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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 11:13 AM Jan 2014

Marco Rubio Is Wrong: The War on Poverty Worked

By Michael Tomasky

On the 50th anniversary of LBJ’s initiative, Marco Rubio says it failed. After all, poverty still exists. But the policies did succeed—Democrats are just afraid to say so.

So now Sen. Marco Rubio is trying to join Rep. Paul Ryan’s conservative bleeding-hearts club band. The Florida senator is releasing a video timed to Wednesday’s 50th anniversary of the launch of the war on poverty to declare said war a failure and launch his own. Woot woot. That isn’t necessarily stupid politics, at least as a general election strategy for 2016. How the guy who’s already alienated the wingers on immigration expects to make it through the primary season trying to get conservatives to care about poor people is another question, but that’s his problem.

Our problem is when conservatives like Rubio talk gibberish: “Isn’t it time to declare big government’s war on poverty a failure?” No, it isn’t. It’s high time to say the war on poverty was a success. A wild success, indeed, by nearly every meaningful measure. But no one thinks so, and a big part of the reason is that most Democrats are afraid to say so. They’d damn well better start. If we’re really going to be raising the minimum wage and tackling inequality, someone needs to be willing to say to the American people that these kinds of approaches get results.

You may have seen the big Times piece Sunday that looked back over the half-century war on poverty, kicked off by Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address. The article noted that in terms of health and nutrition and numerous other factors, the poor in the United States are immeasurably less immiserated today than they were then. But it did lead by saying the overall poverty rate in all that time has dropped only from 19 to 15 percent, suggesting to the casual reader that all these billions for five decades haven’t accomplished much.

What’s wrong with thinking is that we have not, of course, been fighting any kind of serious war on poverty for five decades. We fought it with truly adequate funding for about one decade. Less, even. Then the backlash started, and by 1981, Ronald Reagan’s government was fighting a war on the war on poverty. The fate of many anti-poverty programs has ebbed and flowed ever since.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/06/marco-rubio-is-wrong-the-war-on-poverty-worked.html

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Laelth

(32,017 posts)
1. It's been eroded, but it still works.
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 11:16 AM
Jan 2014

We'd be much worse off were it not for LBJ's accomplishments.

Among Johnson’s liberal achievements are Medicare; Medicaid; Legal Aid; federal funding for education including creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Public Broadcasting Act; the Revenue Act of 1964; the Economic Opportunity Act; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

More here: http://laelth.blogspot.com/2011/01/turning-american-ship-of-state.html


-Laelth

erpowers

(9,350 posts)
6. Johnson Does Not Get Enough Credit
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 01:24 PM
Jan 2014

Lyndon Johnson does not get enough credit for the progressive things he did. He made some mistakes, but he did a great deal of good. Many, if not all, of his policies have helped millions of Americans.

 

Triana

(22,666 posts)
4. There was no "big government war on poverty". There was only a corprat war against the poor.
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 12:55 PM
Jan 2014

And they won.

yellowcanine

(35,692 posts)
5. Medicare and Medicaid were a big part of the War on Poverty. Does Rubio want to get rid of them?
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 01:16 PM
Jan 2014

I don't think so, as much as they like to bad mouth these programs.

Also the Food Stamp Act of 1964 and other nutrition programs such as the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, which provided for free breakfasts for needy school children, among other things. Is Rubio claiming that these programs are failures as well? Then he should damn well say so instead of blathering about the War on Poverty. Of course he won't because once he gets specific, his arguments fall of their own weight.

erpowers

(9,350 posts)
8. Looks Stoned
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 02:47 PM
Jan 2014

Am I the only one who thinks he looks stoned, hungover, or like something is wrong with him?

 

1StrongBlackMan

(31,849 posts)
9. This is a really crazy framing issue ...
Mon Jan 6, 2014, 03:16 PM
Jan 2014

that can be overcome by extending the "war" analogy.

The right points to the continuing existence of poverty and poor folks, and the continuing need to anti-poverty programming to argue the war HAS failed.

To this I respond by asking: "Point to any war that the U.S. won."

And they will say WWI or WWII.

And I say: "But how could we have won that (those) war(s) ... there is still a Germany and Japan?"

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