Status of War on Poverty

Report Outline
Uncertain Future of War on Poverty
Evaluation of the Anti-Poverty Program
New Directions in Anti-Poverty Planning

Uncertain Future of War on Poverty

Proposals for New Look at Poverty Program

A pledge by President Johnson in his State of the Un ion address to press ahead with the war on poverty has failed to modify the prevailing impression that this latest offensive against an age-old enemy is coming to a standstill. “I recommend that we intensify our effort to give the poor a chance to join in the nation's progress,” the President said on Jan. 10.

But the modest increases sought in the 1968 budget, presented to Congress on Jan. 24, hardly suggest that the relatively newborn anti-poverty program is slated for vigorous growth. If Congress approves the administration's proposals, poverty program expenditures in the year beginning July 1, 1967, will total $1.9 billion or only $280 million more than in the current fiscal year. Even the popular Head Start program for pre-school children will not be expanded significantly, as expected, under these terms.

It is now three years since Johnson, in his first major address as President, declared “unconditional war on poverty in America,” and it is 29 months since the administration's anti-poverty proposals were enacted into law on Aug. 20, 1964. Today the program growing out of the President's “declaration of war” is rocked by political dispute, internal dissension, charges of betrayal by those it set out to help, and uncertainty over the fate of the agency (the Office of Economic Opportunity) that Congress created to serve as leader of the new crusade. Friends and foes of the anti-poverty program both consider it ripe for a full-dress congressional investigation.