Republicans Reassess the War on Poverty

January 10, 2014


Perhaps one of the longest running social ill our nation has been fighting is poverty. The war on poverty turned 50 years old. When President Lyndon Johnson announced a war on poverty in 1964 during his State of the Union, the national poverty rate was around 19 percent. Today, the national poverty rate hovers around 16 percent with safety net programs taken into account.

Soon after Johnson declared a war on poverty, his congress enacted the bipartisan Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which laid the foundation for modern day safety nets such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicare, Medicaid and expanded Social Security.

This week, members of the GOP have declared that we have failed in the war on poverty. Borrowing from President Ronald Reagan’s statement, the Republicans have declared that “poverty won the war.” Research undertaken by a group of academics at Columbia University has found that government safety nets have made “significant progress in easing the plight of the poor.”

Poverty has not won the war; our economy has failed in making little progress to lift people out of poverty without the need for government programs. In fact, in 2012, the top ten percent of earners took home more than half the country’s total income. The reality of the economic disparity gap increasing while the middle class shrinks does not bode well for America’s future and we can’t let Americans fall off the edge and below the poverty line.

According to the White House Council of Economic Advisors, without government benefits, the poverty rate in 2012 would have soared to 31 percent.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) announced this week that “instead of continuing to borrow and spend trillions of dollars on government programs that don’t work, what [our] country needs is a real agenda that helps people acquire the skills they need to lift themselves out of poverty and to pursue the American dream.”

Working on setting up skills-building programs is needed and will ultimately be the long-term solution for this problem. We need to train more people to hone and increase their skills and talents to be more competitive in the jobs industry.

Poverty is a disease that affects all Americans, and as such, needs to be dealt with by all Americans.

Yes, we need to create programs that assist Americans with skills training and we need to create good jobs for skilled Americans that will help in a long-term solution to poverty, but we also need to exercise compassion, mercy and justice for those who are in need of assistance. Although Johnson’s declaration of a war on poverty was 50 years ago, it does not mean our policies should reflect a 1960’s America; our economic policies need to meet the changing needs of today.




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