Defending the Great Society

Why LBJ's sweeping antipoverty agenda is still worth fighting for

Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson stood before an audience here in Michigan and delivered something all-too-rare in American politics: An ambitious yet actionable vision for progress.

The "Great Society" agenda that he outlined in May 1964 in Ann Arbor was not only about strengthening our civil rights but also expanding the basic economic rights that make liberty meaningful. Prom education and healthcare to employment programs and voter protections, the Great Society transformed America for the better.

Today, with extreme conservatives in charge of the House of Representalives, this proud legacy of employment, antipoverty, and civil rights programs is under attack. My top priority in Congress is to defend it.

To get a sense of the legacy of the Great Society, consider its scope. While the landmark civil rights laws - including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - were cornerstones of the agenda, President Johnson understood that jobs, good wages, education, affordable housing, and healthcare were also civil rights worth fighting for. That's why he and his allies in Congress toiled mightily to pass legislation creating Medicare, Medicaid, the Jobs Corps, Head Start, federal student loans and grants, VISTA volunteer service programs, federal housing subsidies, expanded unemployment insurance programs, and expanded minimum wage protections, among other vital social and economic advances.

The impacts were indisputable. When this "War on Poverty" was fully funded in the 1960s, the proportion of Americans living in poverty fell from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent. Infant mortality fell by half. The launch of Medicare and expansion of Social Security meant that tens of millions of elderly Americans no longer had to live in poverty.

Contrast the Great Society's "War on Poverty" with our current Congress' "War on Working Poor." The Great Recession and a persistent underfunding of employment programs have resulted in painful levels of unemployment and underemployment. There are still more than three applicants for every job opening nationally. In Detroit and in African-American communities around the country, the picture is much worse. Today, we have a minimum wage that - when adjusted for inflation - is less than 70% of what it was at the end of Lyndon Johnson's time in office. Yet House GOP leaders continue to make reckless cuts to education, infrastructure construction, medical research, environmental protection, and the justice system. Republicans continue to block efforts to adjust the minimum wage to keep up with inflation or to restore the vital unemployment insurance benefits that struggling Americans have already paid for.

Macroeconomic Advisers, an independent research firm, recently estimated that recent budget cuts and the GOP's government shutdown have cost the country up to $700 billion in economic growth and about two million jobs. Big cuts in federal revenue sharing with states have made college unaffordable for millions of students across the country and worsened the budgetary woes of cities including Detroit.

I am fighting for a federal budget that prioritizes job-creation through infrastructure upgrades and workforce training, investments in manufacturing innovation and quality education from pre-K to post-secondary, stronger consumer demand through a fair minimum wage and robust safety net programs including universal healthcare.

When our people are trained, working, and contributing to the tax base, there's less need for support from the government. People have the purchasing power needed to buy homes and cars and to sustain strong economic growth. Fifty years after President Johnson's speech in Ann Arbor, the vision of the Great Society still matters. This is why I continue my fight to implement it.

By Congressman John Conyers