The thesis behind these programs is explicitly that the government shouldn’t waste timing being paternalistic about the recipient’s spending, like existing programs are. It only matters if in aggregate people’s lives are improved, not whether they are “spending wisely” according to someone’s ideal.

There may be other reasons why programs like this aren’t good, like financial feasibility or positive outcomes aren’t sustained when it’s broadly applied, but “I don’t trust someone to spend it well,” which is just a stand in for “how I would spend it,” needs to go away in favor of outcome-based evaluation.