The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 comprised the legislation behind President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, and expanded many existing antipoverty programs while creating several new ones.
The Johnson administration tapped Democratic Congressman Phil Landrum of Georgia to introduce the sweeping antipoverty program that Johnson had called for in his 1964 State of the Union address. The Economic Opportunity Act created several new federal programs, including the Job Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), and work study. The Job Corps provided housing, employment, and job training for 16 to 21 year olds. Through work study, disadvantaged students could obtain work through vocational and higher educational institutions to help them meet the costs of furthering their education. vista created a nationwide force of volunteers to staff state and local antipoverty programs. Participants received living allowances and small stipends while serving with the program. The measure authorized the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to establish pilot programs to give job training and placement assistance to heads of households receiving Aid for Dependent Children payments as well.
Federal funding was provided for state and local antipoverty initiatives. Any programs, public or private, that helped people get jobs, job training and educational assistance, or improved the living conditions of the poor were eligible for funding, if they were administered by an organization that was already helping the poor. The federal government paid most costs of these programs initially, but it reduced its involvement over time to 50 percent. The act also offered federally guaranteed loans to small businesses and farmers to stabilize their operations and create jobs.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the bill was the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a new federal agency to oversee the War on Poverty. The purpose of this office was to coordinate the nation’s antipoverty programs, many of which were at least partially funded by this bill. Critics charged that this was “an unneeded layer of federal authority” and “a dangerous assault on the established system of state-federal relationships.” Republicans ultimately introduced an antipoverty bill of their own that eliminated the Office of Economic Opportunity, Job Corps, and vista. The administration overcame this challenge by agreeing to amendments that effectively gave governors veto power over government activities in their state that were authorized or funded by the Economic Opportunity Act. This change still allowed privately run programs to receive federal assistance under the bill, regardless of the governor’s approval.
Giving governors control over how the measure affected their states was not the only compromise that the Johnson administration had to make to get the act passed. The administration’s original bill had been more generous to farmers. For example, the government was to establish a program to sell farmland to poor farmers below the land’s market value. Congress deleted this provision and turned grants to farmers into guaranteed loans. Dairy farmers, however, did get relief that they had been seeking. The final bill authorized indemnity payments to dairy farmers who were unable to sell milk because it still contained traces of recently banned pesticides.
Several major organizations voiced their opinions on the measure. Labor groups, led by the AFL-CIO supported it, as did the Urban League and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Farm Bureau, National Association of Manufacturers, and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce opposed it.
Debate in Congress over the bill was spirited. Republicans claimed that the bill and the entire War on Poverty were merely “election year gimmicks.” They seized on the fact that Lady Bird Johnson owned thousands of acres of land in Alabama with desperately poor farm laborers living on it as evidence of the administration’s insincerity on the issue. The bill’s opponents also interjected race into the
Debate. They raised the specter of uncontrolled, integrated Job Corps camps in southern states and the NAACP receiving federal aid for its activities under the guise of combating poverty. The administration responded to these attacks by pointing out that 80 percent of Americans in poverty were white.
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The measure was portrayed as a way to solve the problem of poverty. Conceived in the spirit of the New Deal, these new programs went beyond providing economic assistance to the poor. The worker training and educational aspects gave some poor the skills to bring themselves out of poverty, and, more important, the training to stay out of poverty. Those who benefited became, as the bill’s supporters put it, “taxpayers, not taxeaters.” While these programs undoubtedly helped many people improve their lives and escape poverty, they did not end it. Measuring the act by the standards set by the rhetoric of its supporters was not entirely successful.
Further reading: Irwin Unger, The Best of Intentions (New York: Doubleday, 1996).
—Dave Price
World History
