War on Poverty 50 Years Old – President Johnson Declared the War on January 8, 1964 During His State of the Union Speech
 |
| President Lyndon B. Johnson State of the Union Speech January 8, 1964 |
President Lyndon Johnson stood in the Capitol on Jan. 8, 1964, and, in his first State of the Union address, committed the nation to a war on poverty.
“We shall not rest until that war is won,” Johnson said. “The richest nation on Earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it.”
There are currently 46 million Americans living below the poverty line. Take that in for a moment, Forty-Six (46) Million Americans. For a single parent with child the poverty line is $15,510/yr, ($1,292.50/mo or about $300.00/wk.) For a family of four the line is at $23,550. See the entire 2013 Federal Guidelines at Families USA
On Nov. 22, 1963, just hours after Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was meeting with advisers in Washington to get the affairs of state in order. The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Walter Heller, mentioned to Johnson that under Kennedy, he had begun looking at ways to help those in poverty — about 1 in 5 Americans at the time. The new President, historian Robert Caro told NPR’s David Greene wanted to go “Full Tilt” on the program.
That ambitious initiative would help Johnson politically. Many liberals, who had rallied around the cause of poverty, were suspicious of him — but it was something he knew the pain of personally.
His father failed. He once had been a very respected state legislator and businessman, and he totally failed. And as a result, for the rest of his boyhood, Lyndon lived in a home that they were literally afraid every month that the bank might take away. There was often no food in the house, and neighbors had to bring covered dishes with food. In this little town, to be that poor, there were constant moments of humiliation for him, and insecurity. It was a terrible boyhood.
He says, President Johnson, [the causes of poverty may lie] “In a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live.” These were to Johnson real-life foes, and Johnson knew what to do with enemies: You destroyed them. So he loved the word “war.”
READ MORE: “For LBJ, The War On Poverty Was Personal” by NPR Staff.
Unless your over, say, 55, you probably wouldn’t remember the poverty that existed then. The same way that the ultra-rich can’t really understand how little people live on in this country, and how hard it is to just survive, you can hardly the poverty was shared by both black and white equal measure. When you heard Former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney talk of the famous “47%” it was because he truly believed what he was saying because he had never lived not knowing where his next meal was coming from. From time-to-time you will see the media ask a politician how much a loaf of bread, or gallon of milk cost, often, they don’t know. I remember seeing a news report in New York that I never forgot. They had discovered a 14 year old boy, who was attending public school that when he wasn’t in school he was kept in a coffin at home. He ate and defecated in the coffin. For obvious reasons the boy was introverted and when asked the most obvious question of all by the media he said “I thought everyone lived the same way.” My point is this, unless you witnessed it, you cannot imagine America’s poverty before LBJ’s anti-poverty effort. It was to be a worthwhile effort. People were highly motivated and totally committed to their mission.
New programs included Housing, Foodstamps, Headstart, and Medicaid. It was amazing how people could get by on so little and begin to lift themselves out of poverty. The Federal programs were equal in every state until the 1990’s. Former President Clinton signed a bill that returned Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to states in block grants. Since then the states decided your eligibility and fewer families qualified. The number of homeless families grew as a result.
Homelessness
 |
| by the National Alliance to End Homelessness |
It is very difficult to determine how many homeless people there are in the world because countries have different legal definitions for homelessness. Natural disasters and sudden civil unrest also complicate the picture. The best we have is a conservative estimate from the United Nations in 2005, which puts the number of homeless at 100 million.
By the Numbers from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH)
Homelessness occurs when people or households are unable to acquire and/or maintain housing they can afford.
The Big Picture
While circumstances can vary, the main reason people experience homelessness is because they cannot find housing they can afford. It is the scarcity of affordable housing in the United States, particularly in more urban areas where homelessness is more prevalent, that is behind their inability to acquire or maintain housing.
By the numbers:
- There are 610,042 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States.
- Of that number, 222,197 are people in families, and
- 387,845 are individuals.
- About 18 percent of the homeless population – 109,132 – are considered “chronically homeless,”and
- About 9 percent of homeless adults- 57,849 – are veterans. These numbers come from point-in-time counts, which are conducted, community by community, on a single night in January every other year. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires communities to submit this data every other year in order to qualify for federal homeless assistance funds. Many communities conduct counts more regularly.
How Many People are Homeless in the United States?
One approximation of the annual number of homeless in America is from a study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which estimates between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience homelessness. According to a 2008 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report an estimated 671,888 people experienced homelessness in one night in January 2007. Some 58 percent of them were living in shelters and transitional housing and, 42 percent were unsheltered.
How many of the homeless are children?
One out of 50—or about 1.5 million—American children are homeless each year, according to a 2009 study by the National Center on Family Homelessness.
See state-by-state rankings on child homelessness.
See more information on homelessness and how to help at the National Alliance to End Homelessness .
Food Stamps
Food Stamps (SNAP) is a nutrition assistance program serving over 40 million low income Americans. Basically the program provides about $1.50 per meal, per person, although that was prior to the $5B that was recently cut from the program. There currently proposed “Farm Bill” in the Senate would cut another $4B, and the currently proposed Farm Bill in the Congress would cut $40B. A disabled veteran that I spoke to was receiving $184.00 per month prior to the $5B cut that recently took place, he now receives $173.00 per month. That’s not what I call “supporting our troops” like the Republicans like to continuously say.
Wikipedia – The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp program, provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people living in the U.S. It is a federal aid program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) Administration, though benefits are distributed by each U.S. state‘s Division of Social Services or Children and Family Services.
SNAP is the largest nutrition assistance program and is estimated to have served more than 40 million low income Americans per year in recent years. The SNAP caseload has increased substantially as result the recent economic crisis, in addition to rising food prices[2] As an entitlement program, SNAP benefits costs $76.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2013 and supplied roughly 47.6 million Americans with an average of $133.08 per month in food assistance.[3] It is the largest nutrition program (see also WIC) and is a critical component of the federal social safety net for low-income Americans.[4] The high cost of the SNAP program makes the Nutrition title the most expensive, and contentiously debated, title of the United States farm bill.[5]
Education – Headstart
In a conversation with Brian Williams on January 9, 2013 during a special NBC broadcast called “Poverty in America” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said “It has Failed” when he spoke of the War on Poverty. However, he did say:
“pre-K makes a difference,” but he did not endorse any specific solution – only to say that the government should “stop subsidizing programs that are failing.”
President Obama called for universal pre-K to be a national priority in his State of the Union last year. But there has since been no movement in Congress on expanding it. Ryan, who has said social safety nets have “failed miserably,” has made it a point to go to impoverished areas over the past year to try and show Republicans in a more compassionate light. Read More.
Head Start is a federal program that promotes the school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social and emotional development. Head Start programs provide comprehensive services to enrolled children and their families, which include health, nutrition, social services and other services determined to be necessary by family needs assessments, in addition to education and cognitive development services. Head Start services are designed to be responsive to each child and family’s ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage.
Healthcare and Social Security
In order to fight poverty, Lyndon Johnson pushed legislation that introduced or led to healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid; education programs such as Head Start; and an expansion to Social Security.
Social Security
A system that distributes financial benefits to retired or disabled people, their spouses, and their dependent children based on their reported earnings. While you work, you may pay taxes into the Social Security system. When you retire or become disabled, you, your spouse, and your dependent children may get monthly benefits that are based on your reported earnings. Your survivors may be able to collect Social Security benefits if you die.
Politicians took money out of Social Security. The following excerpt is from the 1998 Senate Budget Committee session. Note the underlined portions.
BEGIN EXCERPT
GREENSPAN: I will wait to see what the numbers look like.
HOLLINGS: Well, the truth is…ah, shoot, well, we all know there’s Washington’s math problem. Alan Sloan in this past week’s Newsweek says he spends 150%. What we’ve been doing, Mr. Chairman, in all reality, is taken [sic] a hundred billion out of the Social Security Trust Fund, transferring it over to the spending column, and spending it. Our friends to the left here are getting their tax cuts, we [sic] getting our spending increases, and hollering surplus, surplus, and balanced budget, and balanced budget plans when we continue to spend a hundred billion more than we take in.
That’s the reality, and I think that you and I, working the same side of the street now, can have a little bit of success by bringing to everybody’s attention this is all intended surplus. In other words, when we passed the Greenspan Commission Report, the Greenspan Commission Report only had Social Security in 1983 a two hundred million surplus. It’s projected to have this year (1998) a 117 million surplus. I’ve got the schedule, I’ll ask to put in the record the CBO report: 117, 126, 130, 100, going right through to 2008 over the ten year period of 186 billion surplus. That was intended; this is dramatic about all these retirees, the baby boomers. But we foresaw that baby boomer problem, we planned against that baby boomer problem. Our problem is we’ve been spending that particular reserve, that set-aside that you testify to that is so necessary. That’s what I’m trying to get this government back to reality, if we can do that.
We owe Social Security 736 billion right this minute. If we saved 117 billion, we could pay that debt down, and have the wonderful effect on the capital markets and savings rate. Isn’t that correct? Thank you very much, Sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It should be obvious from the above that the government has for decades been taking the money intended to pay Social Security benefits and spending it as general revenue. The Social Security trust fund is filled with Government IOUs, and those people who insists Social Security is solvent are operating in the faith that T-bills are always good, because the taxpayer can always be forced to redeem them.
But there is a problem. There are so many T-bills in the Social Security fund that when the baby-boomers start applying for benefits, the sudden surge of T-bills being presented for payment would collapse the Federal System, because there are not enough young taxpayers to carry the extra load.
END EXCERPT
Read More from What Really Happened.
We owe Social Security $736 Billion Dollars
The fact is that politicians took money from Social Security or it would be solvent today. We saw the baby boomer situation and were prepared for it. But then the money was taken out of the trust, and now they call it an “entitlement.” REALLY?! I want to take $736B from the tax breaks for the ultra-rich and corporations and when they ask for it back tell them we don’t have the money for their entitlements that they think they deserve.
Healthcare
In 1964, 44 percent of seniors had no health care coverage, and with the medical bills that come with older age, this propelled many seniors into poverty. In fact, more than one in three Americans over 65 were living below the poverty line — more than double the rate of those under 65. Medicare was an important and big change in American health care — it was called the “biggest management job since the invasion of Normandy” — and it was up to John Gardner to make it work. He helped shepherd Medicare to reality, and the results have been extraordinary: virtually all seniors now have health care, and the poverty rate for the elderly has fallen to approximately one in ten — a rate lower than that of the general population. Along with Medicare, the Johnson Administration established the Medicaid program to provide health care to the poor.
People Don’t Understand the Benefits of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”
Prior to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law people like to forget that the cost of their healthcare was going up significantly every year, doubling in four years. These increases were happening while insurance company executives were getting bigger and bigger salaries, and even bigger bonuses. The rise in healthcare premiums were slowed immediately when the ACA was signed into law. One of the reason the costs slowed was because the ACA had a provision that the insurance companies had to spend 80% of all the money they collected through premiums. Many people received refund checks from their insurance companies because they didn’t spend the money from premiums on actual patient claims, and the law said they could no longer just give it to themselves. Most people didn’t know why their insurance companies had sent then that check, and still don’t.
The Cost of Medicare and Medicaid and Medicare Part D
Another reason the raising cost of Medicaid and Medicare was the passage of the “Prescription Drug Bill” in which immediately after it’s passage former President George W. Bush went on television and was taking “a victory lap” for “helping the seniors” with the cost of their prescription drug costs. There were a few problems with this sham, these lies, of how “good” it was. Leading up to this bill coming to a vote the Republicans said it would only cost $395B over the first decade. Within two months of signing the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) into law, President Bush quietly informed Congress that the true cost of the program would be $550 billion, not $395 billion, over the next decade. By the time the program was launched in 2006, the estimated 10 year price tag for the Medicare prescription plan had increased to $720 billion.
See To Attack Obamacare Republicans Forget the Lessons of Bush’s Medicare Reform
1. President Bush initially opposed it. On Jan. 1, 2006, the federal government launched Part D, which enabled the nation’s 43 million Medicare beneficiaries to get subsidized prescriptions through a choice of private insurance plans. But in early 2003, the Bush administration was opposed to providing the new benefit to those enrolled in traditional Medicare (that is, 85 percent of all recipients). Instead, those wanting to gain the drug benefit would have to switch to an HMO or private Medicare Advantage plan. As the New York Times explained in March 2003:
The Bush administration backed away from its idea to offer no drug benefits to elderly people in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. But drug benefits available through private plans would be far more extensive, so Medicare recipients would have strong incentives to join private plans.
It was only the overwhelming public opposition to Bush’s Medicare privatization agenda that forced Republicans to make the prescription drug benefit available to all Medicare recipients. It was with an eye towards the 2004 elections that House Majority Leader Tom Delay warned his recalcitrant colleagues:
“We must forget about ideological absolutes.”
2. Medicare Part D was not paid for. When it was passed in December 2003, the new Medicare drug benefit was forecast by the Bush administration to cost $395 billion over its first decade. To pay for the program, President Bush and his GOP allies did—wait for it—nothing. As Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch admitted in 2009, during the Bush years:
“It was standard practice not to pay for things.”
In contrast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has forecast that with its cost savings and new revenue sources, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the national debt over the next two decades. In response, House Majority Leader
Eric Cantor, who voted for Medicare Part D, denounced the CBO for “budget gimmickry.”
3. The Bush White House lied to Congress about the cost. Within two months of signing the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) into law, President Bush quietly informed Congress that the true cost of the program would be $550 billion, not $395 billion, over the next decade. When Medicare actuary Richard Foster sought to present the true price tag to Congress in late 2003, then agency chief Thomas Scully threatened to fire him. By the time the program was launched in 2006, the estimated 10 year price tag for the Medicare prescription plan had increased to $720 billion.
As the New York Times reported later in 2004, the GAO ultimately concluded that the Bush administration “illegally withheld data from Congress on the cost of the new Medicare law” and that Scully “should repay seven months of his salary to the government.” While Scully was later fined for other ethics violations, he was never held accountable for his role in the Medicare fraud. Today, Thomas Scully “now works for a law firm and a private investment firm, has registered as a lobbyist for Abbott Laboratories, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Caremark Rx and other health care companies.”
4. Part D costs could have been lower. Mercifully, those dire forecasts in 2006 did not come to pass. But it was much lower enrollment (77 versus 93 percent) and the rapid adoption of generic drugs, rather than “competitive mechanisms” which largely explain the lower Medicare Part D bill for taxpayers.
But the costs to Uncle Sam could have been much lower. Then as now, Democrats wanted the federal government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies and pass the savings onto the Treasury and beneficiaries. In November 2005, a report released by Democratic staff on the House Government Reform Committee showed that under the new Medicare plan, prices for 10 commonly prescribed drugs were 80 percent higher than those negotiated by the Veterans Department, 60 percent above that paid by Canadian consumers and still 3 percent higher than volume pharmacies such as Costco and Drugstore.com. The report concluded that:
“The prices offered by the Medicare drug plans are higher than all four benchmarks, in some cases significantly so. This increases costs to seniors and federal taxpayers and makes it doubtful that the complicated design of Medicare Part D provides any tangible benefit to anyone but drug manufacturers and insurers.”
Which is exactly as Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin designed it. Just months after shepherding the Medicare prescription bill he wrote through the House, Tauzin, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, left Congress and accepted a $2 million-a-year job as president of PhRMA — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
The MMA’s ban on Medicare negotiating better prices directly with the drug companies is the key reason why
only 16 Democratic House members voted for it.
5. Part D would not have passed without Tom Delay’s ethics violations. Tom Sculley wasn’t the only Bush administration rule-breaker who ethics violations made passage of the Medicare drug benefit possible.
As you may recall, Tom Delay twisted arms and extended debate on the bill by hours in order to ensure passage. But that wasn’t all, as CBS News recounted Delay’s reprimand from the House ethics committee:
The investigation, by a four-member subcommittee, was triggered when the retiring [Nick]Smith said that unidentified lawmakers and business interests promised substantial money to his son’s congressional campaign if he voted for the Medicare legislation. Smith said the same interests threatened to support other candidates if he didn’t change his vote from “no” to “yes.” The committee found DeLay “offered to endorse Representative Smith’s son in exchange for Representative Smith’s vote in favor of the Medicare bill. In the view of the investigative subcommittee, this conduct could support a finding that Majority Leader DeLay violated House rules.”
6. Democrats improved Medicare Part D. In his Washington Post screed, former HHS Secretary Leavitt declared, “Part D and the Affordable Care Act resulted from contentious negotiations and fierce legislative battles.” That statement is true in much the same way that a Yugo and a Mercedes are both cars.
After all, it’s not just that only three GOP senators and zero House members voted for the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans have voted 39 times since 2011 to repeal the ACA. Meanwhile, Democrats opposed the Part D legislation because they wanted to make it better. And since 2003, they have. After all, it was Obamacare which has reduced the costs of the so-called “
donut hole” which left Medicare recipients with the steep out of pocket costs for their prescriptions. And over 30 million Medicare recipients have taken advantage of new preventive services now covered by the ACA.
As Sarah Kliff noted back in June:
Eight years ago, the federal government rolled out Medicare Part D, a prescription drug benefit. For the first time ever, Medicare was launching a benefit administered exclusively through private health insurance plans. The benefit was not popular: In the spring of 2005, when enrollment efforts ramped up, polls showed Medicare Part D to be less popular than the Affordable Care Act. Fewer Americans felt they understood how it worked, too.
Things have improved, and not just because of the efforts of officials like Mike Leavitt. Unlike the Republicans still trying to kill the Obamacare, Democrats helped make Medicare and its Part D prescription drug benefit better.
Originally posted to Jon Perr on Wed Jul 17, 2013 at 01:09 PM PDT. DailyKos
Recap: White House Lied to Congress, Tom Delay’s Ethics Violations, Politicians Leave Congress to Accept $2M-a-year Jobs at Pharmaceutical Companies and Lobbying Organizations. WOW! Now that’s Healthcare Reform!
War on Poverty or War on Poor?
Republicans and TeaPublicans are screaming that they will not consider extending the Emergency Unemployment Compensation to the 1.3 million Americans whose benefits ran out on December 28, 2013. I don’t necessarily disagree with having a way to pay for anything that we spend, but let’s look at how we can find that money in a way that doesn’t crush middle America because they can’t find a job. Right now there are 3 applicants for every job available in this country. Not only was the Prescription Drug plan not paid for, neither was the Iraq war which former President George W. Bush out right lied to the American people to get us into, and many other things the current President inherited. As Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch admitted in 2009, during the Bush years: “It was standard practice not to pay for things.” I say that since the Afghanistan war is costing us $2B a week, and it would cost $6B to fully fund the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) we bring the troops home just 3 weeks earlier. O.K. you don’t like that one, how about taking $6B in corporate subsidies back from the corporations? How about the tax breaks for the wealthy that have gone on for 10 years under the premise that those tax cuts would “create jobs” which has been proven time and time again didn’t happen. It always disturbs me when the Republicans have the gall to call the wealthy, who receive these tax cuts “Job Creators” when in fact everyone, except the low-information Fox News watchers, know is not the case.
You can’t keep taking from the poor and middle class, giving to the rich and corporations, and continue the income inequality that has gone on for decades and expect the country, and economy, to grow. But they don’t care, who? you ask? The Ultra-Rich, the corporations, the people using the absurd Citizens United decision to contribute massive amounts of money to influence our politicians and elections. The war on poverty is no where as big as the war on the poor.
References for Wikipedia description of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
- ^ “Nutrition Assistance Program Home Page”, U.S. Department of Agriculture (official website), March 3, 2011 (last revised). Accessed March 4, 2011.
- Jump up ^ Wilde, Parke (January 2012). “THE NEW NORMAL: THE SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (SNAP)”. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 95 (2): 325–331. doi:10.1093/ajae/aas043.
- Jump up ^ “SNAP Monthly Data”. Fns.usda.gov. 2013-12-06. Retrieved 2013-12-31.
- Jump up ^ Wilde, Parke (May 2012). Amer. J. Agr. Econ 95 (2): : 325–331. doi:10.1093/ajae/aas043.
- Jump up ^ “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Costs”. Food and Nutrition Services. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
Get Involved For A Better America 
You must be logged in to post a comment.