By Tom Ozimek
A Texas county that encompasses Houston is moving forward with a modified version of its guaranteed income program after the Texas Supreme Curt halted the original initiative over concerns about its constitutionality.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo recently announced a resurrection of sorts of the “Uplift Harris” program that was blocked by the state Supreme Court in response to a legal challenge by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose complaint described the initiative as a “socialist experiment” that lacked safeguards to ensure that taxpayer funds would be used in line with the Texas Constitution.
The new program, which was approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court on Aug. 15, seeks to provide financial assistance to around 1,600 low-income families who had been selected for the original “Uplift Harris” program but with added restrictions on how the funds can be used.
The original program, which was temporarily blocked in June by the state Supreme Court pending appeal due to “serious doubt” about its alignment with the state constitution, promised $500 monthly cash payments to nearly 2,000 families for 18 months.
The families were to be selected by lottery and the payments were to be funded by $20.5 million in federal pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. Just as the first payments were about to be disbursed, Paxton filed an emergency petition to halt the program, which noted that, “there is no such thing as free money—especially in Texas.”
Paxton argued in the filing that the “no-strings-attached” nature of the payments violated the Texas Constitution, which he said prohibits the giving away of public funds to individuals with no conditions, no control over the expenditure of that money, and no guarantee of any public benefit.
The Texas Supreme Court sided with Paxton, expressing concerns about the constitutionality of the initiative and blocking the program, noting that the potential violation could not be remedied if payments were allowed to proceed while the legal battle unfolded.
In response to the ruling, Harris County officials restructured the program. Under the new plan, the selected 1,600 or so families will receive prepaid debit cards loaded with $500 each month. However, unlike the original program, the cards can only be used at specific vendors, such as grocery stores and pharmacies.
“While launching this new program instead of a guaranteed income program isn’t ideal, it’s the best way we can try to keep our promise to these families,“ Hidalgo said in a statement. ”I would say to the families who have been waiting for this lifeline: We are trying, but don’t get your hopes up just yet. We’re moving ahead with cautious optimism to see if the State will object.”
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry as to whether it intends to challenge the new version of the program.
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican, expressed dismay that Harris County is pressing ahead with the revised program in the face of the Texas Supreme Court order, saying “This is the same old lottery socialism,” in a post on X. He said he had forwarded what he described as version “2.0” of a universal basic income program to Paxton’s office “for legal review and action as required.”
Officials in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, have said in the past that Uplift Harris was designed to help households in the county’s poorest ZIP codes who are 200 percent below the federal poverty line, which amounts to $15,060 for an individual, and up to $31,200 for a family of four.
