Gov. Janet Mills gave her final State of the State address as governor this past week. You may be surprised, dear reader, to discover that there were elements of Mills’ speech that I liked and agreed with, you will not be surprised to discover that my praise comes with some rather large caveats.

Mills’ proposal to make community college tuition free for everyone is a good one; it was a good idea when she initially launched it in a more limited context. The problem with the initial proposal was only that it was framed as temporary for the students affected most by the pandemic. The cut-off years were somewhat arbitrary and never should have been there in the first place; it should have been a universal program from the beginning.

This shows a fundamental truth whenever any politician, on the left or the right, frames any government program as temporary: That’s almost never true, regardless of whether it’s a social program or a tax cuts. The only reason any politician ever includes that “temporary” tag is because they don’t have any idea how to pay for it in the long run.

We saw this with the “temporary” enhanced subsidies of health insurance during the pandemic. Today, there are hardly any politicians, on the left or the right, who really want to get rid of the subsidies for good. Instead, they’re merely wrangling about how to pay for it. One suspects that even many of the supposed fiscal conservatives who say they want to get rid of the subsidies for good are happy to have them extended while voting against it. Then they can get credit while avoiding blame — always a politician’s favorite outcome.

So, keep that in mind the next time any politician proposes a new program as temporary. They’re probably just trying to figure out how to keep it in place permanently, either politically or how to fit in the budget. Temporary one-time “fixes” for things are often non-solutions for politicians who want to get political credit for something while avoiding the actual hard work of governing. This characterization certainly applies to Mills’ proposal to raid the rainy day fund for one-time stimulus payments to Mainers — or, excuse me, “affordability checks.”

There are specific problems with Mills’ affordability checks proposal, though, not just philosophical ones.

The income cut-off levels — $75,000 for single filers, $112,500 for head of household and $150,000 for joint filers — are, quite simply, too high. Picture a person who makes $72,000 a year, has no kids, and little or no debt; let’s say just a mortgage and/or a car payment. He can afford to go on vacation, eat out, go shopping. He’s not looking at prices when he gets gas, buys groceries or pays utility bills. He doesn’t need a $300 check from the state; he’ll probably just add it to his vacation fund or his brokerage account.

Conversely, someone who makes $84,000 a year could be in much more dire fiscal straits. Let’s say he’s divorced, pays child support, has student loan debt and has a mortgage and car payments. Even without adding in something like credit card debt, his financial situation looks much tighter than our first example — and yet, he won’t qualify for one of Mills’ affordability checks thanks to his income level. Basing eligibility for assistance solely on income is not unique to Mills’ latest proposal — it’s widespread across government programs — but it’s particularly egregious here.

A better proposal than one-time payments would be permanent tax cuts. This would be much more difficult to structure, of course. The Taxation Committee would have to consider readjusting Maine’s income tax brackets and find a way to pay for it out of the General Fund, rather than the rainy day fund. It would require a serious, sustained discussion throughout the legislative session as an overall structural change to the state budget, rather than an isolated proposal. Such tax relief could be focused on the lower end of tax brackets, so that the assistance goes to those who actually need it.

That’s a lot of difficult work that legislators on both sides of the aisle are likely eager to avoid. These one-time payments with simplistic requirements are easier to debate, but they don’t address the real problem. They’re a simplistic fix designed to get money in people’s pockets before the next election, not a real attempt to address the affordability issue.