War on Poverty

                During his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced legislation that came to be known as the War on Poverty.  He proposed this legislation as his response to a national poverty rate of 19 percent.  Following President Johnson’s speech, the Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act.  This law “established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty.”

                President Johnson ushered in his Great Society and believed that poverty could be reduced by “expanding the government’s role in education and health care.”  The Great Society was basically a continuation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933-1935) and his Four Freedoms (1941).  The major initiatives of the War on Poverty included 1) Social Security Act 1965 (Created Medicare and Medicaid – July 19, 1965), 2) Food Stamp Act of 1964 (August 31, 1964), 3) The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was the centerpiece of the War on Poverty (Created the Community Action Program, Job Corps, and Volunteers in Service to America [VISTA] – August 20, 1964), and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (April 11, 1965).

                Some economists argued that the policies of the War on Poverty actually increased poverty and suggested that the best way to fight poverty was through economic growth.  Milton Friedman, in an interview on PBS, noted “the government sets out to eliminate poverty, it has a war on poverty, so-called `poverty’ increases.  It has a welfare program, and the welfare program leads to an expansion of problems.  A general attitude develops that government isn’t a very efficient way of doing things.”

                James, a conservative Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, wrote that “the war on poverty was a costly, tragic mistake [because] … abolishing poverty did not seem far-fetched to the activists… [and] it was a perspective that led to intolerance….  The simple economic theory of poverty led to a single underlying principle for welfare programs….  In adopting the handout approach for their programs, the war-on-poverty activists failed to notice – or failed to care – that they were ignoring over a century of theory and experience in the social welfare field….  The war-on-poverty activists not only ignored the lessons of the past on the subject of handouts; they also ignored their own experience with the poor.” 

                The War on Poverty was popular for a few years – until people realized that the policies did not work.  The policies did not work because people took advantage of the fact that they no longer needed to work for what they received or take personal responsibility for themselves and their families.  In the 1980s and 1990s there was growing criticism of the welfare state and deregulation; there was also “an ideological shift” in how to help poor people.  The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton who campaigned on “ending welfare as we know it.”

                The PRWORA was a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor because it encouraged employment among the poor rather than simply giving money to the poor.  The major requirements and effects of this bill included:  1) Ending welfare as an entitlement program, 2) Requiring recipients to begin working after two years of receiving benefits, 3) placing a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid by federal funds, 4) aiming to encourage two-parent families and discouraging out-of-wedlock births, 5) enhancing enforcement of child support, and 6) requiring state professional and occupational licenses be withheld from illegal immigrants.

                “Welfare and poverty rates both declined during the late 1990s, leading many commentators to declare that the legislation was a success.  An editorial in The New Republic opined, `A broad consensus now holds that welfare reform was certainly not a disaster – and that it may, in fact, have worked much as its designers had hoped.’”

                The welfare reform worked so well that welfare rolls were reduced by approximately 50 percent as PRWORA ended generation-after-generation-after generation on welfare.  Liberals and progressives could not stand to have people get off welfare and become independent because they need people to be dependent on government in order to have enough votes to win offices.  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a memo in July 2012 that notified “states that they are able to apply for a waiver for the work requirements of the TANF program, but only if states were also able to find credible ways to increase employment by 20%.  The waiver would allow states to provide assistance without having to enforce the work component of the program, which currently states that 50 percent of a state’s TANF caseload must meet work requirements.  The Obama administration stated that the change was made in order to allow more flexibility in how individual states operate their welfare programs….”

                Fifty years have passed since President Johnson launched the War on Poverty and pledged “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”  Jennifer Marshall of The Heritage Foundation commented, “Sadly, the half-century legacy of Johnson’s Great Society has not lived up to that noble goal.  The War on Poverty has not done justice to the poor.  Our responsibility to our neighbors in need demands more:  A redirection of public policy and a commitment from each of us to do what we can in our own communities.”

                “Despite spending nearly $20 trillion since the War on Poverty began, the poverty rate remains nearly as high today as it was in the mid-1960s.  Today, government spends nearly $1 trillion annually on 80 federal means-tested programs providing cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services for poor and low-income Americans.  Clearly, policymakers can’t hide behind reams of programs and billions in spending and declare they’ve done their duty to the poor.  Good intentions aren’t enough.

                “We need to change the character of public assistance.  That means redirecting incentives in federal welfare programs….

                “After the 1996 welfare reform began to require recipients to work or prepare for work, welfare rolls fell by more than half, and poverty rates among single mothers and black children fell to historic lows.  But that reform redirected the incentives of only one program among more than 80 federal welfare programs.”

                Marshall suggests that we use two conservative principles to actually win the War on Poverty.  The first thing we should do is promote work, and the second is to restore “marriage, America’s most important inoculation against child poverty.  Children born and raised outside of marriage are more than five times more likely to experience poverty than their peers raised in intact families.

                “When the War on Poverty began, 8 percent of all children in America were born outside marriage.  Since the mid-‘60s, unwed childbearing has skyrocketed to more than 40 percent of all births, and from 25 percent to about 73 percent among black children.

                “Rebuilding a culture of marriage calls for policy reform to reduce marriage penalties in welfare programs.  It also requires the kind of relational restoration that must happen on a personal level, through the work of churches and community initiatives….  These and other efforts to overcome poverty should engage us personally in the effort to help restore lives, families, and communities.”

                Heritage Senior Research Fellow Robert Rector agreed with Marshall as he wrote in an article for Wall Street Journal, that promoting work and restoring marriage “would be a better battle plan for eradicating poverty in America than spending more money on failed programs.”

                Jesus Christ taught said that we “have the poor with you always…” (Mark 14:7), but we do not have to encourage poverty.  Nor do we need to subsidize it.  Benjamin Franklin was a wise man in many areas and left counsel in dealing with the poor.  “I am for doing good to the poor, but … I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.  I observed … that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer.  And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

                Jesus Christ taught that we should help people who are less fortunate, and I believe we should be obedient to His commandment to care for each other.  I also believe there are a variety of ways to help the poor out of poverty – poor, good, better, and best.  I believe the evidence shows that LBJ’s approach was a poor one because we have been fighting this war for more than fifty years and have gained nothing.  I assume that almost anything different would be better, but I agree with The Heritage Foundation that promoting work and restoring marriage is the very best way to move people out of poverty.  We should never make it “easy” for people to remain dependent because we are not doing them any favor.  We can give them a “hand up” without giving them a “hand out.”  I know we can win the War on Poverty if we use conservative principles to fight it!

                Bruce Walker has an interesting take on the War on Poverty that took place fifty years before LBJ announced his war on it and that took place in the private sector.  This war was a success while LBJ’s has failed miserably.