8.9 The Great Society

John F. Kennedy's 'New Frontier' proposed aid to education, health care for the elderly and civil rights laws, but most stalled in Congress. After Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Johnson, a former Senate leader skilled at deal-making, used the national mood and, after his 1964 landslide over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, large Democratic majorities in Congress to pass an enormous program.

Postwar prosperity convinced many liberals that the economy could afford to end poverty, and Michael Harrington's The Other America (1962) showed that tens of millions of Americans still lived in it.

• War on Poverty: the Economic Opportunity Act (1964) created the Job Corps, VISTA (a domestic Peace Corps) and Community Action programs that encouraged 'maximum feasible participation' of the poor. Head Start (1965) provided preschool for low-income children.
• Medicare and Medicaid (1965): health insurance for Americans 65 and older (Medicare) and for many low-income people (Medicaid).
• Education: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) sent federal money to schools serving poor children; the Higher Education Act (1965) expanded college aid.
• Cities and culture: a new Department of Housing and Urban Development (1965), plus the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.
• Civil rights: the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) were also part of Johnson's agenda (8.10).
• Immigration and Nationality Act (1965): ended the national-origins quotas of 1924, replaced them with overall limits and preferences for family members of residents and for skilled workers. It led to a large rise in immigration from Asia and Latin America that reshaped the country (9.5).

Supporters saw the Court protecting individual rights and democracy. Critics, especially conservatives, accused it of 'judicial activism', of handcuffing police and of driving religion out of public life. These debates fed the conservative movement (8.14).

The official poverty rate fell from about 19 percent in 1964 to about 11 percent in 1973, and poverty among the elderly dropped sharply after Medicare and higher Social Security benefits. Critics on the left said the programs were underfunded, especially as the Vietnam War drained money, a conflict between 'guns and butter'. Critics on the right said the programs were wasteful, expanded federal power too far and created dependence. Urban riots in the late 1960s also cost the Great Society political support. Historians still debate how successful it was.