There has been much talk of late about the "War on Poverty" and whether or not it should be considered as being a success or a failure. And your opinion on the matter will have more to do with which end of the political spectrum you currently reside, than it does with any of the actual facts. And there have also been a considerable number of attempts made, by Democrats, to somehow create the cockamamie notion that the extending of ‘emergency unemployment benefits’ for another three months can somehow be made to relate the war on poverty. And those attempting to do so have been very determined and quite persistent in their efforts. But it’s a false argument and a baseless claim. It’s a con job, plain and simple
In his State of the Union address back on Jan. 8, 1964, then president Johnson, a Democrat, argued that the responsible thing to do was to declare "war on poverty." And today nearly 50 years and trillions of dollars later, with roughly the same number of people below the poverty level as there were in 1964 and with many now being firmly addicted to so-called government "benefits" that have done little more than to rob from them any sort of work ethic, it’s clear that the poor have mostly lost the war. In 1964, the poverty rate was about 19 percent. Census data from 2010 indicates that 15.1 percent are in poverty within a much larger population. The lack of government programs did not cause poverty, and spending vast sums of money has not eliminated it.
It was within four short years of Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union speech that his administration had enacted a broad ran of programs, including the Job Corps, Upward Bound, Head Start, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, the Social Security amendments creating Medicare/Medicaid, the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and over a dozen others. The effort centered around four pieces of legislation:
• The Social Security Amendments of 1965, which created Medicare and Medicaid and also expanded Social Security benefits for retirees, widows, the disabled and college-aged students, financed by an increase in the payroll tax cap and rates.
• The Food Stamp Act of 1964, which made the food stamps program, then only a pilot, permanent.
• The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which established the Job Corps, the VISTA program, the federal work-study program and a number of other initiatives. It also established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the arm of the White House responsible for implementing the war on poverty and which created the Head Start program in the process.
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, signed into law in 1965, which established the Title I program subsidizing school districts with a large share of impoverished students, among other provisions. ESEA has since been reauthorized, most recently in the No Child Left Behind Act.
Those supposedly in the know, and while looking through what can only be rose-colored glasses, often describe this war by saying, "President Johnson's goal was not to create a massive system of ever-increasing welfare benefits for an ever-larger number of beneficiaries. Instead, he sought to increase self-sufficiency, enabling recipients to lift themselves up beyond the need for public assistance." Now while intend no offense, I do think those who hold this position are more than a little naïve. Because I think the record is pretty clear when it comes to exactly what it was that Johnson was trying to create here. What he was hoping to bring about was essentially the enslavement of the black community to government and to the Democrat Party, for the next 200 years.
Johnson basically said as much on at least two occasions, in choosing to describing things in such a way as only he could. It was while on Air Force One while describing the legislation with two governors, "I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." And it was on another occasion that Johnson is known to have said, "These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference." So his motivation for his "War on Poverty" is all too clear.
And as it was intended at the time it was implemented, substantial numbers of people would eventually come to rely pretty heavily on government ‘benefits’ and in so doing would come to lose pretty much any sense of personal responsibility. Teenage girls would know they could get a check from the government if they had babies and therefore they had them, and often more than one. The law actually discouraged fathers from living with, much less marrying, the mothers of their children and so legions of "single mothers" became the norm, and the lack of male leadership in the home contributed to additional cycles of poverty, addicting new generations to government. Even today over 40 percent of all births involve single mothers.
And I’m quite sure that everyone remembers very well how, when ex-president ‘Slick Willie Clinton, another Democrat, signed the welfare reform bill in 1996, the liberals screamed bloody-murder, claiming that people would literally be starving in the streets. But as we all know, none did. Many actually went out and got jobs when they knew the checks would no longer be in the mail. Also, it was over time that the government enacted rules to prevent churches and faith-based groups from sharing their faith if they wanted to receive federal grants, thus removing the reason for their success. These groups, which once were at the center of fighting poverty by offering a transformed life and consequently a change in attitude, retreated to the sidelines.
A policy analysis by the Cato Institute found that federal and state anti-poverty programs have cost $15 trillion over the last five decades but have had little effect on the number of people living in poverty. That amounts to $20,610 per poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three. If the government had sent them a check they might have been better off Here are a few numbers that are directly related to government’s effort to eradicate poverty in America:
33 million — Number of Americans who were living in poverty when the ‘war on poverty’ was declared in 1964.
46.5 million — Number of Americans who are living in poverty today.
19% — Poverty rate in 1964.
15% — Poverty rate in 2013.
126 — Current number of different federal programs aimed at fighting poverty
$15,000,000,000,000 — Total local, state, and federal spending on welfare programs since the beginning of the ‘war on poverty.’
$1,000,000,000,000 —Amount the U.S. spends annually on welfare programs.
$20,610 — Annual amount spent for every poor person in America ($61,830 per poor family of three).
25% – Poverty rate among single-dads.
31% — Poverty rate among single moms.
6% — Poverty rate among married couples.
0.001% — Poverty rate among married couples who both have full-time jobs.
So you be the judge, but in so doing at least try to approach the subject objectively. And ask yourself, was the entire "War on Poverty" really nothing more than one of the grandest political schemes ever perpetrated in this country, second only to The New Deal? Or, was it something that was actually worth the $15 Trillion that was spent on it? Did we get our money’s worth? Personally, I would think the conclusion is a rather obvious one. What the "War on Poverty" was intended to be, is exactly what it became. A method by which the Democrat Party was able to convince a substantial number of Americans, particularly blacks, to firmly attach themselves to the government teat! So, at this point should we simply cut our losses or, as the Democrats would have us do, simply continue the madness and slip it into high gear.
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