THE “WAR ON POVERTY” IS ABSOLUTELY NOT A FAILURE!

 

...This kind of Great Depression Soup Line was eliminated decades ago by FDR, and then later, by the president’s War on Poverty

 

The Republicans today want the public to wrongly think that the President Johnson’s War on Poverty was and is, a failure.

Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty is 50 years old this week.

And the higher profile Republicans in the US Congress such as Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor continue to give total lip service for helping the nation’s poor, as these are some of the key Republicans that voted to cut Food Stamps and for stopping the extending of emergency unemployment checks.

In addition, this week, the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), which claims as its members, 174 of the 233 House Republicans, or a full 75% of the GOP caucus, they had a press conference where they stated that the War on Poverty was a total failure.

The chairman of the RSC’s “anti-poverty initiative”, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL), is best known for heading the Republican effort to dismantle the Food Stamp program.  Mr. Sutherland made this "failure declaration" when he stated, “It’s clear we’re now engaged in a battle of attrition that has left more Americans in poverty than at any other point in our nation’s history.”

Yes, he is correct that there are more in numbers in poverty because the nation’s population increased by 125 million over the last 50 years.  But the poverty rate percentage over those 45 years fell from 25.8% in 1967 to 16% in 2012.  Don’t these representatives ever check on these facts with the non-partisan CBO, and do they not know how to even use a pocket calculator?  Hell, even the Wikipedia can give them these numbers for checking them out!

When asked by the CNN reporter, what he thought of the White House’s latest claim that the poverty rate fell from over 25.8% to 16%, Southerland responded with, “The percentage of people in poverty today as compared to 50 years ago as a percentage is less, but I also want to make sure it is very clear that there are more Americans [in number] living in poverty.”

He is correct that the number is higher, but how can he say the “War” is a failure?  There were 10 million more Americans in poverty in 2012 than there were in 1963.  But if you include all of the financial assistance from anti-poverty programs, the poverty rate actually dips to below 8% today.  People today who are poor now suffer less than in the past because of Medicaid and by getting better nutrition through Food Stamps.  These were both developed as a part of the original War on Poverty.  But of course, the GOP wants to stop all of that and go back to the soup lines of the 1930's.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) at another conference last week, had the gall to say that Representative Southerland’s fight against Food Stamps was “a step in the right direction”. But then Southerland reacted angrily when a reporter mentioned his efforts to cut Food Stamps.  Southerland just growled at the reporter saying that his bill amendment, “had no cuts”.

The GOP and Southerland’s approach is that private organizations, such as the Salvation Army, local Food Banks and private charities should take on the responsibilities of helping the poor, not the federal government.  What they fail to understand, or to admit, is that these organizations could only handle a single-digit percentage of what the US government does today in helping care for the poor and the disabled. 

The Republicans want the public to think that the War on Poverty is a total failure. They want to declare its defeat and to withdraw all government funding. In reality, these social programs haven’t failed the poor, it was the market economy that failed them. After all, it’s important to understand that these social support programs were specifically designed to help the poor.  The market economy was designed for helping the wealthy.

The private charities, though very vital, they are absolutely not a replacement for the federal government’s support of the poor.

But yes, after 50 years, there are definitely still some shortcomings in the War on Poverty.  However, the answer is not to scrap it, which would return America, back to the middle of the 19th century.

Copyright G.Ater  2014