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The Great Society
The Great Society was a very ambitious initiative. We focus on two of the main social welfare areas that were undertaken as part of the large scale social initiatives that it encompassed. These have taken our Nation to the economic 'insolvency' we face today. The 'solution-sequestration' serves not as a legitimate answer to address the HUGE problem - but instead serves as an axe over the neck of many valuable and necessary programs. We do not address the waste that can be found in all programs administered by the Federal Government. That is a worthy and completely separate issue.
Pertinent to this discussion...sequestration does not address the programs below. A very good question to keep in mind - might the purpose be that we do not address the real problem - we cut where it causes the gravest drama - national security - not national security blanket?
A History of the Great Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio University and subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide in the 1964 election that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.[1] Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.[2]
Economic and social conditions
Unlike the New Deal, which was a response to a severe financial and economic calamity, the Great Society initiatives came just as the United States' post-World War II prosperity was starting to fade, but before the coming decline was being felt by the middle and upper classes. President Kennedy proposed an across-the-board tax cut lowering the top marginal rate by 20%, from 91% to 71%, which was enacted in February 1964 under President Johnson (three months after Kennedy's assassination). The tax cut also significantly reduced marginal rates in the lower brackets as well as for corporations. The gross national product rose 10% in the first year of the tax cut, and economic growth averaged a rate of 4.5% from 1961 to 1968.[3] Johnson’s tax cut measure triggered what one historian described as “the greatest prosperity of the postwar years.” GNP increased by 7% in 1964, 8% in 1965, and 9% in 1966. The unemployment rate fell below 5%, and by 1966 the number of families with incomes of $7,000 a year or more had reached 55%, compared with 22% in 1950. In 1968, when John Kenneth Galbraith published a new edition of “The Affluent Society,” the average income of the American family stood at $8,000, double what it had been a decade earlier.[4]
Disposable personal income rose 15% in 1966 alone. Federal revenues increased dramatically from $94 billion in 1961 to $150 billion in 1967. As the Baby Boom generation aged, two and a half times more Americans would enter the labor force between 1965 and 1980 than had between 1950 and 1965.
War on Poverty
The most ambitious and controversial part of the Great Society was its initiative to end poverty. The Kennedy Administration had been contemplating a federal effort against poverty. Johnson, who, as a teacher had observed extreme poverty in Texas among Mexican-Americans, launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the first months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger and deprivation from American life. The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs.
Federal funds were provided for special education schemes in slum areas, including help in paying for books and transport, while financial aid was also provided for slum clearances and rebuilding city areas. In addition, the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 created jobs in one of the most impoverished regions of the country. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 provided various schemes in which young people from poor homes could receive job training and higher education.[14]
The OEO reflected a fragile consensus among policymakers that the best way to deal with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to help them better themselves through education, job training, and community development. Central to its mission was the idea of "community action", the participation of the poor in framing and administering the programs designed to help them.
The War on Poverty began with a $1 billion appropriation in 1964 and spent another $2 billion in the following two years. It spawned dozens of programs, among them the Job Corps, whose purpose was to help disadvantaged youth develop marketable skills; the Neighborhood Youth Corps, established to give poor urban youths work experience and to encourage them to stay in school; Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic version of the Peace Corps, which placed concerned citizens with community-based agencies to work towards empowerment of the poor; the Model Cities Program for urban redevelopment; Upward Bound, which assisted poor high school students entering college; legal services for the poor; the Food Stamp Act of 1964 (which expanded the federal food stamp program);[15] the Community Action Program, which initiated local Community Action Agencies charged with helping the poor become self-sufficient; and Project Head Start, which offered preschool education for poor children. In addition, funding was provided for the establishment of community health centers to expand access to health care,[16] while major amendments were made to Social Security in 1965 and 1967 which significantly increased benefits, expanded coverage, and established new programs to combat poverty and raise living standards.[17] In addition, average AFDC payments were 35% higher in 1968 than in 1960, but remained insufficient and uneven.[18]
Medicare
The Social Security Act of 1965 authorized Medicare and provided federal funding for many of the medical costs of older Americans.[22] The legislation overcame the bitter resistance, particularly from the American Medical Association, to the idea of publicly funded health care or "socialized medicine" by making its benefits available to everyone over sixty-five, regardless of need, and by linking payments to the existing private insurance system.
Medicaid
In 1966 welfare recipients of all ages received medical care through the Medicaid program. Medicaid was created on July 30, 1965 under Title XIX of the Social Security Act of 1965. Each state administers its own Medicaid program while the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) monitors the state-run programs and establishes requirements for service delivery, quality, funding, and eligibility standards.
Interpretations of the War on Poverty remain controversial. The Office of Economic Opportunity was dismantled by the Nixon and Ford administrations, largely by transferring poverty programs to other government departments. Funding for many of these programs were further cut in President Ronald Reagan's first budget in 1981.
Alan Brinkley has suggested that "the gap between the expansive intentions of the War on Poverty and its relatively modest achievements fueled later conservative arguments that government is not an appropriate vehicle for solving social problems."[13] One of Johnson's aides, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., has countered that "from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century."[27] The percentage of African Americans below the poverty line dropped from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1968.[30]
Economist Thomas Sowell argues that the Great Society programs only contributed to the destruction of African American families, saying "the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."[31] Several other economists and commentators--Walter E. Williams, Milton Friedman, Larry Elder, Bill Cosby and others--have recognized the counter-productive incentives of Great Society and thus basically agreed with Dr. Sowell.
Information for the costs of the social programs today.
The Size and Scope Of Means-Tested Welfare Spending
Introduction
The U.S. welfare system may be defined as the total set of government programs-federal and state-that are designed explicitly to assist poor and low-income Americans.
Nearly all welfare programs are individually means-tested. [[1]]Means-tested programs restrict eligibility for benefits to persons with non-welfare income below a certain level. Individuals with non-welfare income above a specified cutoff level may not receive aid. Thus, Food Stamp and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits are means-tested and constitute welfare, but Social Security benefits are not.
The current welfare system is highly complex, involving six departments: HHS, Agriculture, HUD, Labor, Treasury, and Education. It is not unusual for a single poor family to receive benefits from four different departments through as many as six or seven overlapping programs. For example, a family might simultaneously receive benefits from: TANF, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Public Housing, WIC, Head Start, and the Social Service Block Grant. It is therefore important to examine welfare holistically. Examination of a single program or department in isolation is invariably misleading. The views that I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of the Heritage Foundation. In addition, the Heritage Foundation does not endorse or oppose any legislation.
The Cost of the Welfare System
The federal government currently runs over 70 major interrelated, means-tested welfare programs, through the six departments mentioned above. State governments contribute to many federal programs, and some states operate small independent programs as well. Most state welfare spending is actually required by the federal government and thus should be considered as an adjunct to the federal system. Therefore, to understand the size of the welfare state, federal and state spending must be considered together. (A list of individual welfare programs is provided in Appendix B.) please follow the link for the rest of the information of this article. Appendix B is very enlightening.
http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/the-size-and-scope-of-means-tested-welfare-spending
Lyndon B. Johnson
• The Great Society speech by Lyndon B. Johnson
• May 22nd 1964
• http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/Lyndon_B_Johnson/1.htm
• "The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
• For a century we laboured to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
• The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
• Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
• The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
• The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
• It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honours creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
• But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbour, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvellous products of our labour."
Pertinent to this discussion...sequestration does not address the programs below. A very good question to keep in mind - might the purpose be that we do not address the real problem - we cut where it causes the gravest drama - national security - not national security blanket?
A History of the Great Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio University and subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide in the 1964 election that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.[1] Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.[2]
Economic and social conditions
Unlike the New Deal, which was a response to a severe financial and economic calamity, the Great Society initiatives came just as the United States' post-World War II prosperity was starting to fade, but before the coming decline was being felt by the middle and upper classes. President Kennedy proposed an across-the-board tax cut lowering the top marginal rate by 20%, from 91% to 71%, which was enacted in February 1964 under President Johnson (three months after Kennedy's assassination). The tax cut also significantly reduced marginal rates in the lower brackets as well as for corporations. The gross national product rose 10% in the first year of the tax cut, and economic growth averaged a rate of 4.5% from 1961 to 1968.[3] Johnson’s tax cut measure triggered what one historian described as “the greatest prosperity of the postwar years.” GNP increased by 7% in 1964, 8% in 1965, and 9% in 1966. The unemployment rate fell below 5%, and by 1966 the number of families with incomes of $7,000 a year or more had reached 55%, compared with 22% in 1950. In 1968, when John Kenneth Galbraith published a new edition of “The Affluent Society,” the average income of the American family stood at $8,000, double what it had been a decade earlier.[4]
Disposable personal income rose 15% in 1966 alone. Federal revenues increased dramatically from $94 billion in 1961 to $150 billion in 1967. As the Baby Boom generation aged, two and a half times more Americans would enter the labor force between 1965 and 1980 than had between 1950 and 1965.
War on Poverty
The most ambitious and controversial part of the Great Society was its initiative to end poverty. The Kennedy Administration had been contemplating a federal effort against poverty. Johnson, who, as a teacher had observed extreme poverty in Texas among Mexican-Americans, launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the first months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger and deprivation from American life. The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs.
Federal funds were provided for special education schemes in slum areas, including help in paying for books and transport, while financial aid was also provided for slum clearances and rebuilding city areas. In addition, the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 created jobs in one of the most impoverished regions of the country. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 provided various schemes in which young people from poor homes could receive job training and higher education.[14]
The OEO reflected a fragile consensus among policymakers that the best way to deal with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to help them better themselves through education, job training, and community development. Central to its mission was the idea of "community action", the participation of the poor in framing and administering the programs designed to help them.
The War on Poverty began with a $1 billion appropriation in 1964 and spent another $2 billion in the following two years. It spawned dozens of programs, among them the Job Corps, whose purpose was to help disadvantaged youth develop marketable skills; the Neighborhood Youth Corps, established to give poor urban youths work experience and to encourage them to stay in school; Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic version of the Peace Corps, which placed concerned citizens with community-based agencies to work towards empowerment of the poor; the Model Cities Program for urban redevelopment; Upward Bound, which assisted poor high school students entering college; legal services for the poor; the Food Stamp Act of 1964 (which expanded the federal food stamp program);[15] the Community Action Program, which initiated local Community Action Agencies charged with helping the poor become self-sufficient; and Project Head Start, which offered preschool education for poor children. In addition, funding was provided for the establishment of community health centers to expand access to health care,[16] while major amendments were made to Social Security in 1965 and 1967 which significantly increased benefits, expanded coverage, and established new programs to combat poverty and raise living standards.[17] In addition, average AFDC payments were 35% higher in 1968 than in 1960, but remained insufficient and uneven.[18]
Medicare
The Social Security Act of 1965 authorized Medicare and provided federal funding for many of the medical costs of older Americans.[22] The legislation overcame the bitter resistance, particularly from the American Medical Association, to the idea of publicly funded health care or "socialized medicine" by making its benefits available to everyone over sixty-five, regardless of need, and by linking payments to the existing private insurance system.
Medicaid
In 1966 welfare recipients of all ages received medical care through the Medicaid program. Medicaid was created on July 30, 1965 under Title XIX of the Social Security Act of 1965. Each state administers its own Medicaid program while the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) monitors the state-run programs and establishes requirements for service delivery, quality, funding, and eligibility standards.
Interpretations of the War on Poverty remain controversial. The Office of Economic Opportunity was dismantled by the Nixon and Ford administrations, largely by transferring poverty programs to other government departments. Funding for many of these programs were further cut in President Ronald Reagan's first budget in 1981.
Alan Brinkley has suggested that "the gap between the expansive intentions of the War on Poverty and its relatively modest achievements fueled later conservative arguments that government is not an appropriate vehicle for solving social problems."[13] One of Johnson's aides, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., has countered that "from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century."[27] The percentage of African Americans below the poverty line dropped from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1968.[30]
Economist Thomas Sowell argues that the Great Society programs only contributed to the destruction of African American families, saying "the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."[31] Several other economists and commentators--Walter E. Williams, Milton Friedman, Larry Elder, Bill Cosby and others--have recognized the counter-productive incentives of Great Society and thus basically agreed with Dr. Sowell.
Information for the costs of the social programs today.
The Size and Scope Of Means-Tested Welfare Spending
Introduction
The U.S. welfare system may be defined as the total set of government programs-federal and state-that are designed explicitly to assist poor and low-income Americans.
Nearly all welfare programs are individually means-tested. [[1]]Means-tested programs restrict eligibility for benefits to persons with non-welfare income below a certain level. Individuals with non-welfare income above a specified cutoff level may not receive aid. Thus, Food Stamp and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits are means-tested and constitute welfare, but Social Security benefits are not.
The current welfare system is highly complex, involving six departments: HHS, Agriculture, HUD, Labor, Treasury, and Education. It is not unusual for a single poor family to receive benefits from four different departments through as many as six or seven overlapping programs. For example, a family might simultaneously receive benefits from: TANF, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Public Housing, WIC, Head Start, and the Social Service Block Grant. It is therefore important to examine welfare holistically. Examination of a single program or department in isolation is invariably misleading. The views that I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of the Heritage Foundation. In addition, the Heritage Foundation does not endorse or oppose any legislation.
The Cost of the Welfare System
The federal government currently runs over 70 major interrelated, means-tested welfare programs, through the six departments mentioned above. State governments contribute to many federal programs, and some states operate small independent programs as well. Most state welfare spending is actually required by the federal government and thus should be considered as an adjunct to the federal system. Therefore, to understand the size of the welfare state, federal and state spending must be considered together. (A list of individual welfare programs is provided in Appendix B.) please follow the link for the rest of the information of this article. Appendix B is very enlightening.
http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/the-size-and-scope-of-means-tested-welfare-spending
Lyndon B. Johnson
• The Great Society speech by Lyndon B. Johnson
• May 22nd 1964
• http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/Lyndon_B_Johnson/1.htm
• "The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
• For a century we laboured to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
• The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
• Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
• The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
• The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
• It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honours creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
• But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbour, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvellous products of our labour."
See below comments from several of our former presidents, plus the current president and other pertinent articles.
The Political Blacklist Provides Hope: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-political-black-list-provides-hope?CID=examiner_alerts_article
WELFARE REFORM
• Jimmy Carter
• Welfare Reform Address to the Congress
• August 6, 1977
• http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7942
• To the Congress of the United States:
• "As I pledged during my campaign for the Presidency I am asking the Congress to abolish our existing welfare system, and replace it with a job-oriented program for those able to work and a simplified, uniform, equitable cash assistance program for those in need who are unable to work by virtue of disability, age or family circumstance. The Program for Better Jobs and Income I am proposing will transform the manner in which the Federal government deals with the income needs of the poor, and begin to break the welfare cycle.
• The program I propose will provide:
• --Job opportunities for those who need work.
• --A Work Benefit for those who work but whose incomes are inadequate to support their families.
• --Income Support for those able to work part-time or who are unable to work due to age, physical disability or the need to care for children six years of age or younger.
• The reforms five years ago to end “welfare as we know it” have been more successful than some predicted, but will that change in a less prosperous economy?"
Bill Clinton
• http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ksgpress/bulletin/autumn2002/features/welfare.html
• IN HIS TELEVISION ADS IN 1992, presidential candidate and then-governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton said: “For so long government has failed us, and one of its worst failures had been welfare. I have a plan to end welfare as we know it — to break the cycle of dependency. We’ll provide education, job training, and child care, but then those who are able to work must go to work…. It’s time to make welfare what it should be — a second chance, not a way of life.”
Welfare As We Knew It
• President Clinton signed a welfare reform act in 1996, and today, “welfare as we know it” has become “welfare as we knew it.” This legislation, which is up for renewal later this year, is regarded by many conservatives and liberals alike as a success story. At the bill’s signing, however, liberals found some of the provisions more restrictive than they wanted. Fortunately, their worst fears never materialized. Welfare rolls are down by nearly 57 percent — about 7 million people — according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The work requirements that terminated open-ended entitlements have helped to increase job rates among the poor and to decrease poverty. Moving the responsibility for welfare programs from the federal to state governments also proved to work well.
• “It worked much better than [I] thought it would,” says David Ellwood, professor of political economy at the Kennedy School. “Things went well because the economy was really good.” He notes that as a result of a strong economy “states also had flush budgets.” During the Clinton administration, Ellwood served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS and was co-chair of Clinton’s efforts on welfare reform.
Barack Obama
• Living in the economy and social welfare of today there are many quotes and speeches to be found by our current president on this topic. Most often times his words are very eloquently stated, but as they read on paper they do not often reflect his actions. So judge for yourself the sincerity of his words when compared to his attitudes and policies.
• These are two we found quite informative. They speak more to our own point rather than his own.
• "If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost."
• BARACK OBAMA, speech, Aug. 28, 2006
• "Americans ... still believe in an America where anything's possible -- they just don't think their leaders do."
• BARACK OBAMA, fundraising letter, Sep. 1, 2006
• We agree Mr. President.
• http://www.notable-quotes.com/o/obama_barack.html
The Political Blacklist Provides Hope: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-political-black-list-provides-hope?CID=examiner_alerts_article
WELFARE REFORM
• Jimmy Carter
• Welfare Reform Address to the Congress
• August 6, 1977
• http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7942
• To the Congress of the United States:
• "As I pledged during my campaign for the Presidency I am asking the Congress to abolish our existing welfare system, and replace it with a job-oriented program for those able to work and a simplified, uniform, equitable cash assistance program for those in need who are unable to work by virtue of disability, age or family circumstance. The Program for Better Jobs and Income I am proposing will transform the manner in which the Federal government deals with the income needs of the poor, and begin to break the welfare cycle.
• The program I propose will provide:
• --Job opportunities for those who need work.
• --A Work Benefit for those who work but whose incomes are inadequate to support their families.
• --Income Support for those able to work part-time or who are unable to work due to age, physical disability or the need to care for children six years of age or younger.
• The reforms five years ago to end “welfare as we know it” have been more successful than some predicted, but will that change in a less prosperous economy?"
Bill Clinton
• http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ksgpress/bulletin/autumn2002/features/welfare.html
• IN HIS TELEVISION ADS IN 1992, presidential candidate and then-governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton said: “For so long government has failed us, and one of its worst failures had been welfare. I have a plan to end welfare as we know it — to break the cycle of dependency. We’ll provide education, job training, and child care, but then those who are able to work must go to work…. It’s time to make welfare what it should be — a second chance, not a way of life.”
Welfare As We Knew It
• President Clinton signed a welfare reform act in 1996, and today, “welfare as we know it” has become “welfare as we knew it.” This legislation, which is up for renewal later this year, is regarded by many conservatives and liberals alike as a success story. At the bill’s signing, however, liberals found some of the provisions more restrictive than they wanted. Fortunately, their worst fears never materialized. Welfare rolls are down by nearly 57 percent — about 7 million people — according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The work requirements that terminated open-ended entitlements have helped to increase job rates among the poor and to decrease poverty. Moving the responsibility for welfare programs from the federal to state governments also proved to work well.
• “It worked much better than [I] thought it would,” says David Ellwood, professor of political economy at the Kennedy School. “Things went well because the economy was really good.” He notes that as a result of a strong economy “states also had flush budgets.” During the Clinton administration, Ellwood served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS and was co-chair of Clinton’s efforts on welfare reform.
Barack Obama
• Living in the economy and social welfare of today there are many quotes and speeches to be found by our current president on this topic. Most often times his words are very eloquently stated, but as they read on paper they do not often reflect his actions. So judge for yourself the sincerity of his words when compared to his attitudes and policies.
• These are two we found quite informative. They speak more to our own point rather than his own.
• "If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost."
• BARACK OBAMA, speech, Aug. 28, 2006
• "Americans ... still believe in an America where anything's possible -- they just don't think their leaders do."
• BARACK OBAMA, fundraising letter, Sep. 1, 2006
• We agree Mr. President.
• http://www.notable-quotes.com/o/obama_barack.html
To read about the Progressives and their history, click on the button below! Valuable Information!
Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"
Lyndon Baines Johnson moved quickly to establish himself in the office of the Presidency. Despite his conservative voting record in the Senate, Johnson soon reacquainted himself with his liberal roots. LBJ sponsored the largest reform agenda since Roosevelt's New Deal.
The aftershock of Kennedy's assassination provided a climate for Johnson to complete the unfinished work of JFK's New Frontier. He had eleven months before the election of 1964 to prove to American voters that he deserved a chance to be President in his own right.
Two very important pieces of legislation were passed. First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign was passed into law. The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities.
Republican Barry Goldwater attempted to unseat Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election but was soundly defeated. This bumper sticker combines the chemical symbols for "gold" (Au) and "water" (H20) to create a whimsical and memorable campaign slogan.
Johnson also signed the omnibus ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964. The law created the Office of Economic Opportunity aimed at attacking the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was established to provide valuable vocational training.
Head Start, a preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn was put into place. The VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE TO AMERICA (VISTA) was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.
As he campaigned in 1964, Johnson declared a "war on poverty." He challenged Americans to build a "Great Society" that eliminated the troubles of the poor. Johnson won a decisive victory over his archconservative Republican opponent Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
American liberalism was at high tide under President Johnson.
• The Wilderness Protection Act saved 9.1 million acres of forestland from industrial development.
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act provided major funding for American public schools.
• The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and other discriminatory methods of denying suffrage to African Americans.
• Medicare was created to offset the costs of health care for the nation's elderly.
• The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities used public money to fund artists and galleries.
• The Immigration Act ended discriminatory quotas based on ethnic origin.
• An Omnibus Housing Act provided funds to construct low-income housing.
• Congress tightened pollution controls with stronger Air and Water Quality Acts.
• Standards were raised for safety in consumer products.
Johnson was an accomplished legislator and used his connections in Congress and forceful personality to pass his agenda.
By 1966, Johnson was pleased with the progress he had made. But soon events in Southeast Asia began to overshadow his domestic achievements. Funds he had envisioned to fight his war on poverty were now diverted to the war in Vietnam. He found himself maligned by conservatives for his domestic policies and by liberals for his hawkish stance on Vietnam.
By 1968, his hopes of leaving a legacy of domestic reform were in serious jeopardy.
The aftershock of Kennedy's assassination provided a climate for Johnson to complete the unfinished work of JFK's New Frontier. He had eleven months before the election of 1964 to prove to American voters that he deserved a chance to be President in his own right.
Two very important pieces of legislation were passed. First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign was passed into law. The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities.
Republican Barry Goldwater attempted to unseat Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election but was soundly defeated. This bumper sticker combines the chemical symbols for "gold" (Au) and "water" (H20) to create a whimsical and memorable campaign slogan.
Johnson also signed the omnibus ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964. The law created the Office of Economic Opportunity aimed at attacking the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was established to provide valuable vocational training.
Head Start, a preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn was put into place. The VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE TO AMERICA (VISTA) was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.
As he campaigned in 1964, Johnson declared a "war on poverty." He challenged Americans to build a "Great Society" that eliminated the troubles of the poor. Johnson won a decisive victory over his archconservative Republican opponent Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
American liberalism was at high tide under President Johnson.
• The Wilderness Protection Act saved 9.1 million acres of forestland from industrial development.
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act provided major funding for American public schools.
• The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and other discriminatory methods of denying suffrage to African Americans.
• Medicare was created to offset the costs of health care for the nation's elderly.
• The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities used public money to fund artists and galleries.
• The Immigration Act ended discriminatory quotas based on ethnic origin.
• An Omnibus Housing Act provided funds to construct low-income housing.
• Congress tightened pollution controls with stronger Air and Water Quality Acts.
• Standards were raised for safety in consumer products.
Johnson was an accomplished legislator and used his connections in Congress and forceful personality to pass his agenda.
By 1966, Johnson was pleased with the progress he had made. But soon events in Southeast Asia began to overshadow his domestic achievements. Funds he had envisioned to fight his war on poverty were now diverted to the war in Vietnam. He found himself maligned by conservatives for his domestic policies and by liberals for his hawkish stance on Vietnam.
By 1968, his hopes of leaving a legacy of domestic reform were in serious jeopardy.