January is a month commonly associated with the fight for Civil Rights, along with the nationally recognized holiday Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Intrinsically tied to these two civil milestones however, is the anniversary of the introduction of important pieces of legislature aimed to combat poverty, enacted during the presidential tenure of Lyndon Johnson. These laws commonly became known as the “War on Poverty.”
Fifty years later, the effects of the laws and whether or not they achieved their stated goals is not altogether clear.
Earlier this month House Representative and former Vice Presidential hopeful, Paul Ryan, R-Wis. publicly remarked on the War on Poverty.
In his statements, Rep. Ryan commented that on the clarity in his position that the War on Poverty has objectively failed.
Rep. Ryan’s opinions regarding the efficacy of the War on Poverty legislation adheres strictly to his own political paradigm. His philosophy being, in part, the idea that higher federal spending is a negative thing. His philosophy rings particularly when the amount of federal money spent on programs to aid the poor makes up roughly 4 percent of the annual GDP, according to a U.S. Government Spending website.
Despite the large amounts of federal funding pushed into Welfare and Medicaid programs, the overall percentage of U.S. citizens living below the poverty line has not wavered dramatically since the 1960’s, according to national polling data.
Rep. Ryan is not necessarily wrong in his assessment of the overall impacts of the Economic Opportunity Act (official title of the War on Poverty legislation). However, many more variables occur in the country that Rep. Ryan eschewed.
The nation’s lower socioeconomic demographic is now much better off than in the early 1960’s. Standard polls that tell the official poverty rate are often not accurate indicators of the material well being of those people considered poor, as indicated by Washington Post writer Robert J. Samuelson in a column printed earlier this month.
Economists Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame published a consumption based index that indicates the true definition of “poor” as no longer the dire a label it once was. The actual index can be found in Samuelson’s online article at The Washington Post website “How We Won – and Lost – the War on Poverty.”
With all the current dialogue surrounding the anniversary of the War on Poverty laws, the importance of Dr. King’s impact on the social-political movement deserves acknowledgement.
While King’s stance on poverty was a strong one, he never fully supported the laws in the Economic Opportunity Act.
As stated in King’s book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” the core aspects of the Economic Opportunity Act, namely job training, housing programs, and family counseling, held no centralized organizational aspect in their implementation. King felt this rendered these programs insufficient in their ability to truly integrate the disenfranchised lower socioeconomic demographics into the productive workforce.
King’s early criticisms of the War on Poverty appear accurate in light of the recent commentary surrounding the social welfare programs.
The debate over the War on Poverty and its lasting effects on society is not as simple as many politicians and economists would make it out to be though. Deeper institutional divides largely impact the marginalization of impoverished and low wage citizens.
Dr. Andrew Garner, a political scientist at the University of Wyoming, remarked on the problems inherent within the mobilization and registration of American voters.
“The absolute result is a lower registration, especially among poor people.” Garner stated. “That’s not an opinion, or speaking towards any party’s policy agenda, it’s just a simple fact.”
Issues such as these often pass overlooked in the public debate over the efficacy of Johnson’s enacted poverty-combatant legislation.
Garner expounds upon the basic problems that possibly hurt a socially-equal voter turnout, stating, “Our institutional design, in terms of registering voters, lowers the turnout amongst the poor and the low wage workers who don’t have the resources to make it out to vote, or even to register.”
Political campaigns now cost millions, even billions, of dollars to organize, setting up a system in which citizens capable of donating large amounts of money, or hosting fundraisers for politicians are the demographic that politicians strive to mobilize.
“Especially in an era where there’s a lot of money in politics, people who don’t have a lot of money, the theory is that there’s less of a voice for them.” Garner stated.
Dr. King’s harsh commentary on the early stages of the War on Poverty spoke merely to the narrow scope, as he saw it, of the laws themselves.
What King could not possibly predict is the way in which the political climate in this country inextricably distances itself from that of a system wherein all peoples’ interests are represented in government.
The deeper issues inherent within the unequal registration and voting system are the problems that politicians generally avoid in their public debate over the War on Poverty. But these issues specifically form the basis of what can be argued in the disenfranchisement of low wage voters.
Whether or not the War on Poverty is continued through large amounts of federal spending on social Welfare programs, or through economic stimulus, some would claim that the core of the problem lies elsewhere entirely.
