Great Society
The Great Society was also a 1960s band featuring Grace Slick, and a 1914 book by Graham Wallas.The
Great Society was a set of domestic programs proposed or enacted in the
United States on the initiative of
President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969). Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. In addition, several major initiatives in the areas of education, health, urban problems, transportation, consumer protection, and the environment were launched during this period. The Great Society was loosely based on the
New Deal domestic agenda instituted by
Franklin Roosevelt and initially drew from
John F. Kennedy's stalled
New Frontier programs.
Unlike the New Deal, which was a response to a severe economic crisis, the Great Society emerged in a period of unprecedented prosperity. President Kennedy had proposed a tax cut, which was enacted in February 1964, three months after his death.
Gross National Product rose 10% in the first year of the tax cut, and economic growth averaged a rate of 4.5 percent from 1961 to 1968. Disposable personal income rose 15% in 1966 alone. Despite the drop in tax rates, federal revenues increased dramatically from $94 billion in 1961 to $150 billion in 1967.
In spite of the positive economic conditions, other crises confronted the United States. Official discrimination existed throughout the United States and civil unrest, particularly in the struggle for African-Americans to achieve political, social, and economic equality, unsettled the country.
Cold War confrontations continued, most dramatically in
Southeast Asia and
Vietnam. 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.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson during commencement exercises at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964 |
Johnson summarized his goals for the Great Society in a speech at the
University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor, Michigan on
May 22,
1964. Speechwriter
Richard N. Goodwin had coined the phrase "the Great Society," and Johnson had used the expression from time to time before the Michigan speech, but he had not emphasized it until this address. In this address, which preceded the election-year party conventions, Johnson described his plans to solve pressing problems: "We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetingsā"on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society."
[http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/640522.asp President Johnson's speech at the University of Michigan from the LBJ Library] Soon afterward he told reporters, "I'm going to get the best minds in the country to work for me."
President Kennedy had employed several task forces comprised of scholars and experts to craft New Frontier legislation and to deal with foreign affairs. The
technocratic approach appealed to Johnson, in part because the task forces would work in secret and outside of the existing governmental bureaucracy and directly for the
White House staff. Almost immediately after the Ann Arbor speech, 14 separate task forces began studying nearly all major aspects of United States society under the guidance of presidential assistants
Bill Moyers and
Richard N. Goodwin. The average task force had nine members, and generally was comprised of governmental experts and academicians. Only one of the Task Forces on the 1965 Legislative Program addressed foreign affairs (Foreign economic policy); the rest were charged with domestic policy (Agriculture, Anti-recession policy, Civil rights, Education, Efficiency and economy, Health, Income maintenance policy, Intergovernmental fiscal cooperation, Natural resources, Pollution of the environment, Preservation of natural beauty, Transportation, and Urban problems).
The task-force reports, drawn up separately, were submitted to the White House. Moyers circulated them to the agencies concerned and set up a new group of committees of government officials to evaluate the various recommendations. Experts on relations with Congress were also drawn into the deliberations to get the best advice on persuading the Congress to pass the legislation. Johnson reviewed these initial Great Society proposals at his
ranch with Moyers and Budget Director
Kermit Gordon in late 1964. Many specific proposals were included in brief form in Johnson's
State of the Union address delivered on
January 7,
1965.
The task-force approach, combined with Johnson's electoral victory in 1964 and his talents in obtaining congressional approval, were widely credited with the success of the legislation agenda in 1965. Critics would later cite the task forces as a factor in a perceived elitist approach to Great Society programs. Also, because many of the initiatives did not originate from outside lobbying, those initiatives had no political constituencies that would support their continued funding.
With the exception of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Great Society agenda was not a widely discussed issue during the
1964 Presidential election campaigns. Johnson won the election with 61% of the vote, the largest percentage since the popular vote first became widespread in 1824, and carried all but six states. Democrats gained enough seats to control more than two-thirds of each chamber in the
Eighty-ninth Congress with a 68-32 margin in the Senate and a 295-140 margin in the House of Representatives. The political realignment allowed House leaders to alter rules that allowed conservative
Southern Democrats to kill
New Frontier and
civil rights legislation in committee, which aided efforts to pass Great Society legislation. In 1965 the first session of the Eighty-ninth Congress created the core of the Great Society. The Johnson administration submitted eighty-seven bills to Congress, and Johnson signed eighty-four, or 96%, arguably the most successful legislative agenda in American history.
[Unger, Irwin, 1996: 'The Best of Intentions: the triumphs and failures of the Great Society under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon': Doubleday, p. 104.]Civil rights
Historian Alan Brinkley has suggested that the most important domestic achievement of the Great Society may have been its success in translating some of the demands of the
civil rights movement into law.
[Alan Brinkley, "Great Society" in The Reader's Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John Arthur Garraty eds., ISBN 0395513723, Houghton Mifflin Books, p. 472] Four civil rights acts were passed, including three laws in the first two years of Johnson's presidency. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade job discrimination and the segregation of public accommodations. The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 assured minority registration and voting. It suspended use of literacy or other voter-qualification tests that had sometimes served to keep African-Americans off voting lists and provided for federal court lawsuits to stop discriminatory poll taxes. It also reinforced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by authorizing the appointment of federal voting examiners in areas that did not meet voter-participation requirements. The
Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 abolished the national-origin quotas in immigration law. The
Civil Rights Act of 1968 banned housing discrimination and extended constitutional protections to Native Americans on reservations.
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. 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 themselves 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 youths develop marketable skills; the
Neighborhood Youth Corps, the first summer jobs 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 Stamps program; 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.
Education
The most important educational component of the Great Society was the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, designed by Commissioner of Education
Francis Keppel. It was signed into law on
April 11,
1965, less than three months after it was introduced. It ended a long-standing political taboo by providing significant federal aid to public education, initially allotting more than $1 billion to help schools purchase materials and start special education programs to schools with a high concentration of low-income children. The Act established
Head Start, which had originally been started by the Office of Economic Opportunity as an eight-week summer program, as a permanent program.
The
Higher Education Act of 1965 increased federal money given to universities, created scholarships and low-interest loans for students, and established a
National Teachers Corps. The
Bilingual Education Act of 1968 offered federal aid to local schools districts to assist them to address the needs of children with limited English-speaking ability.
Health
The
Social Security Act of 1965 authorized
Medicare and provided federal funding for many of the medical costs of older Americans. 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. In 1966 welfare recipients of all ages received medical care through the
Medicaid program.
Arts and Culture
On
September 29,
1965, Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act into law, creating both the
National Endowment for the Arts and
National Endowment for the Humanities as separate, independent agencies. Lobbying for federally funded arts and humanities support began during the Kennedy Administration. In 1963 three scholarly and educational organizations joined together to establish the National Commission on the Humanities. In June 1964 the commission released a report that suggested that the emphasis placed on science endangered the study of the humanities from elementary schools through postgraduate programs. In order to correct the balance, it recommended "the establishment by the President and the Congress of the United States of a National Humanities Foundation." In August 1964, Congressman
William Moorhead of Pennsylvania proposed legislation to implement the commission's recommendations. Support from the White House followed in September, when Johnson lent his endorsement during a speech at
Brown University. In March 1965, the White House proposed the establishment a National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities and requested $20 million in start-up funds. The commission's report had generated other proposals, but the White House's approach eclipsed them. The administration's plan, which called for the creation of two separate agencies each advised by a governing body, was the version approved by Congress.
[http://www.neh.gov/nehat40/founding/index.html]*
Corporation for Public Broadcasting*
Kennedy Center*
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenTransportation
The most sweeping reorganization of the federal government since the
National Security Act of 1947 was the consolidation of transportation agencies into a cabinet-level
Department of Transportation.
[http://dotlibrary.dot.gov/Historian/history.htm] The department was authorized by Congress on
October 15,
1966 and began operations on
April 1,
1967. The
Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 provided $375 million for large-scale urban public or private rail projects in the form of matching funds to cities and states and created the
Urban Mass Transit Administration (now the
Federal Transit Administration). The
National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and the Highway Safety Act of 1966 were enacted, largely as a result of
Ralph Nader's book
Unsafe at Any Speed.
Consumer protection
In 1964 Johnson named Assistant Secretary of Labor
Esther Peterson to be the first presidential assistant for consumer affairs.
Cigarette Labeling Act of 1965 required packages to carry warning labels. Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 set standards through creation of the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fair Packaging and Labeling Act requires products identify manufacturer, address, clearly mark quantity and servings. Statute also authorizes permits HEW and FTC to establish and define voluntary standard sizes. The original would have mandated uniform standards of size and weight for comparison shopping, but the final law only outlawed exaggerated size claims. Child Safety Act of 1966 prohibited any chemical so dangerous that no warning can make its safe. Flammable Fabrics Act of 1967 set standards for children's sleepwear, but not baby blankets. Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 required inspection of meat which must meet federal standards.
Truth-in-Lending Act of 1968 required lenders and credit providers to disclose the full cost of finance charges in both dollars and annual percentage rates, on installment loan and sales. Wholesome Poultry Products Act of 1968 required inspection of poultry which must meet federal standards. Land Sales Disclosure Act of 1968 provided safeguards against fraudulent practices in the sale of land. Radiation Safety Act of 1968 provided standards and recalls for defective electronic products.
Environment
Joseph A. Califano, Jr. has suggested that Great Society's main contribution to the environment was an extension of protections beyond those aimed at the conservation of untouched resources.
[http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/9910.califano.html]] Discussing his administration's environmental policies, Lyndon Johnson suggested that "[t]he air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. The society that receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for [their] control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation." At the behest of Secretary of the Interior
Stewart Udall, the Great Society included several new environmental laws to protect air and water. Environmental legislation enacted included:
* Clear Air, Water Quality and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments
*
Wilderness Act of 1964,
*
Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966,
*
National Trail System Act of 1968,
*
Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968,
*
Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965,
*
Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965,
*
Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965, and
*
Aircraft Noise Abatement Act of 1968.
Many Great Society initiatives, especially those that benefited the middle class, continue to exist in some form. Civil rights laws remain on the books in amended versions. Some programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, have been criticized as inefficient and unwieldy, but enjoy wide support and have grown considerably since the 1960s
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=32459]. Federal funding of public and higher education has expanded since the Great Society era, and has maintained bipartisan support. Federal funding for culture initiatives in the arts, humanities, and public broadcasting have repeatedly been targets for elimination, but have survived.
Interpretations of the War on Poverty remain controversial. Several observers have noted that funding for many Great Society programs became difficult beginning in 1968, chiefly due to the
Vietnam War and Johnson's desire to maintain a balanced budget. 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.
[Alan Brinkley, "Great Society" in The Reader's Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John Arthur Garraty eds., ISBN 0395513723, Houghton Mifflin Books, p. 472] The poverty programs were heavily criticized by conservatives like
Charles Murray, who denounced them in his 1984 book
Losing Ground as being ineffective and creating an underclass of lazy citizens. 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."
The poverty rate for blacks fell from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1968.
[http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=372]. However, the poverty rate among black families fell dramatically from 1940 and 1960 (87 percent to 47 percent), suggesting poverty rates would have continued falling without the War on Poverty.
[http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell092800.asp] Other critics contend that the War on Poverty, by allegedly encouraging childbirth out of wedlock, is responsible for the destruction of the black family and the decline of black society.
[http://www.ablackconservative.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=6&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Welfare did what slavery and Jim Crow couldn't by Garry Cobb]Irving Kristol and other critics of Great Society programs founded a politics and culture journal
The Public Interest in 1965. While most of these critics had been anti-communist liberals, their writings were skeptical of the perceived
social engineering of the Great Society. Often termed
neoconservatives, they are credited with laying the groundwork for the
conservative movement of the 1980s and 1990s.
[Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, ISBN 0300113994, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 18-19.]*
President Johnson's speech at the University of Michigan from the LBJ Library*
Social Studies help on the Great Society*
Johnson's Great Society speech on CNN*
John Gardner Architect of the Great Society on PBS*
University of Wisconsin notes on the Great Society*
Welfare did what slavery and Jim Crow couldn'tFurther reading
* John A. Andrew
Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society: I.R. Dee, 1998 ISBN 156663184X
* Jeffrey W. Helsing
Johnson's War/Johnson's Great Society: the guns and butter trap:Praeger Greenwood 2000 ISBN 0275964493
* Barbara C. Jordan and Elspeth D. Rostow (editors)
The Great Society: a twenty year critique: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs 1986 ISBN 0899404170
* Lyndon B. Johnson
My Hope for America: Random House, 1964 ISBN 1121428770
* Charles Murray
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980: Basic Books; 10th Anniv edition (February 1995) ISBN 046504233
* Irwin Unger
The Best of Intentions: the triumphs and failures of the Great Society under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: Doubleday, 1996 ISBN 0385468334
