The Other War

Since Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty in 1964, the program has stirred a steady drumfire of criticism that amounts to a war within a war. Last week some of the stoutest supporters of the antipoverty campaign engaged in a corrosive crossfire that could only further damage the Administration's prospects of getting its preshrunk, $2.06 billion request for the program through a critical Congress.

New York's Senator Robert F. Kennedy opened the exchange in Manhattan with a withering attack on welfare as a system that "broke down 30 years ago" and is no longer of any real use in the fight to erase poverty. "We have created a welfare system which aids only a fourth of those who are poor, which forces men to leave their families so that public assistance can be obtained, which has created a dependence on their fellow citizens that is degrading and distasteful to giver and receiver alike," said Bobby. "We have created a system of handouts, a second-rate set of social services which damages and demeans its recipients and destroys any semblance of human dignity that they have managed to retain through their adversity." Unless the U.S. achieves "a virtual revolution in the organization of our social services," he warned, "the result could be the ripping asunder of the already thin fabric of American life."

Intemperate Reaction. In voicing such criticism, and in repeating it during a two-day hearing held in Manhattan by Pennsylvania Democrat Joseph Clark's Senate poverty subcommittee, Kennedy was only echoing objections that have been raised frequently in recent years. Even so, as New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits, another member of Clark's subcommittee, pointed out, such scattershot attacks are bound to hearten those who want to gut the whole antipoverty program.

Thus, when New York City Welfare Commissioner Mitchell I. Ginsberg emphatically endorsed Kennedy's position by telling the subcommittee that the present welfare system should be "thrown out," Javits retorted angrily: "You'd better not be in too much of a hurry to talk that way, or you may get it thrown out right now. There are many in Congress who want just that." New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller seconded Javits. "It's easy to criticize," he said of Bobby. "But Congress sets the standards. Why doesn't he suggest some new legislation?" In reply, Bobby loftily declared that he "regretted the Governor's intemperate reaction."

Disease v. Cure. It was by no means the only strong reaction. In Washington, Lyndon Johnson took advantage of an address before 400 officials of women's organizations to answer the critics of his domestic programs--not only Bobby, but also Martin Luther King, as well as conservatives who want to reduce spending. "To those who believe that we are backing off, I say, no, we are staying for the long pull," said the President. As proof, he noted that the amount of federal funds helping the poor through all social programs now totals $22 billion, nearly 21 times the 1960 sum.

To those who complain that this is too much money, continued Johnson, "I would like to suggest that we cannot logically oppose the effects of poverty and the efforts to relieve them. We can not abhor the disease and then fight the cure." He also went out of his way to compliment the "able and inspiring" Sargent Shriver, the antipoverty czar. Besides having to endure indirect criticism from Brother-in-Law Bobby, Shriver has had his budget requests cut sharply, and faces a Republican campaign to disband his Office of Economic Opportunity entirely.

Not Bad. At week's end Joe Clark winged off to the West Coast with his peripatetic subcommittee for hearings in San Francisco and Los Angeles--bringing to nine the number of areas visited. To the Senators, who began their probe in Mississippi last month and reported "widespread hunger in the Delta counties that can only be described as shocking," California's ghettoes were almost pleasant by comparison.

Despite modest successes in a number of areas, the war on poverty has created such a stir that it faces tough going on

Capitol Hill. "The essential problem of the poverty program isn't that it's weak, it's that it creates antagonisms," said Kennedy--and such antagonisms are inevitable if the poor are to have a role in shaping and directing the programs created for their benefit. "What came out of the hearings this morning," said Bobby in San Francisco, "was a desire for hope and dignity. You don't achieve this by coming in and telling the poor what is good for them. You must let them run the program, even if they run it badly at first." The view that the poor must actively participate in poverty programs, though widely shared by sociologists, will make it no easier for Lyndon Johnson to wring funds out of Congress.

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