The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. Wikipedia.
Johnson worked with Congress to pass more than 200 pieces of legislation that attempted to address the more than 37 million people living in poverty at the time. Source; CNN Politics.
The "official" poverty rate was 15 percent in 2012.
Everything you need to know about the War on Poverty at the Washington Post that says, in 2012, food stamps (since renamed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) alone kept 4 million people out of poverty. The national debt in 1964 was $311,712,899,257.30. Today we have a whopping $17.235 TRILLION dollar debt.
Read Senator Marco Rubio's brilliant speech on the 50th anniversary on the War on Poverty.
1 comment:
rubio's speech is excellent. I hope everyone reads it.
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