The counterplan has the states implement the basic income without changing federal requirements. States will implement the guaranteed income with Workfare requirements as required by federal law – this will reinforce the stigma of welfare.

By the time Mayor de Blasio took charge of city hall after his 2014 campaign to end New York City’s “tale of two cities,”127 the workfare program’s damage was well-documented by advocates, organizers, and legal service providers.128 Over time, advocates succeeded in working with the city’s welfare agency to push for the amendment of certain features of New York’s workfare rules, including statutory protections permitting districts to count at least some four-year-college coursework as a work activity for purposes of receiving subsistence benefits.129 Additionally, the state of New York eliminated the mandatory minimum sanction periods within which an allegedly noncompliant household member would stop receiving benefits.130 Advocates worked with the city agency to reduce the number of work hours required by single parents of young children and to eliminate mandatory workfare placements in unpaid, unproductive “Work Experience Program” positions that offered minimal experience or value to potential employees.131 To obtain federal TANF funds,132 states and local districts remain subject to punitive mandatory work requirements, which continue to stigmatize recipients and trap them in an alternating cycle between low-wage, insecure work and reliance on welfare to meet basic needs.133 Still, as a result of these reforms, New York City was closer than it had been in decades to implementing non-punitive work supports and subsistence-level benefits to all income-eligible households.134