The War on the War on Poverty

When Lyndon Johnson launched his War On Poverty in 1964, he gave the Office of Economic Opportunity command of ten campaigns* to rescue the nation from want. Almost from the start, however, the antipoverty warriors have been fighting a losing battle on Capitol Hill. By now, a large segment of the Congress seems determined to divest the OEO of its generalship.

Whatever praise OEO receives, its defeats--admittedly not infrequent--reap salvos of abuse. Stung by growing senatorial criticism, the agency last week issued an upbeat report claiming that nearly 3,000,000 Americans--1,000,000 of them nonwhite--climbed out of poverty in 1967. In the War on Poverty's first three years, said the report, "1,700,000 whites and more than 700,000 nonwhites a year crossed the threshold compared with an average of 840,000 whites and 80,000 nonwhites each year in 1959-64." The statistics, while impressive, may prove porous armor for OEO against its opponents once Congress reconvenes.

Senate foes want to transfer the agency's most lauded program, Head Start, to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. HEW, which opposes such precipitous transfers, may also get VISTA, the Community Action Program's Upward Bound, and neighborhood health centers. Legal services may go to the Justice Department, which does not want them. The Senate also may give the Job Corps to the Labor Department.

Pinched Budget. Head Start administrators see their problem in the fact that under HEW the individual states would control the program and possibly curtail its scope. Traditional support for state control is one reason for the longstanding Republican opposition to OEO. When Head Start proved to be not only a resounding success but also a catalyst for integration, Southern Democrats joined the opposition. Now OEO fears that segregationists would deliberately downgrade the program in the South.

The House of Representatives may thwart the Senate plan. Kentucky Congressman Carl Perkins says that OEO's future will be determined "by its good works between now and next year." Fearing the worst, OEO personnel are leaving the agency at record rates. Sargent Shriver's successor, Bertrand M. Harding, has adopted a conciliatory tone toward Congress but has thus far failed to placate his foes. Next year's budget is even more pinched than the outlays that Shriver fought to increase. Yet even OEO's future is not the key issue The agency's original mandate, after all, was to create programs that could some day be turned over to old-line Government bureaus. The underlying problem actually is not who runs the poverty programs but how effectively they are run.

*The Job Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Work-Study Program, Adult Basic Education, Rural Loan Program, Migrant Worker Assistance, Employment and Investment Incentives, Work Experience Program, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and the Community Action Program, which set up Head Start, Upward Bound, Legal Services and Health Service Centers.

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