Great Society Programs

A term coined by Lyndon B. Johnson to describe and promote his agenda and vision for the nation. His attempt to realize changes was manifested in more than two hundred pieces of enacted federal legislation.

Origins and History

Lyndon B. Johnson first used the phrase “Great Society” to describe his domestic agenda in a commencement speech delivered at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964. In his inaugural address in 1965, Johnson spelled out his vision of the United States as a “great society” and challenged the American public to address society’s most pressing social, economic, educational, and environmental concerns. His vision was to be achieved by assigning each problem to a specific presidential task force that would would develop a solution. This approach meant that Great Society programs would be implemented as they were developed rather than as part of a grand strategic plan.

Much of the welfare-oriented legislation that Johnson proposed followed in the tradition established by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry S Truman’s Fair Deal. Johnson’s civil rights legislation built upon modest antidiscrimination laws passed in 1957 and 1960. In civil rights, welfare, and several other areas, the scope of activity initiated by the Johnson administration far surpassed the activity of any other administration.

The bulk of Johnson’s legislative program was passed after his landslide election to the presidential office in 1964. As a result of the coattails effect produced by his decisive victory, the Democratic Party added to its majority in both the House and Senate, and Congress was sympathetic to Johnson’s programs. Johnson’s tendency to use consensus building ensuring that all major interest groups affected by a certain policy received some benefit also helped minimize opposition. For example, the Food Stamp Act of 1964, besides helping low-income families buy food, purchased surplus crops from U.S. farmers and included higher support prices for other crops. In this way, Johnson attempted to ensure that the poor would be fed and farmers would be fairly compensated.

Civil Rights and Voting

The first significant piece of civil rights legislation was originally proposed by President John F. Kennedy. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Johnson worked with fellow Democrats Senator Hubert Humphrey and Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy to secure passage of this legislation. However, the bill stalled in the Senate when southern Democrats initiated a filibuster on March 26, 1964, to prevent a final vote on the measure. Because the northern Democrats did not have enough votes for cloture (a parliamentary device that would end a filibuster), Johnson was forced to turn to the Senate minority leader, Everett Dirksen, for support. In exchange for his efforts, Dirksen was given full credit for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act, signed into law on July 2, forbid discrimination in regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

However, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had little impact on voting rights. By 1965, this deficiency was obvious, and calls for additional federal legislation rang out. In March, 1965, violence surrounding a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, received national television coverage. Johnson responded by proposing new voting rights legislation in one of the most moving speeches of his presidency. Johnson successfully secured passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 using the coalition created with Dirksen. This act created federal examiners who would determine if a person was qualified to vote, abolished literacy tests required of voters, and provided federal monitoring of registration and voting.

Poverty and Health

One of the most significant pieces of legislation in fighting the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. It was designed to eliminate poverty by creating employment opportunities through education and training. This law created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), initially headed by R. Sargent Shriver, a holdover from the Kennedy administration who became Johnson’s chief adviser on poverty in the United States. The OEO created a number of innovative programs, including the Community Action Programs (CAP), which included funding for job training, legal counseling, health care, housing, welfare reform, and education. CAP was designed to empower community groups by providing them with grants and by requiring that the poor be represented on local planning boards. Other programs initiated by the OEO included the Job Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA, a domestic version of the Peace Corps), college work-study jobs, and neighborhood health centers.

Health care was extended to Americans age sixty-five and older in 1965 when Medicare legislation was enacted. This legislation also included Medicaid, which provided health care coverage for individuals on welfare. Both programs were funded by the Social Securitypayroll tax.

Education

A major focus of Johnson’s Great Society program was improving education. A task force appointed by President Kennedy recommended increased federal support for nursery, elementary, and secondary schools in impoverished areas. In response, the OEO created Head Start, a community action preschool program in 1965.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 authorized more than one billion dollars in grants to impoverished school districts to pay for more teachers, textbooks, and new buildings. The goal was to equalize educational opportunities for children from low-income families, which it did on a limited basis, although it also provided newly allocated federal funds to middle-class communities.

Colleges and universities were also supported by the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the National Defense Education Act of 1965. The former provided grants to libraries and insured college student loans, and the latter financed increased enrollments in undergraduate and graduate schools. This legislation did little to fight poverty, but it provided unprecedented opportunities for the middle class and strengthened colleges and universities.

Housing

One of Johnson’s goals was to enable impoverished people to live in better housing. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which oversaw the Federal Housing Administration, Urban Renewal Administration, and Public Housing Administration. The act’s provisions included rent supplements and low-interest and no-down-payment mortgages designed to help lower-income families purchase housing. Three years later, Congress passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which provided funds for the construction of millions of new homes and apartments to replace substandard dwellings. Unlike the Model Cities Act of 1966, which funded city development projects but got bogged down in squabbles between federal and local agencies, the 1968 housing act was successful in providing improved housing to many low-and middle-income people.

Environment

Many of the Great Society’s environmental policies were guided through Congress by Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, who introduced water and air pollution control legislation. The Water Pollution Control Authority, created in 1965 by the Water Quality Act, established federal standards for water treatment facilities. The Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966 increased federal aid for sewage treatment plants and provided grants for pollution control programs for the nation’s rivers and lakes. After a number of delays caused by the automobile industry, the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Act of 1965 added federal controls for motor vehicle emissions to existing clear air legislation. The Air Quality Act of 1967 strengthened these federal standards and provided funding for fuel combustion research.

Impact

The success of the Great Society programs was limited because of the relatively limited funding the programs received. Though authorized to spend tens of billions of dollars on various programs, Congress appropriated only a fraction of this amount. This gap was caused by pressures to finance the United States’ growing involvement in the Vietnam War and intensified by Johnson’s reluctance to ask Congress for a tax increase to pay for the war effort. Johnson did seek a tax surcharge in 1967, but his bill died in committee. It became increasingly clear that the nation could not afford both guns and butter.

Although the Great Society programs failed to end poverty in the United States, they did alleviate many of the problems faced by the nation’s poor by taking a multifaceted approach. The federal government’s regulatory role increased markedly as it took responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s poor, elderly, consumers, and students and for the state of the environment and cities. The number of programs and the amount of aid transferred by the federal government to states, localities, and community organizations more than doubled.

In civil rights, federal intervention changed the face of southern society and politics by ending legal segregation and by ensuring that African Americans were allowed to vote. In addition, Johnson issued an executive order in 1965 requiring that federal contractors adopt affirmative action hiring guidelines. The urban riots of 1967 and 1968 drew attention to the economic and housing problems of city-dwelling African Americans, and these problems were addressed by a provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that outlawed housing discrimination. Through these policies, the legal status of African Americans was secured in a relatively short period of time.

Subsequent Events

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, many of the Great Society programs were reassessed. In 1994, the Republican Party captured control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in forty years. One of the principal components of the Contract with America, the platform upon which many House Republicans were elected, was the promise to reform the welfare system. In 1995, Congress passed the Welfare Reform Act, which transferred much of the responsibility for determining welfare eligibility and benefits to the states. States responded in various ways, some opting to reform as others attempted to disassemble many of the Great Society programs.

Additional Information

A number of biographies of Johnson address his vision of a great society, including Doris Kearns’s Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976) and Paul K. Conkin’s Big Daddy from the Pedernadales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (1986). His War on Poverty is described in James T. Patterson’s America’s Struggle Against Poverty, 1900-1980 (1981) and in John Morton Blum’s Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961-1974.