The Politics of Poverty

The phone rang aboard the presidential jet as it swept west toward Texas. It was White House Staffer Larry O'Brien with the news that the House had just passed Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty bill. When Lyndon heard that, he turned to an aide and grinned broadly. "As far as I'm concerned," he said, "I have everything I want."

Part of that everything, obviously, was a political plus that would no doubt be impressed on the electorate this November. The impression, in fact, began one morning last week when the President, conducting the appropriate ceremonies in the Rose Garden, signed the $947.5 million program into law with 72 give-away pens. "The days of the dole in our country are numbered," he promised fervently. "We are not content to accept the endless growth of relief rolls or welfare rolls. We want to offer the forgotten fifth of our people opportunity and not doles."&*

What It Does. It would be unfortunate if anybody accepted Lyndon's prophecy at face value, however. For as devoutly as he and other Americans hoped that one day poverty would be banished, the cruel truth is that the three-year program as now constituted --or more precisely, jerry-built--stands little chance of eradicating any substantial portion of poverty. Democrats and Republicans alike hold that opinion, although naturally the Republicans are more vocal in their criticism. Says New Jersey's liberal Republican Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen: "This act is going to undermine the programs we already have operating. Overlap and duplication are almost inevitable."

The bill's key provisions (including first-year appropriations):

sbYOUTH PROGRAMS. Total cost: $412.5 million. Provides for three separate youth projects: 1) a Job Corps ($190 million) for 40,000 school dropouts, aged 16 to 21, who, with the O.K. of host-state Governors, will live in rural conservation camps or urban training centers, get a basic education, job skills and $50 a month: 2) work-training programs ($150 million) for 200,000 boys and girls aged 16 to 21, who will be paid for part-time work while attending school--or, if they have already dropped out of school, fulltime work with counseling for job placement afterward; 3) a work-study program ($72.5 million) for 140,000 indigent college students who will be paid for part-time work on or off campus while they continue their studies.

sbURBAN AND RURAL COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS. Total cost: $315 million. To get local communities cracking on their own poverty wars, federal funds up to 90% of cost will be pumped into public or private nonprofit agency programs when requested, but again only if state Governors do not object. Also included are adult education projects to teach people 18 and older to read and write.

sbRURAL AREAS. Cost: $50 million. To provide 15-year loans (maximum: $2,500) to low-income farm families, the money to be used to improve farms or farm operations.

sbEMPLOYMENT AND INVESTMENT INCENTIVES. Cost: $25 million. To offer 15-year loans (maximum: $25,000) to small businesses for hiring the chronically unemployed.

sbWORK EXPERIENCE PROGRAM. Cost: $150 million. To open job and training opportunities for heads of families now on relief, or those ineligible for relief.

sbADMINISTRATION AND COORDINATION. Cost: $10 million. To provide for a di rector, Peace Corps Boss Sargent Shriver, a deputy director and three assistant deputies, all appointed by the President; a Washington staff of 250; a professional field staff of 65; and 5,000 field vol unteers who, as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), will receive $50 a month.

The Overlap Gap. Of all the criticisms of the plan, the most relevant one is that it duplicates already-existing federal anti-poverty efforts. In each case, advocates reply, there is a slight but nonetheless important difference. The 1963 Vocational Education Act provides for residential training centers for poor youngsters, just as the Job Corps program does, but the VEA is restricted to school-attending students, while the Job Corps welcomes unskilled dropouts. Similarly, the National Defense Education Act aids needy college students, just as the new work-study program does. Big difference: NDEA makes tuition loans to students with some financial resources, while the work-study plan helps create part-time jobs for students with no resources whatsoever.

Delicate Balance. Apart from these and other equally reasonable point-by-point complaints, there was plenty of bipartisan uneasiness about what might happen once the massive program gets rolling. One indication was that the Democrat-led House Committee on Education and Labor plans not only to put a liaison man in the program's Office of Economic Opportunity, but to set up a watchdog subcommittee as well. In deed, even Committee Chairman Adam Clayton Powell, Harlem's Democratic Congressman, has reservations. "This can become one of the greatest pieces of legislation in the history of the U.S.," says Powell, "or it can be a total flop."

That delicate balance seems to hinge on how well Poverty Director Sarge Shriver does his job. Shriver has his work plainly cut out for him. As it stands, the program involves literally nearly every important agency in the U.S. Government, including the Departments of Defense, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Interior, and Health, Education and Welfare. "I feel sorry for Sargent Shriver," says Illinois' Democratic Congressman Roman C. Pucinski, who helped lead the fight for the bill in the House. "This will be successful only if it's carefully policed all along the way." Otherwise, added Pucinski in an admirably polite understatement, "this will become just another bureaucratic problem." But not until after November.

* But the doles keep growing. New York City's Welfare Commission reported last week that 483,573 New Yorkers were on relief in June--a 12.4% increase over June 1963.

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