Americas story. Funding for cspan 2 comes from these Television Companies and more, including charter communications. Chter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. We are just getting started. We are building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. Charter communications, along with these Television Companies supports cspan 2 as a public service. This course, as you know, examines the development of the u. S. Welfare state, the way americans have gone about making social provisions for themselves. Social provisions include programs that aim at reducing risk and enhancing quality of life. Our focus has been on the relief of poverty. Im going to depart from our usual format here. Im going to do a fair amount of reading this afternoon because im concerned about covering all the material that we have to cover. Over the course of our exploration of the construction of the american welfare state, we have encountered several different persistent themes. Among these are the idea that in the United States, social provision is divided between public and private institutions. The public provides welfare programming. The public shaped welfare programming through the texts tax system. Private entities provide charity and philanthropy. American employers provide the bulk of social welfare benefits. Another thing is the experimentation with the institutional form. We have worked our way through outdoor relief, the idea that impoverished families remain in their own homes. Indoor relief, the poor houses and the like. The american system has accommodated both forms simultaneously, arguing back and forth about which one is preferable, or least harmful. The third consideration for the american system is the Important Role of the system as mechanisms for managing the workforce. I think normally we think of it being aimed at relieving poverty. At the level of policy, it is about making sure that employers have access to a stable workforce. A fourth theme is the tension between these iterations, between american commitment to compassion, the idea that we are responsible for one another, and that communities will take care of Vulnerable People within them. That commitment is constantly at war with a commitment to instilling discipline. A commitment to work, to creating citizens who are capable of being selfsufficient and establishing independence. Those two pieces, they seem to be at war with one another. A corollary of that, because we operate these programs with warring values underlining them, it is also true that we cannot completely make up our minds about what our goal for any of these programs is. Are we attempting to facilitate a stable workforce and come look at it . Are we trying to rid ourselves of poverty . What are we trying to do . Last week, we left off with an examination of the Social Security act of 1935. The new deal legislation that laid the foundation for American Social provisions and created the framework in which social provision operates to this day. In todays session, we will look at the development of poor relief and policy. It was launched by the Johnson Administration in 1954. Lyndon johnsons ambitions or were to make American Life more expansive. We are interested in a core element of this Great Society program, which is the war on poverty. It operated on multiple fronts. During his tenure, Congress Passed important landmark legislation, providing support for public education, for expanded job training, for renewed access to healthcare this includes the creation of the medicare and medicaid programs. A commitment to publicly subsidized housing, including the creation of the the prompt of housing and urban development, and new approaches to urban development, including the Community Action programs that were part of the war on Program Policy legislation. Each of these elements was upfront in the war on poverty. Within this comprehensive attack on poverty, but we are going to be scrutinizing today, what you are reading about in this material, is the Economic Opportunity act of 1964. This is the act that created the war on poverty. We will go through a little bit of the operation, but we will lay out the structure, so you know, it is comprised of five titles. Each of them attacking poverty on a different front. We have job training and Work Experience entitles one and five. We have the business and economic assistance in titles three and four. That includes rural communities. Poverty is not strictly an urban phenomenon in the United States. We learned that in looking at the new deal research, they went to north dakota. A key piece of the Economic Opportunity act was the program created by title ii. Community action took the view that poverty could only be addressed effectively through comprehensive strategies that included the elements that are touched on in the other title. They had to think about job training, education, housing, as well as where people were getting income from. The Community Action title also took the position that the only way that that kind of planning could get done effectively is if the people who are going to be subject to the plan were involved in the planning. The Community Action program set up a system where the federal government would make direct funding to grassroots groups around the country. To plan, and then to monitor implementation of communitywide antipoverty plans. This proved to be dynamic, productive, and highly controversial, as youll see. Note that the Economic Opportunity act did not address poor relief directly. It did not provide income assistance. On thursday, we will be talking about the afdc, aides to family with disabled children. In brief, afdc payments were significantly raised under johnson. Other programs were instituted. For example, in 1964, formalization of the food stamp program. So that is the layout. We are working through this. We are digging through the archaeology and the evolution of the american system, starting in the cellar and working our way up. We laid the groundfloor foundation with the new deal. We are working on the Great Society material. Within the Great Society, we are dealing with the Economic Opportunity act. On thursday, we will deal with the afdc in greater depth. So why, in general, or for our project, does this topic matter . What we are trying to do here is identify the contributions the Great Society policymaking made to the development of the american system of social provision. And the significance of the Great Society effort is a window into the dynamic of the american struggle with poverty, and how poverty should be addressed. As with all phases of the development of American Social welfare policy, the Great Society built on the institutional architecture directed by past attempts. The Great Society builds on the new deal. The new deal builds on mothers pensions. The mothers pensions builds on the war pensions, and on and on. The Great Society grappled with american ambivalence concerning it. We hope to build up compassionate society. We pride ourselves on independence and self sufficiency. The question, again, is, how is policy to be designed to meet that first objective, compassion, while also the second, discipline and independence. In addressing these challenges, the Great Societys war on poverty was unique in several ways. It had innovation with regard to goals and approaches and relations and social movements. What am i speaking about here . With regards to goals. The war on poverty expressed significantly larger aspirations concerning poverty and enhancement of american qualityoflife than any previously formed program. It expanded the role of government in achieving those goals. Johnson asked americans to imagine a nation where poverty is ended by and through the efforts of the people working through their government. How about policy approaches . Again, im referring here to the Community Action program. The war on poverty thus recognized the systemic nature of poverty, something that we have been waiting for policymakers to do. Here, we are finally seeing americans saying, yes, poverty is not always about individual fillings. Maybe theres Something Else going on. Recognizing the systemic nature of poverty, the war on poverty sought to address it. Thus, the Community Action program created by the when race trumps merit drew together multiple antipoverty initiatives addressing Workforce Development and urban planning, that previously operated in separate silos. The strategy was to attack poverty in communities where it predominated. It folded antipoverty initiatives into one conference of attack and engaged residents of impoverished communities in planning and implementing. One aspect that you want to know here is that for the war on poverty program, poverty was linked to the place. It was linked to city neighborhoods and communities where it occurred. Strategies on attacking poverty dealt with particular places in particular groups. The impact of social movements. You may see in the reading that rather differently from the phases of policy development we have looked at those four, in the case of the great societies war on poverty , it was influenced by grassroots pressure. It was launched amidst the amount of the 60s. It contributed to highlighting that. Those of africanamerican, women, and poor people themselves. There was a volatile atmosphere in the 60s. Aussie makers heard and responded to these voices. Ultimately, to me, the war on poverty is interesting because it so directly tested american values. In the war on poverty , we see a confrontation between the values of compassion and discipline that i have been presenting to you. The war on poverty tested the potency of the American Dream. The American Dream being the idea of america as a place of opportunity for all. The war on poverty tested that by testing whether enlightened policy could extend that opportunity to all americans. The war on poverty was confronted with, and grappled directly with the possibility that modern americas capitalist economy could not be restructured to provide for all and that jerryrigged fixes would be necessary to lift the poor from poverty. War on poverty policymakers had doubt that a dole or any forced redistribution would help. Act attempt and bear with me. Im going to go through some background pieces just to get those pieces lets lay out the background of the Economic Opportunity acts attempt. Bear with me. Im going to go through some background pieces to get them laid out. Then well get to the act itself. So the background. War on poverty wants intervention into american poverty built on existing structures for positions of relief and operated within a framework of values related to compassion, community, and work. With regard to institutional structures, again, as you saw in particular in the new deal materials, and issue for welfare provision at the National Level was for programs to be structured as insurance or structured as a system. Insurance programs like Social Security were those in which benefits were based in part on contributions paid in by beneficiaries. These programs were more respected than assisted programs, programs like afdc. It operated as a public grant. A second set of distinctions are national or state. These two tend to attract one another. Social security as a national program, administered by the federal government provided a more stable stream of benefits and one that was consistent across regions. It is more stable than state administered programs like Unemployment Compensation or aid to families with dependent children. There is a hierarchy here. You are always safer on the insurance side of the equation. Insurance and National Mean what we known as know as Social Security. It is weaker. It leaves people more vulnerable. This is the institutional set of structures that the war on poverty was going to have to figure out how to build on. Again, the war on poverty has to engage these values that we have been talking about. I guess what i am arguing here is that the Johnson Program felt that just maybe, it had solved this problem. Maybe it had come up with a way to melt our commitment to compassion the american commitment to compassion for those that are in need of with the american commitment to independence and self sufficiency. The way this was going to operate was by creating a program that relied on the health of the American Economy and had faith that the economy could provide for everybody, if only access could be opened up. The program took as its task, opening this up. They recognized that the economy was not open to all. It took as its task, opening up the economy. If that could work, then maybe americans could demonstrate compassion while sticking to their commitment to economic independence. So i want to look with you at a couple of background pieces that fed into shaping the program. I think as we have gone through these programs, we have been trying to establish in each phase of american development, what the Historical Context has been, what kinds of values and kinds of social thinking each phase of the program drew on. Lets try to do that here for the war on poverty. I want to raise issues about contemporary experiments going on in the realm of poverty policy prior to the Economic Opportunity act. And then we need to mention a couple of things about lyndon johnson, who was without a doubt factor in this development. So i have three notable public and intellectual or criers in the wilderness take your pick to present to you. John galbraith. He was a witty and gracious public intellectual who published often. In the case of the affluent society, he was indicting americans. We are moving to the end of the 50s. We are mired in eisenhower stability. We are feeling our wealth as a society. We are on top of the world diplomatically. We view ourselves as a nation that won the second world war. We havent discussed that yet with the russians. Galbraith says, look around. What is it that you are actually getting . He makes this charge. He says, take a typical american family. They are out for a weekend outing. The family has an automobile out for a tour. It passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, billboards, and posts with wires that shouldve been put underground. They pass into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art. They picnic on packaged food from a portable icebox by polluted stream and spend the night at a park which is a menace to Public Health and morals, just before dozing off on an air mattress, omitted the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect on the curious unevenness of their blessing. Is this, indeed, the american genius . Galbraiths point was that in the postwar era, what americans had been doing at an accelerated rate is feathering their private nest, and feeling their private affluence. All well and good, but he says, look around. We are serving the public sector. What you have left . What you have left is an expensive car. When you venture out, its a society in ruins. He called this private opulence and public squalor. He challenged americans to think more systematically about how their wealth might better be used. Great. There is airconditioning in the home. Is there something more you would like to achieve a society . The second indictment did get e they were exploring the land of appalachia. His book, night comes to the cumberlands, it got public notice. It was promoted by a columnist in the new york times. It lays claim to having spurred the kennedy effort which johnson picked up and expanded for appalachian redevelopment. Night comes to the cumberlands was published in 1962. Michael harrington, the other american, also published in 1962. Harrington was one of dorothy days catholic workers. He was a catholic. He became a socialist. He was a journalist. He was an activist. His book, the other america, was published in 1962. It asserted that as many as a quarter of americans were living in poverty. An aspect of the affluent Society Problem that galbraith was pointing out was not the degradation of the infirmity and landscape, but also the degradation of the people. Harrington used the book to show how American Society was structured in ways that effectively hit hid the poor from more affluent people. This book was reviewed in the new yorker by the public intellectual named dwight mcdonald. It caught the attention of the Kennedy Administration and kennedy. Just as night comes to the cumberlands, it is a basis for the creation of the appellation redevelopment authority. This book, the other america, was a spur to creating the program that became the war on poverty. How about experiments . You have ideology. These are authors that, maybe they are not creating the issue, but these people caught public attention. Thre hitting on something that americople were apparently worried about and receptive to. The other thing we