War on Poverty Johnson
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There are few individuals unaware of the disastrous foreign policies of former President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was these policies that were responsible for the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam, a conflict whose impact would help knock Johnson from office. However, Johnson felt he inherited the Vietnam War from the Kennedy Administration, and he much preferred focusing on domestic policies. The Great Society is the umbrella term used to describe the domestic programs established by the Johnson Administration. In his 1965 State of the Union speech, Johnson defined the Great Society, one in which federally funded programs would raise the quality of life for all Americans. This idea was closely linked to Johnson’s War on Poverty, begun in 1964. The Great Society was effective in many ways. The programs launched under this series of domestic policies included Medicare, federal funding for education and the arts, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was born. This analysis will focus on Johnson’s War on Poverty and why it failed to help produce the Great Society he so dearly envisioned. Johnson’s Great Society was outlined in his 1965 State of the Union Speech, one in which he felt America’s problems could best be attacked via the urban centers, the countryside, and the classrooms. In this speech Johnson argues, “The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demand
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ed, Johnson would still have disliked the War on Poverty for having turned out to be, to his mind, a stronghold of his enemies” (Lemann 5).
While Johnson’s War on Poverty as part of his plan to construct the Great Society lost the war from many historian’s, analysts’ and politicians’ perspectives, it cannot be said that Johnson’s war lost every battle. For despite the long-term failure of Johnson’s programs, there were immediate and positive benefits felt by many segments of the American public due to his War on Poverty programs. Under Johnson’s programs the poverty rate dropped by ten percent as already noted. So, too, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Social Security, and Food Stamp programs saw payments to the needy rise from $388 a month in 1960 to $577 a month when Johnson left office (Did 1). Johnson’s War on Poverty also saw dramatic improvements in health care and housing among the poor and needy, “Infant mortality fell by one-third in the decade after 1965 as a result of the expansion of federal medical and nutritional programs...and the proportion of families living in substandard housing also declined steeply, from 20 percent in 1960 to 11 percent a decade later” (Did 1).
Despite such impressive gains
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Approximate Word count = 1890
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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