The populist revolution responding to the coronavirus has been spearheaded by none other than Mitt Romney. The Utah senator embraced a $1,000 cash bailout to every adult in the country, to both help induce consumer demand among middle- and upper-income earners and help the basic bottom line for those who cannot make immediate bills.
Though his payment would be a one-time payment, it echoes the idea of universal basic income, which has been in the news thanks to its prominence in Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign. It is especially compelling during a time of pandemic precisely because it is simple. By forgoing means testing, the overhead and time required to distribute a UBI is limited, a necessary feat of any cash infusion meant to prevent evictions and starvation.
Yet the rest of Congress wishes to complicate the premise of Romney’s proposal. Josh Hawley plans to propose cash relief, but only for “working families,” whatever that means, “based on the number of children they have at home.” Tom Cotton is working on his own legislation for “cash stipends” for those affected by the virus. In a more explicit rebuke of Romney, Brian Schatz tweeted that a cash bailout ought to only go to “the needy, including gig workers, underemployed, caregivers and others.”
In theory, neither liberals nor conservatives ought to want a cash bailout for the wealthy. And in practice, without a pandemic, a universal basic income is still a fringe idea at best. But during a case like the coronavirus, if the government wants to spend an ounce of cash on a direct bailout, we need it to save people from eviction and put consumer demand back on life support. A UBI does that quickly and cheaply. So what if a millionaire gets an extra $1,000 if it means our most impoverished do as well more quickly than they would otherwise? There’s simply no feasible world where a plan in the mold of Cotton’s or Hawley’s could be implemented as quickly as Romney’s.
There’s a serious case that given our $22 trillion national debt, we shouldn’t even entertain bailouts. But if we’re going to do so, it better go directly to consumers and as quickly as possible. A UBI does that. Complicating it would not.
