User:Zweifel/War on Poverty

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The War on Poverty was one of major initiatives of the Great Society, aimed at reducing poverty in the United States. The phrase was first introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. As a part of the Great Society, Johnson's view of a federally-directed application of resources to expand the government's role in social welfare programs from education to healthcare was a continuation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and Four Freedoms speech from the 1930s and 1940s. However, the War on Poverty went far beyond Roosevelt's efforts. Although couched in terms of benefitting all Americans, the War on Poverty was in fact intimately related to the Civil Rights Movement; whereas by 1965 many of the major political goals of the Civil Rights Movement had been accomplished, the effects of slavery and segregation, viz., the exceptional poverty and economic isolation of Black Americans nonetheless remained.

The War on Poverty aimed to address that. Legislation proposed by Johnson was designed in response to the poverty of over 35 million Americans that year and followed difficult economic conditions associated with a national poverty rate of around 25%. The War on Poverty speech led Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, a law that established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administrate the local application of Federal funds targeted against poverty.

By 1966, it had become apparent that the initial method of provision of these services, Community Action, was insufficient, and a new program, Model Cities, was developed to coordinate urban regeneration. Model Cities actually embodied two broad trends that can be seen in earlier programs: increasing emphasis on coordination and planning at the Federal level, especially the coordination of both private and public efforts, and "Creative Federalism," whereby the federal government, recognizing the lack of necessary funds at the local level, would provide such funds, as well as bureaucratic assistance, in order to carry out federal and local proposals.

By that point, only two years after the War on Poverty was initially launched, the political climate in the United States had changed. The Watts Riots of 1965 and other riots in 1966 provoked a backlash against the radical Black Power movement, seen in the dramatic losses of the Democratic party in the 1966 congressional elections. After November 1966, Johnson's policies, particularly those aimed at alleviating the poverty of Black Americans such as Model Cities, were starved of funding by a hostile congress. Despite this, the size of the Black [middle class] doubled between 1960 and 1970, although Blacks left in the inner cities sunk further and futher into poverty.

The overall failure of the War on Poverty was in no small part responsible for the rightward shift in American politics in later decades. Deregulation, growing criticism of the welfare state, and an ideological shift to reducing federal aid to impoverished people in the 1980s and 1990s culminated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, in which Bill Clinton "end[ed] welfare as we know it."^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, the legacy of the War on Poverty remains in the continued existence of such Federal Programs as Head Start and Job Corps.

Quotations[edit]

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

Lyndon B. Johnson, State of the Union Address, January 1964

We are much too late.

Lyndon Johnson, February 1966

In the South, an old game had been going on with a new rule, imperfectly understood by whites, that the first side to resort to violence—lost. Now in the North the Negroes had resorted to violence, in a wild destructive explosion that shattered, probably forever, the image of non-violent suffering.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1967

When Ronald Reagan would talk about the woman drawing five separate welfare checks, it wasn't difficult to imagine the color of her skin.

Nicholas Lemann, 1991

Background[edit]

Michael Harrington's book The Other America, 1962, is sometimes credited with being a catalyst in this moment.

In his 1964 State of the Union address, Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America,” starting a series of extensive government programs aimed at reducing poverty, largely directed at poor blacks in America’s cities. He appointed Sargent Shriver to direct these efforts. On August 20, 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was signed into law. Its main function was to establish Community Action agencies in local communities, in order to give the poor a political voice as to what services they required to rise out of poverty, and to provide them those services.iii Among the services provided by the Office for Economic Opportunity (OEO) were Head Start, a preschool education program, Adult Basic Education, Job Corps, and VISTA, a volunteer service along the lines of the Peace Corps.

Major initiatives[edit]

Early Stages: a Brief Survey of the OEO in 1964

The Productive and Dysfunctional 1965

In his 1965 State of the Union address, Johnson proposed a number of new programs, including a new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), an education act, and medical care for the elderly and for children. In his January 7, 1965 special message to Congress, “Advancing the Nation’s Health,”iv Johnson put forth two proposals, later to be known as Medicare and Medicaid. With respect to Medicaid, he recommended direct federal grants to provide prenatal and children’s health services. On January 12, 1965, he recommended funding pre-school projects (Head Start), as well as “…legislationv…to authorize a major program of assistance to public elementary and secondary schools serving children of low-income families.”vi In discussing crime, he proposed legislation that “would authorize the Attorney General to assist state, local and private groups to improve and strengthen crime control programs.”vii In each of these examples, Federal financial and administrative assistance was proposed, and later enacted.

On March 2, Johnson proposed a Department of Housing and Urban Development to Congress.viii In the proposal, he described how the new department would consolidate and coordinate a number of already existing housing programs. “[I]t will be primarily responsible for federal participation in metropolitan area thinking and planning….We can offer incentives [to unaffiliated communities] to metropolitan area planning and cooperation.” He proposed “… a program of matching grants to local governments for building new basic community facilities...” and later offered federal funding for land acquisition and development, as well as rent supplements. Although rent supplements were not funded by the House, HUD clearly represented a major step forward in the areas of both planning and funding at the federal level. Indeed, Johnson wrote in his memoirs, “the cumbersome organization of government is simply not equipped to solve complex problems that cut across departmental lines,” and later, “our urban programs had grown into a network of separate fiefdoms. We pulled them all together by establishing a new Department of Housing and Urban Development…”ix

In March, 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy Planning, published a sociological study of the urban Black poor for use within the Federal government. He contended that, as a result of slavery and segregation, black migrants to Northern cities were experiencing increasing instability in their families. Being denied education and training for countless generations, men were experiencing high levels of unemployment, and, in their role in the family, both economically and socially, had become marginalized. This resulted in significantly high levels of illegitimate births, broken families, and female-headed households, increasing the number of people on welfare. As a result of this, Black youth, especially Black boys, were having far more academic problems than their white equivalents (or those from whole families), weren’t exposed to models of responsible masculinity that their fathers would normally provide, and were thus turning to crime and delinquency, and further unemployment. Deeming this the “tangle of pathology,” he observed that this system had started to perpetuate itself, that the children from these families would reproduce such patterns, contributing further to the disorganization of urban black society.x

Many of the ideas of this report were used by Johnson in his June, 1965, Commencement address at Howard University, a speech that was read and approved by Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young before it was given.xi Arguing for special consideration of Black problems, Johnson committed his administration to measures in support of the Black family, in an effort to ensure “not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result,” and pledging a White House conference to discuss and plan a course of action in this second stage of the civil rights movement.xii The summer of 1965 saw a number of important events: the successful Selma to Montgomery march, the passage of the Voter Rights Act, the general success of the Youth Opportunities Campaign (a call by the President for private companies and government agencies to hire youths during the summer months so that they would be off the streets and would earn enough money to return to school the following school year), and, of course, the August riot in the Watts area of Los Angeles. The riot was naturally condemned by the president, who stated that “[violence] strikes from the hand of the Negro the very weapons with which he is achieving his own emancipation,”xiii argued that the nation must strike at the cause of the riots, i.e., poverty, and later announced a program of assistance to Los Angeles.xiv

It was in the shadow of the Watts riots that the controversy over the Moynihan Report played out. Originally classified, as it contained census data not yet made public, the report was leaked and started appearing in newspaper columns, most notably “Inside Report” by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, later becoming the subject of several magazine articles. Nicholas Lemann argues that the attention the report received in the press “had concentrated on the parts of the repost that dealt with out-of-wedlock childbearing and ignored the parts about unemployment,”xv a thesis that was, by and large true, especially in light of the fact that many of them quoted a line, the phrasing of which, in hindsight, is most unfortunate: “the very essence of the male animal, from the bantam rooster to the four-star general, is to strut.”xvi Indeed, the message of the report was twisted beyond recognition,xvii alienating several of the more left wing civil rights activists, such as Floyd McKissick, who said, “my major criticism of the report is that it assumes that middle class American values are the correct ones for everyone in America.”xviii Johnson himself stopped holding press conferences from August 30 to January 13, 1966, (perhaps due to the Moynihan controversy), and made no mention of either the report or even the black family at the opening of the planning conference for “To Fulfill These Rights” in November 1965.xix

1965 ended on a mixed note. The first session of the 89th Congress was one of the most productive in history, and passed an unprecedented proportion of the President’s proposals (69%), although it did not fund them to nearly the degree he wished. The economy grew by 6.3%, personal income grew by 8.0%, and corporate profits grew by an amazing 21.1%, while prices rose only 1.7%. Unemployment dropped to 4.5%, and even that of non-whites dropped to 8.1% from 9.6%., and the budget deficit was kept well below what was required.xx Califano describes the extraordinary lengths the President went to in order to prevent inflation, such as selling national stockpiles of natural resources.xxi Indeed, 1965 would be the last year Johnson would be able to hold down inflation that would come as a result of increased spending in the Vietnam war.

The Moynihan controversy removed what should have been a theme central to the War on Poverty, the increasing disorganization of urban black society due to weaknesses in the urban black family structure. Not only that, it set a precedent whereby the administration would be willing to fight only a limited war on poverty, rather than doing whatever was necessary to break the cycle of poverty, including addressing “politically incorrect” topics, which should have been viewed as par for the course. The Watts riot demonstrated the magnitude of the problem Johnson wished to confront, caused a national obsession over the “urban crisis,” and caused his programs to be viewed with increasing suspicion.

1966: Mounting Pressures

Towards the end of 1965, Johnson’s advisors started working on new programs and proposals for the second session of the 89th Congress. In his memoirs, Johnson wrote:

if all our people were properly housed, most of the problems that now threaten our society would be less critical, and we would be an immeasurably stronger nation…Along with new buildings to replace [the slums], we needed to offer those slum dwellers a genuine opportunity to change their lives….the proposal was an approach to the rebuilding of city neighborhoods in a total way, bring to bear on a blighted community all the programs that could help in that task…xxii

Califano is considerably more honest in describing the genesis of Model Cities. He describes how unruly the OEO had become under Shriver, how he would almost taunt mayors with the “maximum feasible participation” clause, and chronicles the public spat between Shriver and Budget Director Charles Schultze, who was able to speak the immortal line, “we ought not be in the business of organizing the poor politically.” Califano writes, “by the end of 1965 LBJ feared that community action organizations were jeopardizing other Great Society efforts,” although LBJ eventually decided not to reorganize the OEO for fear of criticism.xxiii

Califano ascribes the original idea of Model Cities to UAW President Walter Reuther, who presented him with the idea of total coordination of services, involving all segments of the community.xxiv Moreover, the situation seemed grim. Califano argues, “the problems exposed by the Watts riot had put the stamp of urgency on LBJ’s desire to mount a concerted assault on slum conditions in America’s cities.”xxv He writes, almost in direct contradiction of his former mentor’s statement above,

By the mid-1960s, however, urban problems extended far beyond the dilapidated buildings housing seven million families. Schools were inadequate, as were health care, transportation, and recreational facilities.xxvi

This was not simply a housing problem. This situation was getting worse and they knew it. Nonetheless, in his State of the Union address, LBJ said, Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do….I will ask the Congress not only to continue, but to speed up the war on poverty….In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and neighborhoods….Working together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the task of providing…all the…necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come together to live the good life. I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the growth of entire metropolitan areas.xxvii

To reiterate, LBJ’s plan for 1966 was to fight a war abroad, pursue substantial fiscal spending policies domestically, though not at what he believed to be their necessary levels, forego a tax increase, and still expect to moderate both inflation and the budget deficit. On January 26, Johnson submitted his Model Cities proposal to Congress. Again, the language of the proposal proves instructive. His repudiation of community action in the proposal is of critical importance, and can be seen in the following, Virtually every forward step we have taken has had its severe limitations. Each of those steps has involved a public choice, and created a public dilemma: […] -- involving urban residents in redeveloping their own areas, hence lengthening the time and increasing the cost of the job. -- preserving the autonomy of local agencies, thus crippling our efforts to attract regional problems on a regional basis [my italics].xxviii

In his proposal, Johnson wrote, “I propose that we combine physical reconstruction and rehabilitation with effective social programs throughout the rebuilding process. I propose we achieve new flexibility in administrative procedures.”xxix Cities would design thoroughly coordinated demonstrations, or metropolitan area-wide attacks on poverty, whose primary goal would be to “arrest blight and decay in entire neighborhoods” and “bring about a change in the total environment affected.,” making “use of every available social program,” in order to “narrow the housing gap between the deprived and the rest of the community”, providing equal housing opportunity to every race.xxx The demonstration would employ residents “in all phases of the program,” and would “foster the development of local and private initiative and widespread citizen participation.”xxxi Most notably, the demonstration “should be managed …by a single authority with adequate powers to carry our and coordinate all phases of the program,”xxxii further evidence of the move away from community action toward a bureaucratically organized program. The essence of this program is that the city, in renewing itself physically, in a demonstration specific to the needs and conditions of that particular city, would renew itself in terms of expanded employment in the program itself and the development of ties between business and the local community, thus expanding employment even further.

The program in Johnson’s proposal would be administered by HUD, which would approve Federal funding of the demonstrations. Federal funding would come in two forms: “the complete array of all available grants and urban aids in the fields of housing, renewal, transportation, education, welfare, economic opportunity, and related programs,” and “special grants amounting to 80% of the non-Federal cost of…grant-in-aid programs included in the demonstration.” xxxiii The Model Cities proposal typifies the two main trends stated in the introduction. Model Cities was obviously representative of Creative Federalism. In the proposal, Johnson wrote, “we intend to help only those cities who help themselves.”xxxiv Creative Federalism was Johnson’s policy of affecting change in areas where he had limited jurisdiction, whereby the Federal government would provide funds for state and local governments to address problems specific to their areas, ones that are outside the traditional jurisdiction of the Federal government or are better served by local initiative. This is exactly what Model Cities was meant to do. Model Cities was also representative of the move towards greater coordination and planning. The whole point of Model Cities was to provide a coordinated attack on poverty. The planning for this would come from the city proposing the program, with Federal oversight from HUD. This was meant to ensure maximum coordination and efficiency: a program specific to the city, approved of by a department of the executive.

Riding high on a wave of legislative success in the first session of the 89th Congress, one could hardly assume that LBJ wouldn’t further his liberal dreams beyond Model Cities. On March 1, Johnson sent a message to Congress on health and education. For health services, Johnson proposed a program similar in conception (though not in scope) to Model Cities. He wrote in his proposal, A winning strategy demands wise and well planned use of manpower. It demands coordinated use of all resources available. I recommend…a program of grants to enable states and communities to plan the better use of manpower, facilities, and financial resources for comprehensive health services.xxxv

In the same proposal, Johnson also requested additional funding for Head Start and to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, “to help communities in planning school construction to…deal with obsolescence, overcrowding an…de facto segregation.”xxxvi Similarly, with respect to crime, Johnson wrote, “I am asking Congress to increase appropriations for the Law Enforcement Assistance Act,” and, “We must establish a rational, coordinated correctional system [by consolidation at the Federal level under the Justice department]”xxxvii During the summer of 1966, another “long, hot summer,” America saw riots in black ghettoes in a number of American cities, most notably Chicago. The rioting was more extensive and involved a larger number of people than Watts, and was perceived as an increasing trend. The President was of course called upon to comment on this civil unrest, its implications, and what he would do to prevent future riots from occurring. His responses were naturally condemnatory. “Riots in the streets will never bring lasting reform. They tear at the very fabric of the community. They set neighbor against neighbor. They create walls of mistrust and fear among fellow citizens.”xxxviii Rioters were said to understand rights, but have neglected their responsibilities to society.xxxix Furthermore, Johnson emphasized the losses to civil rights that were to be had by rioting. “We are not interested in black power and we are not interested in white power. But we are interested in American democratic power, with a small “d”.”xl Later, he said, “So it is not only to protect the society at large that we refuse to condone riots and disorders. It is to serve the real interests of those for whose cause we struggle.”xli However, Johnson offered very few immediate solutions, referring only to his long term solutions (i.e., his programs)xlii and other responses not comparable to the problem at hand, such as “find[ing] recreation,…,open[ing] the swimming pools, turn[ing] on the sprinklers, turn[ing] up new recreational areas….”xliii The President had always viewed law enforcement and the maintenance of civil peace as under the jurisdiction of local government (a constitutionally justified position), thereby precluding such preventative measures as National Guard mobilization without provocation. The President was thus put in a position whereby he was held accountable for the riots and yet had no remedy at his disposal.

As 1966 progressed, it became apparent that the Civil Rights movement and the coalition of forces that enabled it were in decline, as evidenced by the breakup of COFO and the impending expulsion of whites from SNCC and CORE. In analyzing this situation, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote, in 1967,

If a program was to be forthcoming, it would have to be the work of the civil-rights movement, with whatever assistance it could muster in government departments and universities. There was no reason to assume that the movement would fail in this, but in fact it did so: totally. The civil-rights movement had no program for going beyond the traditional and relatively easy issues of segregation and discrimination, and could not organize itself to produce one within the life of the 89th Congress.xliv

In September, 1966, Harry McPherson, an aid to Johnson, had an enlightening correspondence with Nicholas Katzenbach, then Attorney General, discussing government strategy with respect to the movement. He writes, The civil rights movement is obviously in a mess…White resentment is great and still growing; the Negro community is fragmented…The pressure will grow for you to silence the protests, to take vigorous action to “bring the Negroes into line,” [but this is now unfeasible]….Part of the problem is that the civil rights acts, while profoundly meaningful to the Southern Negro and symbolically meaningful to the Northern Negro, did little to bring about progress in education, housing, and employment. Expectations were aroused by breakthroughs in political rights. Economic rights are much harder to achieve; but that fact does not placate people who are anxious for a share in the bounty….a few things are sure:

1)the way to a decent life for Negroes lies through peaceful change; 2)the Negro is threatened by riots – immediately, because they usually take place in his neighborhoods, and long-term, because the white community turns against him and will not support peaceful change;xlv 3)the task of Negro leadership is to make these points clear to their people; 4)young leaders must also be brought along….xlvi

McPherson recommended calling a conference of moderate civil rights leaders and the President in the fall of 1966, as a way of restoring a moderate movement that the administration could back. Katzenbach rejected this idea, as it would discredit those older leaders even further, associating them with the administration. A conference was never called.xlvii The purpose of this discussion is to illustrate how civil rights leaders, once the preeminent organizers direct action, had fallen into a position where they needed to be cajoled by the government into mounting an opposition against the people who could turn back the clock. Nineteen sixty-six was a far cry from 1964.

Meltdown in 1967

Before the mid-term elections of 1966, many pundits were discussing “white backlash” as a likely force that Johnson and Black America had to contend with. The Administration had become alienated from the newer, more radical direction of the civil rights movement, while simultaneously had become associated with blacks, including the radicals, in the eyes of many whites. Johnson was thus left isolated in the center. The 1966 elections bear this out; although the Democrats maintained majorities in both houses of Congress, they lost 47 seats in the House of Representatives, and four seats in the Senate. It was with this newer, more conservative, and far more skeptical 90th Congress that Johnson had to work.

In addition to this change in Congressional composition, the economic situation had also changed, and indeed this change would dominate Johnson’s policy-making strategy. The administration had consistently pursued a high-growth, high-employment, anti-inflationary economic policy. The war in Vietnam was soon to catch up with them. Inflation started to creep up in 1966 due to increased war expenditures, and continued to do so in 1967. Furthermore, the extraordinary tools that the Johnson administration had used hitherto to hold down inflation, such as sales of national stockpiles, were no longer available and union pressure for wage-growth became insurmountable.xlviii Unemployment had declined significantly in 1966 to exceptionally low levels and remained steady into 1967. However, non-white (i.e., black) unemployment stayed at an unacceptable level of 7.4%. GDP growth slowed towards the end of 1966, growing only very slowly in the first half of 1967.xlix There were two options to hold off inflation. First, interest rates could rise, which would seriously impact output, and was deemed unacceptable by Johnson. The alternative to this was a tax increase; taking money directly out of the economy would give people less money to spend, and therefore hold down inflation. In light of budgetary pressures, Johnson opted for this second measure.

The 1967 State of the Union address contained comparatively few new legislative proposals, a recognition of a hostile Congress The only two that were significant were the Safe Streets Bill (which was eventually passed in June, 1968 as the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968) and a 6% tax surcharge (also passed in 1968, well after its opportunity to mitigate inflation and fund FY68 had passed). Johnson urged Congress to sustain his social programs, saying, “Now we must answer whether our gains shall be the foundations of further progress, or whether they shall be only monuments to what might have been– abandoned now by a people who lacked the will to see their great work through.” What Johnson primarily asks for is the full appropriation of funds for his programs allowed for by their respective legislation.

Johnson submitted a budget of $135 billion, $75 billion of which would be spent on defense (an increase on $57 billion in FY66). Another $44.7 billion was to be spent on uncontrollable civilian expenditures, such as Social Security. Thus remained $14.9 billion in “controllable” civilian spending, namely the War on Poverty, and other social and domestic programs, such as conservation. A temporary six-percent surcharge on corporate and individual income taxes would be necessary to avoid a deep and illegal budget deficit.l

The president’s budget proposal was followed by the Economic Report of the President. Therein argued the President that the American economy was operating at basically full employment. There were three million people without work. Of those, two million were experiencing frictional unemployment, i.e., simply the time it takes to switch jobs. The remaining million were long term unemployed, and a further half million had exited the labor market altogether, i.e., had given up looking for work. Johnson then showed how this disproportionately affected blacks by describing 6 ½ million families as poor because the heads of households (n.b., black women) were unable to work. This was meant to provide justification for the Great Society programs.li

The spring months are traditionally the time when the president sends Congress annual messages on education and health, housing, and the like, proposing new programs to deal with problems in those areas. In the spring of 1967, Johnson submitted these messages, plus several unsolicited ones, such as the March 14th “Special Message to the Congress: America’s Unfinished Business, Urban and Rural Poverty,” attempting to justify his programs further. As Johnson sent his reports, Congress deliberated on how much money he was actually going to get. Long, hot summers had become a condition of America’s cities in the summers of the late 1960s. Riots erupted in a number of American cities, the two most spectacular of which were in Newark, and, more importantly, Detroit, where 43 people died. Following the Detroit riot, the President set up the Kerner Commission to study riots and civil disorders. The summer of 1967 was also a period of increasing protest over the war in Vietnam, as well as rapidly deteriorating approval ratings of the Lyndon Johnson. What made this situation different from previous years was the hostile Congress, and an economy that had performed more poorly than beginning-of-the-year expectations. The President felt the need to resubmit the budget on August 3, as two economic forecasts had changed. The economy had slowed, reducing tax revenues by $7 billion. The costs of waging war in Vietnam had increased beyond expectation. Furthermore, inflation was higher than predicted, and significantly higher than in 1966. The President requested the 6% surcharge be increased to 10%., and promised to reduce costs in those parts of his budget that weren’t fixed. With this, America would be able to continue the war in Vietnam, continue its social programs, and, above all else, avoid inflation.lii This provoked a budgetary showdown between Johnson and Congress that stretched from the summer until well into the following autumn, when bills started to be held up in committee, most notably the House Ways and Means Committee, headed by Wilbur Mills. Mills basically forced the President to demonstrate spending restraint in order to pass his tax increase (which didn’t get passed until well into 1968, after the time when it’s deflationary pressure was most needed).liii Furthermore, when appropriations were decided upon, they were significantly lower than the limit allowed. For example, Johnson requested more than $600 million for HUD, and got barely more than $100 million. Five Problems and a Conclusion

Nineteen sixty-seven ended on a sour note for Johnson, who was then only several months away from announcing his retirement. The man who started his presidential career with a broad consensus and optimism, indeed a faith in the upward mobility of black Americans, ended his career presiding over some of the worst internal divisions in 20th Century American history. Why didn’t the Great Society succeed? Where did the holes in the system lie? There are five general problems, reflecting broader political and economic trends, that loomed over the entire affair:

1) The Moynihan controversy and the subsequent neglect of the black family as a focal point for government action. In retrospect, it seems difficult to ignore the breakup of the urban black family and its effects on the urban social structure. This is, however, hardly anything new. The German post-war constitution defines one role of the state as protecting the family. The problem was rooted in American culture; the family was private business, and discussion of it was most certainly not “politically correct,” in the 1960s version of political correctness.

2) Income redistribution. There are two facets to this argument. The AFDC welfare system was designed in the 1930s to support widows. It remained unchanged throughout the development of Great Society programs. Moynihan successfully argues that this system unfairly penalized two-parent families by withholding funds necessary to ensure their stability.liv Furthermore, the money that was spent, for example, on education, went to people, such as teachers and administrators, who were already financially secure. This could be considered a misappropriation of funds, as they did not go to those who needed them most.

3) The Vietnam war and the Federal budget. The administration needlessly spent vast sums of money on an unpopular, and, in some ways, unconstitutional war, that could have been spent on more thorough programs. Furthermore, the war contributed to inflation, further undermining budgetary stability. This came to a head in 1967 when the Congress allowed the President his war, and cut his programs. To put it another way, Johnson chose Vietnam over the Great Society.

4) The unresponsiveness of the administration. Johnson placed too much emphasis on long-term solutions—his programs for solving urban America’s problems—and not enough on the immediate nature of the situation. Confronted with deadly riots and property damage in the tens of millions, Johnson discussed expanding recreational opportunities.

5) Militant Black Nationalism, riots, and white backlash. By feeding on people’s lesser instincts, black power advocates were certainly able to build a solid base of support for themselves. However, by proclaiming themselves their “executioner’s executioner,” as Stokely Carmichael did, and then attacking a fairly sympathetic system, as well as their own neighborhoods, black nationalists did themselves no service in attaining black power. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Although not altogether justified, white backlash could certainly be expected from this sort of behavior. All of this left Johnson, the public official most committed towards improving the situation of urban blacks, “isolated in the middle.”

For these reasons above, it becomes clear that Lyndon Johnson did indeed lose the race against high expectations. It took him two years to develop a program, albeit one still flawed, that would substantially address the unique problems of the black ghettoes. In this time, the urban black problem had become sufficiently radicalized as to provoke riots, which in turn provoked political backlash. Despite all of his efforts, this process left Johnson isolated, without sufficient political backing that would allow him to implement Model Cities. Research and development require time, and unfortunately Johnson did not have enough. The race against race was lost.

The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created during United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Administration, including VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start (though that program was later transferred to the Department of Health Education and Welfare), Legal Services and the Community Action Program.

The OEO was established in 1964 and quickly became a target of both left-wing and right-wing critics of the War on Poverty.

The OEO launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965. The project was designed to help end poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. Head Start was then transferred to the Office of Child Development in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later the Department of Health and Human Services) by the Nixon Administration in 1969.

The Job Corps trains disadvantaged and at-risk youth and has provided more than 2 million disadvantaged young people with the integrated academic, vocational, and social skills training they need to gain independence and get quality, long-term jobs or further their education. Job Corps continues to help 70,000 youths annually at 122 Job Corps centers throughout the country. Besides vocational training, many Job Corps also offers GED programs as well as high school diplomas and programs to get students into college.

Past directors of the OEO included Sargent Shriver, Bertrand Harding, and Donald Rumsfeld.

Criticisms[edit]

President Johnson's 'War on Poverty' speech was delivered at a time of recovery (the poverty level had fallen from 22.4% in 1959 to 19% in 1964 when the War on Poverty was announced) and it was viewed by critics as an effort to get the United States Congress to authorize social welfare programs. Many economists such as Milton Friedman have argued that Johnson's policies actually had a negative impact on the economy due to their interventionist nature. Economists such as these recommend that the best way to fight poverty is not through government welfare but through the free market.

Results and Legacy[edit]

In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the US dropped to 11.1% and has remained between 11 and 15% ever since. Since 1973 poverty has remained well below the historical US averages in the range of 20-25% [1].

Poverty among Americans between ages 18-64 has fallen only marginally since 1966, from 10.5% then to 10.1% today. Poverty has significantly fallen among Americans under 18 years old from 23% in 1964 to 16.3% today. The most dramatic decrease in poverty was among Americans over 65, which fell from 28.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.

In 2004, more than 35.9 million, or 12% of Americans including 12.1 million children, were considered to be living in poverty with an average growth of almost 1 million per year.

The OEO was dismantled by President Richard Nixon in 1973, though many of the agency's programs were transferred to other government agencies.

According to the Readers' Companion to U.S. Women's History, "Many observers point out that the War on Poverty's attention to Black America created the grounds for the backlash that began in the 1970s. The perception by the white middle class that it was footing the bill for ever-increasing services to the poor led to diminished support for welfare state programs, especially those that targeted specific groups and neighborhoods. Many whites viewed Great Society programs as supporting the economic and social needs of low-income urban minorities; they lost sympathy, especially as the economy declined during the 1970s."[2]

Historical Notes[edit]

The U.S. government continues to use the antiquated Orshansky measure of the poverty line, a measure which is only adjusted for inflation, and not adjusted for the actual cost of living against median income. In the 1960s the average cost of living was 30% of individual income, though in recent years the cost of living averages to 50% of household income. Because of this skew in measuring the poverty line some believe that the current U.S. Census statistics published could actually be closer to 50 million Americans. ^{[citation needed]}

References[edit]

Article from the Christian Science Monitor, including many statistics from this article.

External links[edit]

[[Category:Great Society programs]] [[Category:Social justice]] [[Category:War on something|Poverty]] [[Category:Poverty]]