmers and eaters alike, especially at a time when the climate crisis and food insecurity are both urgent issues. Will the Farm Bill’s Hunger Provisions Meet the Growing Need? For the past month, food pantries in many parts of the country have been for what they anticipate will be a surge in demand. After a dip in 2021, the number of families who reported “sometimes” or “often” not having enough to eat throughout 2022. Now, pandemic-related bumps in SNAP benefits have officially ended, with food prices still much higher than normal. Meanwhile, in Washington, Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas), the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, began the first hearing on nutrition programs in the 2023 Farm Bill by chiding the USDA for its 2021 update to the Thrifty Food Plan, which increased benefits based on the rise in food prices over time. It’s the one recent increase that won’t expire, but Boozman said it brought SNAP spending up to “levels that are unsustainable.” In the coming months, that tension between not enough and too much aid for hungry Americans will almost certainly resurface: Hunger groups will be fighting for expansions to SNAP that Democrats generally support, while many Republicans will sound alarms about the current cost and push for stricter . Last week, House Republicans which would make more SNAP recipients subject to work requirements. SNAP is the largest program authorized by the farm bill, and it is expensive: In 2018, it accounted for 75 percent of the projected $428 billion in farm bill spending between 2019 and 2023, and the Congressional Budget Office costs will rise 8.4 percent over the next 10 years. But SNAP’s proportion of the farm bill pie is so large because 40 million people participate annually. By comparison, commodity programs receive 7 percent of funding, but over the past five years only served an average of 850,000 farmers each year. Average commodity payments are in the tens of thousands of dollars, and some farms get them continuously for decades. A recent EWG analysis found one subset of larger farms had each received since 1985. In the last few farm bill cycles, hunger groups focused on defending against cuts to SNAP, said Gina Plata-Nino, deputy director of SNAP at the Food Research Action Center (FRAC). This time around, especially since the pandemic exposed how close many people were living to the edge, she said, . “This isn’t 2018. Our economy is not the same, and there are ways that people were impacted. We need to do better.” At the end of February, a coalition of 500 hunger and nutrition groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the American Heart Association, released . Its members say lawmakers should protect the Thrifty Food Plan update and expand eligibility for , veterans, and

Farm bill is key to solve food insecurity.

The  on Wednesday asked Congress to improve the efficiency of U.S. food assistance authorized by the farm bill as it seeks ways to streamline the response to any food crisis.

The agency needs more flexibility to spend money in ways that best fit local realities, USAID Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance Sarah Charles told a hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The current food crisis has strained USAID resources, she said, and current farm bill requirements have restricted its ability to respond.

The war raging in Ukraine has exacerbated food insecurity across the world — and food aid experts are looking to the 2023 farm bill for solutions.

Ukraine’s massive grain supplies typically feed 400 million people per year, but the war has “drastically cut supplies” and driven up food costs for consumers in rich and poor countries alike, according to the World Food Program (WFP). 

The TCJA also limited the ability of firms to deduct all their interest expenses, capping the amount at 30 percent. The limit started to become more restrictive this year. For their part, Democrats want to see the 2021 version of the CTC restored. That means increasing the credit amount, distributing the funds monthly and, most important, making the credit fully refundable so families with low- or even no-income could still receive the full amount. Both Democrats and Republicans will point to the potential benefits of their ideas. Democrats will say the 2021 version of the CTC put a solid dent in child poverty and food insecurity last year. These gains have faded as the CTC expansions (and other aid) expired. Backers of restoring or extending the business breaks will say the pandemic showed the importance of supporting research that helped deploy vaccines and therapeutics. And with economic uncertainty and high inflation ahead, they’ll say it is more important than ever to support private sector investment. The Democrat-controlled House agreed to continue until 2026 full expensing of research costs as part of the Build Back Better Act. But it will be tougher to win Democratic support for the other investment changes since many Democrats prefer raising business taxes. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is pushing for a compromise CTC, though few Republicans currently support his plan. But Rohit Kumar, a former aide to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), said on TPC’s webcast The Prescription that Republicans might back an increase in the size of the credit as part of a compromise. They are less likely to support full refundability and monthly advanced payments, however. Tax extenders usually move without much controversy because lawmakers don’t bother to pay for them. But a grand bargain with the CTC and TCJA-related business tax changes won’t be cheap. Congressional scorekeepers estimate the 2021 version of the CTC would cost about $1.6 trillion over a decade, while the business investment tax breaks would reduce federal revenues by another $400 billion (there currently isn’t an official estimate for making the net interest deduction cap less restrictive). Are there ways to offset that $2 trillion or a slightly smaller compromise? Sure. But the demise of the Build Back Better Act and the balancing act required to get the IRA enacted show how hard it is to put together a large tax proposal, even with the votes of one party. One other tax issue may get attention in a lame duck session: A bipartisan bill to expand tax breaks for retirement savings. That measure passed the House last March and has strong support in the Senate. It could serve as a vehicle for more modest tax changes on the congressional to-do list. But doing something big and bipartisan in a short lame duck session will be extremely difficult.

After a couple of years of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, the 2023 tax filing season was, for the most part, pretty smooth. But that apparently didn't do the federal tax system much good, at least from a reputational standpoint. The annual Gallup poll on the U.S. economy and personal finance found that the federal income tax now is considered the worst of all taxes. It bumped local property tax from the top spot. Of course, that view might have been influenced by Gallup's timing. It asked its tax questions from April 3 to 25, right as millions were finishing up their annual filing tasks. One thing that also contributed to the increased disdain for the Internal Revenue Code is the finding that 60 percent of those surveyed said the amount of federal income tax they pay is too high. That was up six percentage points from a year ago, and 15 points higher than the answer to that question in 2018 and 2019. Gallup says that the majority in it tax/finance surveys over the years have typically believed that the income tax they pay is fair. Not now. Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the income tax they pay is fair, similar to the record low of 45 percent in 1999. And more than half, 51 percent, said their taxes are not fair. That's the highest Gallup has measured to date. Political positions: As you might expect, the answers reflected the United States' partisan divide. "Americans' opinions of federal income taxes, which had been relatively accepting for the past two decades, have become more critical," said Jeffrey M. Jones, the Gallup senior editor who is in charge of research and analysis for the company's U.S. polling. "It is unclear to what extent this is a function of Americans' paying more in federal income taxes in dollar terms, reaction to larger macroeconomic factors such as inflation and the health of the U.S. economy, or misperception of the reality of their personal tax situation, possibly influenced by their political beliefs." Seventy-one percent of Republicans are more likely to believe their taxes are too high under a Democratic president than they were in 2020 when the Oval Office was a member of the GOP. Independents also believe they are paying too much in tax, with that view going up by 14 points this year. But that's just about half as large as the increase among Republicans that their taxes are too high. Democrats' attitudes, however, essentially haven't changed. Last year, 40 percent said their taxes are too high; that inched up to 41 percent this year. Much of the recent shift is attributable to Republicans' more negative views of income taxes under a Democratic president than a Republican one, although Republicans have been more critical of taxes under President Joe Biden than they were under President Barrack Obama, added Jones.

After Sen. Rick Scott released his conservative "Rescue America" policy plan, fellow Republican senators grumbled to GOP leadership about the attacks they were facing because of the proposal, according to The Washington Post.

The 11-point plan — which immediately attracted attention due to its controversial tax proposals — drew Republicans into a debate that they didn't want to have in a year when they feel confident that they can retake one or both chambers of Congress this fall. And those members let their feelings be known during a late February meeting in the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who had already distanced himself from the Florida Republican's plan.

The Republican Congress has passed a tax plan in which more than four-fifths of the long-term tax cuts are steered to the extremely wealthy, and are offset by future tax increases for a significant fraction of the party’s own voting base. Republicans plan substantial cuts to government services that those voters use and like.

This kind of “reverse Robin Hood” upward distribution has become the unifying goal of the Republican Party. The current GOP’s tax plan is the latest iteration of a decades-long rightward trajectory.

While macroeconomic policies were long considered part of the technocratic realm of ‘quiet politics’ (Culpepper, ), they have moved into the electoral realm of ‘noisy politics’ over the last decade. The cumulative impact of the financial crisis, the eurozone crisis and the pandemic on Europe's economies has been unprecedented. Public debt has substantially increased, and the politicization of public debt and fiscal consolidation will likely accelerate yet again, once short-term emergency measures to combat the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic are over. Consequently, governments will be confronted with tough fiscal policy choices, further exacerbating political conflict over fiscal policies.

In this context, it is vital to understand citizens' fiscal policy preferences. To what extent do they care about debt? A large body of research finds that government debt is unpopular and fiscal consolidation is broadly in line with public opinion. According to this view, citizens are fiscal conservatives, who dislike government debt and support balanced budgets (e.g., Alesina et al., ; Arias & Stasavage, ; Bansak et al., ; Barnes & Hicks, , ; Brender & Drazen, ; Giger & Nelson, ; Peltzman, ). In contrast, other research suggests that citizens punish governments for implementing fiscal consolidation. According to this view, voters oppose spending cuts and tax increases, which reduce the popularity of governments, harm the re-election chances of incumbents and contribute to the success of populist parties (Bojar et al., ; Fetzer, ; Galofré-Vilà et al., ; Hübscher & Sattler, ; Hübscher et al., ; Jacques & Haffert, ; Talving, ).

If partisans reason about the importance of government overspending in a biased fashion, as per H1, the change in presidential administrations should spur changes in partisans’ perceived importance of addressing the deficit. Specifically, according to H1a and H1b, the change from the Obama Administration to Trump Administration should result in lower perceived importance of the deficit among Republicans and greater perceived importance of the deficit among Democrats, respectively.

To test these expectations using the PRC data, we specified a logistic regression model featuring an interaction between a trichotomous categorical measure of party identification (Democrat, Independent, or Republican) and the year of the survey (0 = 2016, 1 = 2018). To account for any potential imbalances between the two samples, we also included controls for respondents’ age, family income, education level, gender identification, racial identification, and ideological self-placement.

A narrow majority of U.S. adults (54%) say they would oppose the federal government providing a guaranteed income – sometimes called a universal basic income (UBI) – of about $1,000 per month for all adult citizens, whether or not they work; 45% favor the proposal. Young people favor a universal basic income by about two-to-one; much less support among older adults The idea of the government providing a universal basic income for all adult citizens draws broad and intense opposition among Republicans, but is generally supported by Democrats, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Nearly eight-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (78%) oppose the federal government providing a universal basic income of about $1,000 per person, with 62% strongly opposed. A smaller share of Democrats and Democratic leaners (66%) favor a UBI, with just a third supporting the proposal strongly. UBI was the centerpiece of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s campaign. Yang is scheduled to speak to the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, shortly before Joe Biden accepts the party’s presidential nomination. How we did this There also are wide age, race and income differences in views of the government providing a universal basic income of about $1,000 for each adult citizen, whether or not they work. Adults under age 30 favor the government providing a UBI by roughly two-to-one (67% to 33%). There is far less support among older adults: 72% of those 65 and older oppose the proposal, while just 26% are in favor. Majorities of Black (73%) and Hispanic adults (63%) favor the government providing a UBI, compared with 35% of White adults. And while the proposal draws broad opposition from adults in upper- and middle-income households, a 63% majority of those in lower-income households favor it. Sizable age and income differences in both parties in views of a universal basic income In both parties, younger adults and those with lower incomes express higher levels of support for the federal government providing a UBI for all adult citizens. While majorities of Republicans across age groups oppose the UBI proposal, 41% of Republicans ages 18 to 34 favor it, by far the highest share of any GOP age group. Among Democrats, support for a UBI also is much higher among adults ages 18 to 34 than among older people. About four-in-ten Republicans in lower-income households (43%) favor the government providing a universal basic income, compared with 17% of those with middle incomes and just 8% of those with upper incomes. There are similar income differences among Democrats. Still, Democrats across income and age categories are far more likely than Republicans in those groups to favor a universal basic income. There are also racial and ethnic differences in these views among Democrats, though majorities of Black (77%), Hispanic (70%) and White Democrats (61%) support the federal government providing a universal basic income for all adult citizens.

The concept might sound far-fetched, but a so-called universal basic income (UBI), is currently one of the most hotly debated policy topics being floated as a means to address income inequality and the disruption that technology poses to the workforce. UBI is being tested in Finland and other international markets, but has received decidedly mixed reactions. Meanwhile, developments in robotics and artificial intelligence have grave implications for the labor force. A report issued this week from consulting firm PwC found that more than a third of U.S. jobs were at risk from automation, upping the ante for policy makers to cushion the blow to workers. Advocates for UBI argue that a guaranteed paycheck could serve as a way to fight poverty and uncertainty in an evolving U.S. economy, and encourage workers to take more risks in the job market if they had some extra money as a cushion. The idea has gained prominent backers such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently told CNBC he supported UBI — joining a growing list of tech execs who’ve voiced support for the concept as a solution to unemployment that will be caused by future automation — the rise of the robots. Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator President Sam Altman and eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar have also expressed support for a universal income. Skeptics, however, insist that a guaranteed paycheck would actually reduce the incentive to work. In their view, a UBI would accomplish little other than wasting money on those who don’t need it, and may even crowd out programs like Social Security and Medicare. The increasingly polarizing concept was on full display this week, as UBI backers and antagonists sparred at a debate hosted by Intelligence Squared U.S. in New York City. The debate made for strange bedfellows, as a well-known labor organizer teamed up with an economic libertarian to argue in favor of UBI, while two aides to former president Barack Obama and vice president Joe Biden pushed back on the idea. “Despite job growth, the November election is a shocking warning that the economy is off to a bad start, and many people are stuck in minimum wage jobs,” said Andrew Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the largest and most organized labor unions in the country. With a turbulent economy giving rise to populism, Stern said the economic environment was creating a “U.S. of anxiety” over money. A universal income would be “humane, flexible, it promotes choice and freedom, and offers security to individuals,” Stern added. Well-known libertarian Charles Murray agreed, saying that by the government eliminating spending on some programs, thereby generating revenue to spend elsewhere, “we can afford to do this in America.” However, Jason Furman, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, rejected the suggestion, saying it would do more harm than good. “If you give someone a dollar, [that dollar] has to come from somewhere,” said Furman, arguing that a universal income would actually take America in the wrong direction and worsen economic conditions. UBI boosters “argue that [government] money sent to the elderly today doesn’t work … that the welfare state today doesn’t work, but these claims are false,” Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Biden, told the debate’s participants. Myriad welfare programs currently employed by the government “lift more than 40 percent of Americans out of poverty, and instituting a universal income in our country would undermine that progress,” he said. A guaranteed paycheck would be an expensive proposition. In the U.S. alone, it could cost more than $3 trillion to distribute just a $10,000 annual income to all citizens, science and technology website Futurism said in a report recently. Stern and Murray suggested that cutting spending on defense and curbing tax credits could pay for UBI. Yet both Furman and Bernstein warned about the cost to the federal government, with the latter calling UBI little more than “bad math.”

For as long as America has had a poverty problem — which is to say, for its entire history — a small group of dreamers has proposed guaranteed income as a solution. The idea dates to the year the country was founded: Thomas Paine proposed a type of basic income in his 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense.” In the mid-20th century, it gained traction among Black American thinkers: In 1966, the Black Panthers’ Ten-Point Program demanded “employment or a guaranteed income” for everyone. A year later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his last book — “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” — that government aid programs all have a “common failing: they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” The first official proposal for a federal basic income program, though, came not from a paragon of progressivism, but from Richard Nixon. In 1969, Nixon introduced the Family Assistance Plan, which would have provided additional cash to poor families through a negative income tax — cutting checks to the poorest Americans instead of them paying the government — of $1,600 (about $13,000 today) for a family of four. The proposal was motivated by Nixon’s desire to replace the welfare system, which was unpopular with White blue-collar voters, but it never made it out of the Senate Finance Committee. Many skeptical politicians and voters feared that giving people cash would allow them to quit their jobs, stop looking for work or work less. Around the same time, a series of negative-income-tax experiments benefiting about 7,500 people in six states appeared to confirm those concerns: In Seattle and Denver, where the two largest programs took place, married men worked an average of 7 percent fewer hours after three years of the program, while married and single women worked 17 percent fewer hours. And while researchers didn’t look at any other measures of stability — whether participants were more likely to seek medical care, for example, or whether their children missed fewer days of school — they did observe a modest increase in the divorce rate. Those two factors were enough to destroy widespread interest in guaranteed-income experiments for several decades.

Republican pols love to promote the canard that government aid discourages paid employment. Former president Donald Trump — who, let's remember, inherited his real estate fortune — was also a fan of work requirements. His administration attempted to impose them on non-elderly, non-disabled recipients of Medicaid. Seema Verma, who served as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Trump's administration, claimed the move would help the people set to lose benefits. Work requirements for non-disabled adults, she said, would improve self-esteem, well-being, health and self-sufficiency.

So it was no surprise that when Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) issued a joint statement in opposition to the initial Biden child tax credits, they also couched it as a way to help families. "This kind of universal basic income makes more Americans dependent on government and severs the vital elements — work, marriage, community, and beyond — required to raise healthy families."

The concept might sound far-fetched, but a so-called universal basic income (UBI), is currently one of the most hotly debated policy topics being floated as a means to address income inequality and the disruption that technology poses to the workforce. UBI is being tested in Finland and other international markets, but has received decidedly mixed reactions.

Meanwhile, developments in robotics and artificial intelligence have grave implications for the labor force. A report issued this week from consulting firm PwC found that more than a third of U.S. jobs were at risk from automation, upping the ante for policy makers to cushion the blow to workers.

The first official proposal for a federal basic income program, though, came not from a paragon of progressivism, but from Richard Nixon. In 1969, Nixon introduced the Family Assistance Plan, which would have provided additional cash to poor families through a negative income tax — cutting checks to the poorest Americans instead of them paying the government — of $1,600 (about $13,000 today) for a family of four. The proposal was motivated by Nixon’s desire to replace the welfare system, which was unpopular with White blue-collar voters, but it never made it out of the Senate Finance Committee.

Many skeptical politicians and voters feared that giving people cash would allow them to quit their jobs, stop looking for work or work less. Around the same time, a series of negative-income-tax experiments benefiting about 7,500 people in six states appeared to confirm those concerns: In Seattle and Denver, where the two largest programs took place, married men worked an average of 7 percent fewer hours after three years of the program, while married and single women worked 17 percent fewer hours. And while researchers didn’t look at any other measures of stability — whether participants were more likely to seek medical care, for example, or whether their children missed fewer days of school — they did observe a modest increase in the divorce rate. Those two factors were enough to destroy widespread interest in guaranteed-income experiments for several decades.