http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/16/war-poverty-colossal-flop/Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty.
This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise. Since its beginning, U
.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s
three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution. One third of the U.S. population received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013.
The federal government currently runs
more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These programs provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal
and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion. (These figures do not include Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment Insurance.)
Over 100 million people, about one third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013.
If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.But today the Census will almost certainly proclaim that around 14 percent of Americans are still poor. The present poverty rate is almost exactly the same as it was in 1967 a few years after the War on Poverty started. Census data actually shows that poverty has gotten worse over the last 40 years.
