McHenry Times

Illinois state House Rep. Allen Skillicorn (R-East Dundee) believes a proposal for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) model by Chicago City Alderman Ameya Pawar would decimate welfare state jobs.

"If Chicago implements universal basic income, what will the majority of patronage workers do all day?" Skillicorn told the McHenry Times."None of the welfare bureaucracies would be needed anymore."

Skillicorn also is skeptical about how UBI would be paid for. 

Rep. Allen Skillicorn

"Show me the money," Skillicorn said in the email interview.

Skillicorn has represented the 66th House District since 2016. He was unopposed in the primaries in March and he is running as an unopposed incumbent in November's General Election. The 66th House District includes Kane and McHenry counties.

In late June, Pawar, of Chicago 47th Ward, began talking about the creation of a Chicago Resilient Families Initiative taskforce and a UBI model that would provide 1,000 Chicago families "with a minimum of $500 per month, no strings attached."

Pawar's proposal came months after he and fellow progressive Illinois state Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston) were defeated by two billionaire candidates in the governor's race. J.B. Pritzker won the Democrat nomination during the primaries in March and will run against Republican incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner in November's general election.

Pawar's proposal would scale "the city of Chicago's Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) smoothing program to the same 1,000 family cohort. The EITC smoothing would advance payments on a monthly basis. Also, the task force would study the creation of a Chicago-based Earned Income Tax Credit Program."

Pawar made his proposal public on June 27 when he posted the proposal, complete with dozens of city aldermen's signatures, on his Twitter account.

"My legislation calling for the creation of a Chicago #UniversalBasicIncome pilot has 36 co-sponsors," Pawar wrote in the Tweet.

Local and national news outlets have since picked up the story, including a lengthy article in The Intercept. 

”Nearly 70 percent of Americans don't have $1,000 in the bank for an emergency," Pawar was quoted in the July 16 article. "UBI could be an incredible benefit for people who are working and are having a tough time making ends meet or putting food on the table at the end of the month."

In July, former President Barack Obama backed the idea of a Universal Basic Income, though he didn't specifically mention Pawar's proposal. 

"It's not just money that a job provides," Obama said in a speech in Johannesburg, South Africa, during a ceremony to honor the late Nelson Mandela."It provides dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose. And so we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income, review of our work week, how we retrain our young people, how we make everybody an entrepreneur at some level. But we're going to have to worry about economics if we want to get democracy back on track."