Retreat at Home
Retreat at Horne Two NEWS reports in the last weeks of 1966 illuminated the road the United States can be expected to travel in 1967. The first was the announcement by President Johnson that he...
...But the program deserves a far better fate than starvation by degrees...
...Its administrators have made mistakes, some serious...
...It deserves a chance to prove itself, and this it has not had...
...Unless Mr...
...The impact will be especially harsh on those cities which were able to organize themselves early and which now have successful, ongoing programs...
...President Johnson announced that the twice reduced budget of OEO would be further reduced for this fiscal year...
...Shriver had hardly finished his unprecedented expression of dismay over the crippling blows struck by Congress when the axe fell again...
...Certainly if the Administration itself reneges on its commitments to OEO, it can hardly hope for enlightened funding of the program from the coalition of conservative Republicans and Dixie Democrats that hopes to rule the House of Representatives during the next two years...
...This challenge, he declared, is the "great unfinished work" of "the richest and most fortunate nation in the history of the world...
...In the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than strip it from the hands of those in need...
...Johnson reverses his present role, unless, as Washington columnist Charles Bartlett put it, "he wraps a strong, protective arm around" the anti-poverty program, it will be starved by budget reductions and devoured by its enemies in the new Congress...
...It is a total commitment by this President and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies...
...He should also reread and rediscover-and perhaps believe againthe eloquent appeals to build the Great Society which only yesterday dominated his finest speeches...
...Johnson, we believe, will destroy the all-too-fragile foundations of his Great Society and place his own political future in even graver jeopardy than it is now...
...the President asked...
...The leader who cried out against sacrificing "the hope of our poor" seems bent on doing precisely that as he becomes obsessively involved in the war in Vietnam and ignores the other war at home...
...And hundreds of additional communities, especially in rural America, will be unable to join the battle...
...If he chooses the other course-collaboration and compromise with the conservative Republican leadership in its commitment to a false economy-Mr...
...Retreat at Horne Two NEWS reports in the last weeks of 1966 illuminated the road the United States can be expected to travel in 1967...
...They will feel they have been double-crossed...
...The harsh realities of January, 1967, stand in dismal contrast to the stirring rhetoric of January, 1966...
...It started early in 1966 when President Johnson proposed to appropriate little more than half the amount that the Office of Economic Opportunity, which administers the war on poverty, had hoped to get...
...He ordered a $32 million program reduction and "deferment" of an additional $100 million...
...This hacking away at the only-toomodest appropriation for the war on poverty is all the more tragic because it comes even before the new, and presumably more conservative, Congress convenes...
...Emphasis added...
...Between thirty and forty million Americans-one fifth of the nation-he told Congress and the country, still live on the ragged edge of subsistence with little or no opportunity to break out of their hopeless plight...
...During the struggle on Capitol Hill, President Johnson seemed indifferent to the fate of the vital appropriation and made no effort to come to the rescue of the embattled OEO...
...The original legislation was faulty in some respects...
...The cut in funds for the war on poverty at the very moment that the Administration is planning to demand billions more for the endless war in Vietnam reminds us that it was less than a year ago that Mr...
...Nobody contends, as far as we know, that the war on poverty is a perfect operation...
...Rather it is a commitment...
...The poor will feel that democracy is only for the rich...
...Even before it was known precisely where the axe would fall on needed programs at home, it had become clear that the first casualty of the distorted emphasis on the war in Vietnam would be "the other war"-the war on poverty here in the United States...
...Johnson assured the nation no such choice between guns and butter would be necessary-and if by any chance it were, it would not be the poor who were sacrificed...
...Will they sacrifice . . . for the distressed . . . the hope of our poor...
...He scolded those who demanded more guns and less butter...
...The first was the announcement by President Johnson that he was canceling or deferring $5.3 billion worth of domestic programs in the current fiscal year...
...This program," the President emphasized, "is much more than a beginning...
...The poor will feel they have been short-changed...
...Congressional action has curtailed the war on poverty in 1,000 communities...
...Whom will they sacrifice...
...Now, less than three years later, the "total commitment" has become a tragic retreat...
...This time it was wielded in person by the architect of the "total commitment" to wage war on poverty...
...Because of Vietnam, we cannot do all that we should or all that we would like to," said Sargent Shriver, director of the OEO, in the philosophical language of a loyal member of the Administration team...
...Considering its brief existence and /pitifully inadequate funds, it must be reckoned a significantly hopeful beginning-if for no other reason than the fact that it is the first serious attempt by our government to make available to the poor something more hopeful and meaningful than a permanent welfare check...
...The second was the disclosure by the Chief Executive that the war in Veitnam will require-and get-in the current fiscal year $9 to $10 billion more than was estimated last January...
...This nation is mighty enough," the President asserted in his State of the Union message last January, "its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough to pursue our goal in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home...
...The next backward step came in the closing weeks of the Eighty-ninth Congress last fall when that body cut the President's modest request and seriously diluted the community action program, which is the heart of the anti-poverty program...
...On March 16, 1964, President Johnson sent a memorable message to Congress summoning it to join him in declaring war on poverty...
...The results of Congressional action and White House neglect were recently revealed to the nation by Shriver, whose team spirit wilted understandably under the impact of the blow from some members of the team...
...The President, it seems to us, should not only stop his post-election pursuit of consensus with the conservative, penny-pinching, budget-slashing Dirksen-Ford leadership in the Republican camp...
...for fiscal 1967," he said...
...If he does this, he will come out fighting as the new Congress convenes-fighting for the social programs he has insisted he believes in but has lately placed in the greatest peril...
Vol. 31 • January 1967 • No. 1
