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The Silent and Forgotten Americans - Victims of Poverty - Hostages of Indifference - Perpetual Political Pawns

This year, 2019 the federal, state, and local governments will spend close to a combined $1 trillion to fund more than 100 separate anti-poverty programs.  According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, since the “War on Poverty was launched by the Lyndon Johnson Administration in 1964, government efforts to fight poverty have cost more than $23 trillion.  Imagine that, $23 trillion dollars, yet poverty rates today remain about the same as during the Johnson Administration.

The Heritage Foundation studied the same issue for a report in 2014, which marked the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's launch of the War on Poverty. In January 1964, Johnson declared "unconditional war on poverty in America."

Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson's war. Adjusted for inflation, that's three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.  If you add spending since 2014 you get $27 trillion dollars spent.

In 2018, the government spent $943 billion dollars providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn't include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one-third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its annual poverty report. The report claims that in 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were poor.

Remarkably, that's almost the same poverty rate as in 1967, three years after the War on Poverty started. How can that be? How can government spend $9,000 per recipient and have no effect on poverty? The answer is - it can't.

Presidents since 1964 include Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Trump.  The four Democrats held office for 24 years, while the six Republicans held office for 23½ years.  The bottom line is both political parties spent about the same money fighting poverty.

From urban renewal to legal services, manpower programs to Head Start, high rise apartments to Section 8 single family homes, infrastructure to beautification, there have been many innovative, successful, and expensive programs yet little has changed.

At the root of the failure was corruption throughout government, a failure to test pilot programs before spending massive amounts of money, and a detachment from attacking the roots of poverty.

I worked over the years trying to identify programs and attack poverty for Democrats and Republicans alike.  In the 1960s I created a methodology for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to identify pockets of poverty within a metropolitan area, opening the door for the first time to allow targeted programs within an urban area.

As a policy developer, program analyst, and program implementer, my job was to use all the resources of all levels of government to attack poverty.  Over the years I was called in to the Office of the Budget, later the Office of Management and Budget, on numerous task forces to consolidate the myriad of programs being created, help the state and local governments set up management and accountability systems, and identify new programs and strategies to address problems.

OMB was part of the Executive Office of the President and by 1973 I became part of the New Federalism Task Force in OMB to overhaul all the federal domestic programs and give the governors and mayor more control over the tens of billions of dollars being spent.

The New York Times said our “secret” 32-person task force operating out of the Executive Office of the President was responsible for the most far reaching reform of federal domestic programs since President Franklin Roosevelt created the New Deal in the 1930s.

During this time we created the General Revenue Sharing, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Comprehensive Manpower block grants, Housing block grants, Welfare Reform, and many other programs for transportation, health care, infrastructure, and related initiatives. 

For three decades I worked to create, evaluate, repair and replace programs in cooperation with the state and local governments attempting to address poverty.  During that time, I worked for city councils, mayors, poverty programs, metropolitan planning, governors, members of the House and Senate and the Office of the President.

Our work proceeded through economic adversity, racial riots, corruption, being the target of radical groups, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panthers, massive increases in gangs and crimes, the explosion of drug trafficking, cop killings, and a more.

We launched many innovative programs to attack poverty and many efforts fell short of expectations.  So frustrating was the work that years after building high rise apartments for the low income in Newark, New Jersey alone, over 30,000 housing units had to be destroyed because of crime, unfit living conditions, drugs and other reasons.

There were many people saved by these efforts and many minorities found the door to equal opportunity opened but the failure to anticipate the degree of corruption and the failure to actively involve law enforcement in the design and implementation of the many neighborhood programs kept them from succeeding.

Remember, there was continuous friction between the federal government and local government as the feds were using the massive infusion of money to local government as a tool to achieve the integration of police departments all over the nation.

Without fully integrated police departments there could not be the cooperation needed between the police and residents to stop the crime, gangs, and drugs from overpowering the legitimate and dedicated people trying to help.

The problem remains, and our resolve to solve it must be renewed.  We have gained much experience these past 55 years of fighting poverty, segregation, discrimination, and bias and must not lose the lessons but build on them to find a solution to poverty and inequality.

Poverty is not a racial issue it impacts on all races.  It is not simply a matter of racial inequality because there are poor Whites, Blacks, Hispanic, Asian and Native American.  It destroys dreams, the quality of life, the educational opportunities, health care, the availability of good food at reasonable costs, clean drinking water, and the list goes on and on.

Of course, Baltimore and many other cities face poverty issues that have changed the nature of the once proud towns and are a deterrent to future opportunities in many cities.  We all have a stake in assuring a better quality of life for all people and equal opportunity for all people because poverty is a powerful reminder of the limits of our success, our wealth, and our determination to be fair and just.