Reply #10: I do [View All]

It is a myth that these programs did not work. Were they perfect? No. Did they help? Definitely.

Medicare, the War on Poverty, Head Start, Affirmative Action, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, the Clear Air, Water Quality and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, the 1965 Solid Waste Disposal Act, the 1965 Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act, and the 1968 Aircraft Noise Abatement Act. They also provided the rationale for later laws creating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Superfund that (is supposed to exact financial payment from past polluters.

Thirty-five national parks were establishe during the Great Society years. The 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act today protects 155 river segments in 37 states. The 1968 National Trail System Act has established more than 800 recreational, scenic, and historic trails covering 40,000 miles.

It doesn't sound like a failure to me, but I can see that even you have come to question whether this is true.

Nixon signed off on the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act. Say what you will about Nixon, I despised the man, but he seems like a far-left liberal by today's sandards, save his continued promotion of the war.

Try this piece by Joe Califano, the former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (a cabinet position that no longer exists, now effectively the Welfare "Reform" Department run by Tommy Thompson):

<snip>
If there is a prize for the political scam of the 20th century, it should go to the conservatives for propagating as conventional wisdom that the Great Society programs of the 1960s were a misguided and failed social experiment that wasted taxpayers' money.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, 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. Since then, the poverty rate has hovered at about the 13 percent level and sits at 13.3 percent today, still a disgraceful level in the context of the greatest economic boom in our history. But if the Great Society had not achieved that dramatic reduction in poverty, and the nation had not maintained it, 24 million more Americans would today be living below the poverty level.

This reduction in poverty did not just happen. It was the result of a focused, tenacious effort to revolutionize the role of the federal government with a series of interventions that enriched the lives of millions of Americans. In those tumultuous Great Society years, the President submitted, and Congress enacted, more than 100 major proposals in each of the 89th and 90th Congresses. In that era of do-it-now optimism, government was neither a bad man to be tarred and feathered nor a bag man to collect campaign contributions, but an instrument to help the most vulnerable in our society.

What has the verdict been? Did the programs we put into place in the 1960s vindicate our belief in the responsibility and capacity of the national government to achieve such ambitious goals, or do they stand as proof of the government's inability to effect dramatic change that helps our people?

more: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/9910.califano.html#byline