Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program

If I could change one major decision in modern American history, I would go back to the 1960s and change the way we designed the War on Poverty.

But first, an important distinction.

I would not change the Civil Rights Movement.

America needed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Discrimination based on race needed to be confronted, segregation needed to end, and Black Americans needed the same legal protections and opportunities promised to every American.

That was about equal rights.

The War on Poverty and many of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs were something different. They were about using government programs to fight poverty and provide economic security. Although these policies are often associated with the same period and with helping Black Americans, the programs assisted poor Americans of many races.

My change would be in how that assistance was structured.

The intentions were good. If someone is hungry, help feed them. If a family cannot afford medical care, help provide it. If someone loses a job and falls on hard times, there should be a safety net.

I believe a prosperous and decent country should do those things.

But a safety net should be designed to catch someone when they fall and help them climb back up—not become a permanent place to live.

I would have designed the War on Poverty from the beginning around that principle.

Government assistance would have been tied much more closely to education, job training, employment and advancement. Benefits would phase out gradually as someone’s income increased so that taking a better job or working additional hours would always leave a family better off.

I also would have placed much greater emphasis on creating economic opportunity in poor communities: better schools, vocational training, apprenticeships, small-business ownership, homeownership and access to jobs.

And I would have been extremely careful about any benefit structure that unintentionally made marriage, employment or earning additional income financially disadvantageous.

None of this means abandoning people who genuinely cannot support themselves. The elderly, people with serious disabilities, children and others who cannot reasonably become economically independent should have a strong safety net.

But for able-bodied adults, the ultimate objective of government assistance should be independence whenever realistically possible.

This isn’t fundamentally a racial issue.

Generational poverty can affect Black families, white families, Hispanic families and people living everywhere from inner cities to rural America. Once poverty becomes generational, breaking that cycle becomes enormously difficult.

That’s why, looking back, I would separate two ideas that are sometimes incorrectly lumped together.

Civil rights should guarantee equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

Anti-poverty programs should provide help while creating the strongest possible path toward economic independence.

We absolutely needed the first.

I believe we could have done a much better job designing the second.

So if I could go back to the 1960s, I wouldn’t weaken America’s commitment to civil rights by one inch.

I would rewrite the War on Poverty with one additional measure of success:

Not simply how many people we were able to help, but how many people we ultimately helped reach the point where they no longer needed that help.