[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 141 (Monday, October 18, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2119-E2122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THE LEGACY OF PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE GREAT SOCIETY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. GENE GREEN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, October 18, 1999

  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, as we move even closer to the end of 
this century, I rise to pay tribute to President Lyndon B. Johnson. 
Earlier this year, I included in the Congressional Record, an article 
printed in the Houston Chronicle by Marianne Means which details why 
President Johnson will be considered as one of our nation's greatest 
Presidents.
  Today, I would like to include an article from the October 1999 issue 
of the Washington Monthly by Joseph A. Califano, Jr. At the end of this 
important article, Mr. Califano states: ``* * * it is time to 
recognize--as historians are beginning to do--the reality of the 
remarkable and enduring achievements of the Great Society programs. 
Without such programs as Head Start, higher education loans and 
scholarships, Medicare, Medicaid, clean air and water, civil rights, 
life would be nastier, more brutish, and shorter for millions of 
Americans.''
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks by including this 
important article in its entirety:

  What Was Really Great About the Great Society: The Truth Behind the 
                           Conservative Myths

                          (By Joseph Califano)

       If there is a prize for the political scam of the 20th 
     century, it should go to the conservatives from propagating 
     as conventional wisdom that the Great Society programs of the 
     1960's were a misguided and failed social experiment that 
     wasted taxpayers' money.
       Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, from 1963 
     when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of 
     his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of 
     Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 
     percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such 
     a brief period in this century. Since then, the poverty rate 
     has hovered at about the 13 percent level and sits at 13.3 
     percent today, still a disgraceful level in the context of 
     the greatest economic boom in our history. But if the Great 
     Society had not achieved that dramatic reduction in poverty, 
     and the nation had not maintained it, 24 million more 
     Americans would today be living below the poverty level.
       This reduction in poverty did not just happen. It was the 
     result of a focused, tenacious effort to revolutionize the 
     role of the federal government with a series of interventions 
     that enriched the lives of millions of Americans. In those 
     tumultuous Great Society years, the President submitted, and 
     Congress enacted, more than 100 major proposals in each of 
     the 89th and 90th Congresses. In that era of do-it-now 
     optimism, government was neither a bad man to be tarred and 
     feathered nor a bag man to collect campaign contributions, 
     but an instrument to help the most vulnerable in our society.
       What has the verdict been? Did the programs we put into 
     place in the 1960s vindicate our belief in the responsibility 
     and capacity of the national government to achieve such 
     ambitious goals--or do they stand as proof of the 
     government's inability to effect dramatic change that helps 
     our people?


                              A Fair Start

       The Great Society saw government as providing a hand up, 
     not a handout. The cornerstone was a thriving economy (which 
     the 1964 tax cut sparked); in such circumstances, most 
     Americans would be able to enjoy the material blessings of 
     society. Others would need the kind of help most of us got 
     from our parents--health care, education and training, and 
     housing, as well as a nondiscriminatory shot at employment--
     to share in our nation's wealth.
       Education and health were central to opening up the promise 
     of American life to all. With the 1965 Elementary and 
     Secondary Education Act, the Great Society for the first time 
     committed the federal government to helping local school 
     districts. Its higher education legislation, with 
     scholarships, grants, and work-study programs, opened college 
     to any American with the necessary brains and ambition, 
     however thin daddy's wallet or empty mommy's purse. Bilingual 
     education, which today serves one million individuals, was 
     designed to teach Hispanic

[[Page E2120]]

     youngsters subjects like math and history in their own 
     language for a couple of years while they learned English, so 
     they would not fall behind. Special education legislation has 
     helped millions of children with learning disabilities.
       Since 1965 the federal government has provided more than a 
     quarter of a trillion dollars in 86 million college loans to 
     29 million students, and more than $14 billion in work-study 
     awards to 6 million students. Today nearly 60 percent of 
     full-time undergraduate students receive federal financial 
     aid under Great Society programs and their progeny.
       These programs assure a steady supply of educated 
     individuals who provide the human resources for our economic 
     prosperity. When these programs were enacted, only 41 percent 
     of Americans had completed high school; only 8 percent held 
     college degrees. This past year, more than 81 percent had 
     finished high school and 24 percent had completed college. By 
     establishing the federal government's responsibility to 
     finance this educational surge--and the concept that access 
     to higher education should be determined by ability and 
     ambition, not dollars and cents--we have amassed the trained 
     talent to be the world's leading industrial, technological 
     communications and military power today.
       Head Start, which has served more than 16 million 
     preschoolers in just about every city and county in the 
     nation and today serves 800,000 children a year, is as 
     American as motherhood and apple pie. Like so many 
     successes, this preschool program has a thousand parents. 
     But how many people remember the battles over Head Start? 
     Conservatives opposed such early childhood education as an 
     attempt by government to interfere with parental control 
     of their children. In the '60s those were code words to 
     conjure up images of Soviet Russia wrenching children from 
     their homes to convert them to atheistic communism. But 
     Lyndon Johnson knew that the rich had kindergartens and 
     nursery schools; and he asked, why not the same benefits 
     for the poor?
       The impact of the Great Society's health programs has been 
     stunning. In 1963, most elderly Americans had no health 
     insurance. Few retirement plans provided any such coverage. 
     The poor had little access to medical treatment until they 
     were in critical condition. Only wealthier Americans could 
     get the finest care, and only by traveling to a few big 
     cities like Boston or New York.
       Is revolution too strong a word? Since 1965, 79 million 
     Americans have signed up for Medicare. In 1966, 19 million 
     were enrolled; in 1998, 39 million. Since 1966, Medicaid has 
     served more than 200 million needy Americans. In 1967, it 
     served 10 million poor citizens; in 1997, 39 million. The 
     1968 Heart, Cancer and Stroke legislation has provided funds 
     to create centers of medical excellence in just abut every 
     major city--from Seattle to Houston, Miami to Cleveland, New 
     Orleans to St. Louis. To staff these centers, the 1965 Health 
     Professions Educational Assistance Act provided resources to 
     double the number of doctors graduating from medical schools, 
     from 8,000 to 16,000. That Act also increased the pool of 
     specialists and researchers, nurses, and paramedics. 
     Community health centers, also part of the Great Society 
     health care agenda, today serve almost eight million 
     Americans annually. The Great Society's commitment to fund 
     basic medical research lifted the National Institutes of 
     Health to unprecedented financial heights, seeding a harvest 
     of medical miracles.
       Closely related to these health programs were efforts to 
     reduce malnutrition and hunger. Today, the Great Society's 
     food stamp program helps feed more than 20 million men, 
     women, and children in more than 8 million households. Since 
     it was launched in 1967, the school breakfast program has 
     provided a daily breakfast to nearly 100 million 
     schoolchildren.
       Taken together, these programs have played a pivotal role 
     in recasting America's demographic profile. In 1964, life 
     expectancy was 66.6 years for men and 73.1 years for women 
     (69.7 years overall). In a single generation, by 1997, life 
     expectancy jumped 10 percent: for men, to 73.6 years; for 
     women, to 79.2 years (76.5 years overall). The jump was 
     highest among the less advantaged, suggesting that better 
     nutrition and access to health care have played an even 
     larger role than medical miracles. Infant mortality stood at 
     26 deaths for each 1,000 live births when LBJ took office; 
     today it stands at only 7.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, a 
     reduction of almost 75 percent.
       These enormous investments in training medical and 
     scientific experts and funding the National Institutes of 
     Health have played a key part in establishing our nation as 
     the world's leader in basic research, pharmaceutical 
     invention, and the creation of surgical procedures and 
     medical machinery to diagnose our diseases, breathe for us, 
     clean our blood, and transplant our organs.
       Those of us who worked with Lyndon Johnson would hardly 
     characterize him as a patron of the arts. Yet think about 
     what cultural life in America would be like without the 
     National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, which were 
     designed to ``create conditions under which the arts can 
     flourish,'' and make fine theater and music available 
     throughout the nation, not just at Broadway playhouses and 
     the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Endowment for the 
     Arts has spawned art councils in all 50 states and more than 
     420 playhouses, 120 opera companies, 400 dance companies and 
     230 professional orchestras. Johnson also oversaw the 
     creation of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, whose 
     programs entertain three million people each year and are 
     televised to millions more, and the Hirshhorn Museum and 
     Sculpture Garden, which attracts more than 700,000 visitors 
     annually.
       Another creature of the Great Society is the Corporation 
     for Public Broadcasting, which today supports 350 public 
     television and 699 public radio stations. These stations have 
     given the nation countless hours of fine arts, superb in-
     depth news coverage, and educational programs such as Sesame 
     Street that teach as they entertain generations of children. 
     Now many conservatives say there is no need for public radio 
     and television, since there are so many cable channels and 
     radio stations. But as often as we surf with our TV remotes 
     and twist our radio dials, we are not likely to find the kind 
     of quality broadcasting that marks public television and 
     public radio stations.
       The Great Society's main contribution to the environment 
     was not just passage of laws, but the establishment of a 
     principle that to this day guides the environmental movement. 
     The old principle was simply to conserve resources that had 
     not been touched. Lyndon Johnson was the first president to 
     put forth a larger idea.
       ``The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are 
     being blighted by poisons and chemicals which are the by-
     products of technology and industry. The society that 
     receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating 
     whole, take responsibility for [their] control. To deal with 
     these new problems will require a new conservation. We must 
     not only protect the countryside and save it from 
     destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and 
     salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation 
     must be not just the classic conservation of protection and 
     development, but a creative conservation of restoration and 
     innovation.''
       Those new environmental commandments inspired a legion of 
     Great Society laws: the Clear Air, Water Quality and Clean 
     Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, the 1965 Solid Waste 
     Disposal Act, the 1965 Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control 
     Act, and the 1968 Aircraft Noise Abatement Act. They also 
     provided the rationale for later laws creating the 
     Environmental Protection Agency and the Superfund that exacts 
     financial payments from past polluters.
       Of the 35 national parks established during the Great 
     Society years, 32 are within easy driving distance of large 
     cities. The 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act today protects 
     155 river segments in 37 states. The 1968 National Trail 
     System Act has established more than 800 recreational scenic, 
     and historic trails covering 40,000 miles.


                              Equal Access

       Above all else, Lyndon Johnson saw the Great Society as an 
     instrument to create racial justice and eliminate poverty. 
     Much of the legislation already cited was aimed at those 
     objectives. But we directly targeted these areas with laser 
     intensity. When LBJ took office, this country had segregated 
     stores, theaters and public accommodations; separate toilets 
     and water fountains for blacks; and restaurants, hotels, and 
     housing restricted to whites only. Job discrimination was 
     rampant. With the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Great Society 
     tore down all the ``whites only'' signs. The 1968 Fair 
     Housing Act opened up housing to all Americans regardless of 
     race.
       But the measure of the Great Society, particularly in this 
     field, cannot be taken alone in statutes enacted. In one of 
     the most moving speeches of the century, Johnson's 1965 
     Howard University commencement address, ``To Fulfill These 
     Rights,'' he said:
       ``But freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who, 
     for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring 
     him to the starting line of a race and then say, `You are 
     free to compete with all the others,' and still justly 
     believe that you have been completely fair. This is the next 
     and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights.'' 
     Thus was born the concept of affirmative action, Johnson's 
     conviction that it is essential as a matter of social justice 
     to provide the tutoring, the extra help, even the preference 
     if necessary, to those who had suffered generations of 
     discrimination, in order to give them a fair chance to share 
     in the American dream. Perhaps even more controversial today 
     than when then set forth, affirmative action has provided 
     opportunity to millions of blacks and has been a critical 
     element in creating a substantial black middle class and an 
     affluent black society in a single generation.
       That speech provided another insight the nation ignored. In 
     cataloguing the long suffering of blacks, Johnson included 
     this passage: ``Perhaps most important--its influence 
     radiating to every part of life--is the breakdown of the 
     Negro family structure. It flows from centuries of oppression 
     and persecution of the Negro man. And when the family 
     collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When 
     it happens on a massive scale the community itself is 
     crippled. So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to 
     create conditions under which most parents will stay 
     together, all the rest--schools, and playgrounds, and public 
     assistance, and private concern--will never be enough to cut 
     completely the circle of despair and deprivation.''
       Conservatives charge the Great Society with responsibility 
     for the disastrous aspects of the welfare program for mothers 
     and children. But that program was enacted in the 1930s and 
     conservatives (and liberals) in Congress rejected Great 
     Society efforts to revamp it. LBJ called the welfare system 
     in

[[Page E2121]]

     America ``outmoded and in need of a major change'' and 
     pressed Congress to stop conditioning welfare benefits on the 
     man leaving the house and to create a work incentive program, 
     incentives for earning, day care for children, child and 
     maternal health, and family planning services. In the 
     generation it has taken the nation to heed that warning, 
     millions of children's lives have been savaged.
       In the entire treasury of Great Society measures, the jewel 
     Lyndon Johnson believed would have the greatest value was the 
     Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law opened the way for 
     black Americans to strengthen their voice at every level 
     of government. In 1964 there were 79 black elected 
     officials in the South and 300 in the entire nation. By 
     1998, there were some 9,000 elected black officials across 
     the nation, including 6,000 in the South. In 1965 there 
     were five black members of the House; today there are 39.
       Great Society contributions to racial equality were not 
     only civic and political. In 1960, black life expectancy was 
     63.6 years, not even long enough to benefit from the Social 
     Security taxes that black citizens paid during their working 
     lives. By 1997, black life expectancy was 71.2 years, thanks 
     almost entirely to Medicaid, community health centers, job 
     training, food stamps, and other Great Society programs. In 
     1960, the infant mortality rate for blacks was 44.3 for each 
     1,000 live births; in 1997, that rate had plummeted by two-
     thirds, to 14.7. In 1960, only 20 percent of blacks completed 
     high school and only 3 percent finished college; in 1997, 75 
     percent completed high school and more than 13 percent earned 
     college degrees.
       In waging the war on poverty, congressional opposition was 
     too strong to pass an income maintenance law. So LBJ took 
     advantage of the biggest automatic cash machine around: 
     Social Security. He proposed, and Congress enacted, whopping 
     increases in the minimum benefits that lifted some two 
     million Americans 65 and older above the poverty line. In 
     1996, thanks to those increased minimum benefits, Social 
     Security lifted 12 million senior citizens above the poverty 
     line.
       The combination of that Social Security increase, Medicare 
     and the coverage of nursing home care under Medicaid (which 
     today funds care for 68 percent of nursing home residents) 
     has had a defining impact on American families. Millions of 
     middle-aged Americans, freed from the burden of providing and 
     medical and nursing home care for their elderly parents, 
     suddenly were able to buy homes and (often with assistance 
     from Great Society higher education programs) send their 
     children to college.
       No Great Society undertaking has been subjected to more 
     withering conservative attacks than the Office of Economic 
     Opportunity. Yet the War on Poverty was founded on the most 
     conservative principle: Put the power in the local community, 
     not in Washington; give people at the grassroots the ability 
     to stand tall on their own two feet.
       Conservative claims that the OEO poverty programs were 
     nothing but a waste of money are preposterous--as 
     preposterous as Ronald Reagan's quip that ``LBJ declared war 
     on poverty and poverty won''. Eleven of the 12 programs that 
     OEO launched in the mid-60's are alive, well and funded at an 
     annual rate exceeding $10 billion; apparently legislators 
     believe they're still working. Head Start, Job Corps, 
     Community Health Centers, Foster Grandparents, Upward Bound 
     (now part of the Trio Program in the Department of 
     Education), Green Thumb (now Senior Community Service 
     Employment), Indian Opportunities (now in the Labor 
     Department) and Migrant Opportunities (now Seasonal Worker 
     Training and Migrant Education) were all designed to do what 
     they have been doing: empowering individuals to stand on 
     their own two feet.
       Community Action, VISTA Volunteers, and Legal Services 
     continue to put power in the hands of individuals down at the 
     grassroots level. The grassroots that these programs 
     fertilize just don't produce the manicured laws that 
     conservatives prefer. Only the Neighborhood Youth Corps 
     has been abandoned--in 1974, after enrolling more than 
     five million individuals. Despite the political rhetoric, 
     every president, Ronald Reagan included, has urged 
     Congress to fund these OEO programs or has approved 
     substantial appropriations for them.


                             A Better Deal

       The Great Society confronted two monumental shifts in 
     America: The urbanization of the population and the 
     nationalization of commercial power. For urban America, it 
     created the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It 
     drove through Congress the Urban Mass Transit Act, which has 
     given San Franciscans BART, Washingtonians Metro, Atlantans 
     MARTA, and cities across America thousands of buses and 
     modernized transit systems. The 1968 Housing Act has provided 
     homes for more than 7 million families. The Great Society 
     also created Ginnie Mae, which has added more than $1 billion 
     to the supply of affordable mortgage funds, and privatized 
     Fannie Mae, which has helped more than 30 million families 
     purchase homes.
       The '60s also saw a nationalization of commercial power 
     that had the potential to disadvantage the individual 
     American consumer. Superstores and super-corporations were 
     rapidly shoving aside the corner grocer, local banker, and 
     independent drug store. Automobiles were complex and 
     dangerous, manufactured by giant corporations with deep 
     pockets to protect themselves. Banks had the most 
     sophisticated accountants and lawyers to draft their loan 
     agreements. Sellers of everyday products--soaps, produce, 
     meats, appliances, clothing, cereals, and canned and frozen 
     foods--packaged their products with the help of the shrewdest 
     marketers and designers. The individual was outflanked at 
     every position.
       Sensing that mismatch, the Great Society produced a bevy of 
     laws to level the playing field for consumers: auto and 
     highway safety for the motorist; truth in packaging for the 
     consumer; truth in lending for the home-buyer, small 
     businessman and individual borrower; wholesome meat and 
     wholesome poultry laws to enhance food safety. It created the 
     Product Safety Commission to assure that toys and other 
     products would be safe for users and the Flammable Fabrics 
     Act to reduce the incendiary characteristics of clothing and 
     blankets. To keep kids out of the medicine bottle we proposed 
     the Child Safety Act.
       The revolution in transportation led to the creation of the 
     National Transportation Safety Board, renowned for its work 
     in improving air safety, and the Department of 
     Transportation.
       In numbers of Americans helped, the Great Society exceeds 
     in domestic impact even the New Deal of LBJ's idol, Franklin 
     Roosevelt. but far more profound and enduring are the 
     fundamental tenets of public responsibility it espoused, 
     which influence and shape the nation's public policy and 
     political dialogue to this day.
       Until the New Deal, the federal government had been 
     regarded as a regulatory power, protecting the public health 
     and safety with the Food and Drug Administration and 
     enforcing antitrust and commercial fraud laws to rein in 
     concentrations of economic power. With the creation of 
     the Securities and Exchange Commission and the other 
     alphabet agencies, FDR took the government into deeper 
     regulatory waters. He also put the feds into the business 
     of cash payments: welfare benefits, railroad retirement, 
     and Social Security.
       Johnson converted the federal government into a far more 
     energetic, proactive force for social justice--striking down 
     discriminatory practices and offering a hand up with 
     education, health care, and job training. These functions had 
     formerly been the preserve of private charities and the 
     states. Before the Johnson administration, for example, the 
     federal government was not training a single worker. He 
     vested the federal government with the responsibility to 
     soften the sharp elbows of capitalism and give it a beating, 
     human heart; to redistribute opportunity as well as wealth.
       For the public safety, Johnson took on the National Rifle 
     Association and drove through Congress the laws that closed 
     the loophole of mail order guns, prohibited sales to minors, 
     and ended the import of Saturday night specials. He tried 
     unsuccessfully to convince Congress to pass a law requiring 
     the licensing of every gun owner and the registration of 
     every gun.
       Spotting the ``for sale'' signs of political corruption 
     going up in the nation's capital, Johnson proposed public 
     financing of presidential campaigns, full disclosure of 
     contributions and expenses by all federal candidates, limits 
     on contributions, and eliminating lobbying loopholes. He 
     convinced Congress to provide for public financing of 
     Presidential campaigns through the income-tax checkoff. But 
     they ignored his 1967 warning: ``More and more, men and women 
     of limited means may refrain from running for public office. 
     Private wealth increasingly becomes an artificial and 
     unrealistic arbiter of qualifications, and the source of 
     public leadership is thus severely narrowed. The necessity of 
     acquiring substantial funds to finance campaigns diverts a 
     candidate's attention form his public obligations and 
     detracts from his energetic exposition of the issues.''


                           Fear Of The L-Word

       Lyndon Johnson didn't talk the talk of legacy. He walked 
     the walk. He lived the life. He didn't have much of a 
     profile, but he did have the courage of his convictions, and 
     the achievements of his Great Society were monumental.
       Why then do Democratic politicians who battle to preserve 
     Great Society programs ignore those achievements? For the 
     same reason Bill Clinton came to the LBJ library on Johnson's 
     birthday during the 1992 campaign and never spoke the name of 
     Lyndon Johnson or recognized Ladybird Johnson, who was 
     sitting on the stage from which he spoke.
       The answer lies in their fear of being called ``liberal'' 
     and in their opposition to the Vietnam War. In contemporary 
     America politicians are paralyzed by fear of the label that 
     comes with the heritage of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. 
     Democrats rest their hops of a return to Congressional power 
     on promises to preserve and expand Great Society programs 
     like Medicare and aid to education, but they tremble at the 
     thought of linking those programs to the liberal Lyndon. The 
     irony is that they seek to distance themselves from the 
     president who once said that the difference between liberals 
     and cannibals is that cannibals eat only their enemies.
       Democratic officeholders also assign Johnson the role of 
     stealth president because of the Vietnam War. Most 
     contemporary observers put the war down as a monumental 
     blunder. Only a handful--most of them Republicans--defend 
     Vietnam as part of a half-

[[Page E2122]]

     century bipartisan commitment to contain communism with 
     American blood and money. Seen in that context, Vietnam was a 
     tragic losing battle in a long, winning war--a war that began 
     with Truman's ordeal in Korea, the Marshall Plan, and the 
     1948 Berlin airlift, and ended with the collapse of communism 
     at the end of the Reagan Administration.
       Whatever anyone thinks about Vietnam and however much 
     politicians shrink from the liberal label, it is time to 
     recognize--as historians are beginning to do--the reality of 
     the remarkable and enduring achievements of the Great Society 
     programs. Without such programs as Head Start, higher-
     education loans and scholarships, Medicare, Medicaid, clear 
     air and water, and civil rights, life would be nastier, more 
     brutish, and shorter for millions of Americans.

     

                          ____________________