Great Society Dbq

Just after being elected, President Lyndon B. Johnson revealed his remarkable plans for the Great Society. His plan would require the use of wisdom to be accomplished, but the end result would be greater quality of life for each and every American. Because Great Society promised, and in many ways truly accomplished, a better and more equal society, it had a massive positive effect on American Society.

Johnson set his sights on Congress in January of 1965 to begin conquering his goals for Great Society: aid to education, attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, development of depressed regions, a wide scale fight against poverty, removal of obstacles to vote, and the control/prevention of crime/delinquency.

In the modern United States, Johnson saw no reason to justify why many Americans did not have access to a full education, adequate health care, decent housing, and the opportunity to develop one’s own talents. To reprimand the wrongs he saw in society, Johnson utilized a variety of task forces composed of experts to create cutting-edge legislation that included the Equal Opportunity Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act, Head Start, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, the Educational Opportunity Act, the Job Corps, Model Cities, Aid to Appalachia, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Air Pollution and Water Pollution Control Acts, and the Urban Transportation Act. To Johnson, Great Society was basically an extension of the Bill of Rights as well as the continuation of social reform policies enacted by FDR under the New Deal in the 1930s.

In 1960, nearly twenty five percent of all Americans lived below the poverty line, in spite of the opulence during the time. Entire regions of the country had not received any economic growth formed in the postwar years. Even worse was that technological advances began diminishing many high-paying unskilled labor jobs, leaving the unskilled and uneducated behind. The Opportunity Act 1964 tried to provide citizens with the tools to get themselves out of poverty.
Job Corps, vocational training system, and Head Start, preschools used to prepare low income children for a more successful venture in public school, were all important programs established by the Opportunity Act to help people.Community Action Programs and extended loans to small businessmen/farmers were also funded by the Act. One of the most ambitious legislations was the enactment of Medicare to provide healthcare for senior citizens. Forty four percent of all senior citizen in 1964 did not have healthcare coverage, which naturally lead them to acquiring massive medical debt and becoming impoverished by it. For Americans aged 65 and older, more than one in three were living below the poverty line. Unbelievably, that was more than double the rate for Americans aged below 65. Medicare was a momentous change in American healthcare. Today, nearly all seniors have healthcare and the rate for senior poverty for senior impoverishment has fallen to one in ten, less than that of the national rate for poverty.
A full and proper education was an elusive goal for many Americans in the 1960s as more than a quarter of the population out of fifty four million people had not earned a high school diploma.

In fact, many needed an additional five plus years of school to even be close to obtaining a diploma. Fortunately, in 1965, Congress passed the revolutionary Elementary and Secondary Education Act which approved federal funding for education below the college level for the first time in American history. The Higher Education Act was also passed by Congress. This Act created the the National Teachers Corps and eased the burden of higher education cost for many eager students. Along with a lack of formal education, most Americans struggled to find appropriate housing. Since World War ll, cities had almost no affordable and decent housing to offer. To make the situation worse, suburbanization of America along with change in the economy meant that many businesses began to leave the cities. Urban rioting throughout Johnson’s presidency only accelerated the speed at which businesses left. To help ease the People’s suffering, President Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 that established the Department of Housing and Urban Development and expanded funding for public housing. He also provided financial aid to cities that rebuilt damaged and deteriorated

parts.
The Great Society programs enacted by President Johnson affected over a hundred and ninety five million Americans. Still, critics find a way to devalue the impact that Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and Great Society initiative had. Critics believe that it added layers of bureaucracy and wasted money on “handouts” to people who did not deserve them, or just simply wasted money as programs never gave any true results. There’s even people who believe the federal government should have no involvement in such tasks anyway. Unfortunately, many of Johnson initiatives never came full circle due to the large strain on the economy from massive government spending on domestic problems and the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, the impact left on American society by President Johnson’s Great Society is nearly recognized by all as political today still dispute how to handle issues with poverty, healthcare, and education.