BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope…. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”

President Lyndon Johnson, State of the Union, January, 1964

“Today, the poverty rate is stuck at 15 percent—the highest in a generation. And the trends are not encouraging. Federal programs are not only failing to address the problem, they are also in some significant respects making it worse.”

The War on Poverty: 50 years Later, House Budget Committee, March, 2014

It is both hyperbole and hypocrisy to declare Johnson’s War on Poverty a great success or a dismal failure. It is both and it is neither.

The War on Poverty has taught us a good deal, however, and should instruct us in how to attack poverty and make social welfare responsive to those who need. The time for transformative change is long, long overdue.

The War on Poverty did teach us that poverty is far more complex and much more deeply ingrained in the fiber of American society than Johnson assumed at the time. It certainly convinced us that just throwing money at the problem, even the trillions spent in the last 50 years, is not a solution.

This war also taught us that poverty and opportunity are an elusive combination that the government should not promise because the government cannot deliver it with any degree of certainty. When the government instills false hope, it delivers only despair.

We also know that the economic engine of capitalism is a better solution. Economic strength creates both security and opportunity for so many more than government can reach. Even international advocate for the little people, U2’s Bono agrees. He said in a recent speech that government assistance is “just a stopgap. Commerce and entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid.”

But neither can we depend entirely on capitalism’s economic engine. Government has a difficult and demanding role to play.

There is a wealth of information and data on welfare in America. Here is a sliver of what else we know in eight major areas of concern.

• In 1965, the poverty rate was 17.3 percent. In 2012 it was 15 percent, although, according to Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, a study done by University of Notre Dame and University of Chicago researchers found that with non-cash benefits the government now provides, the 2010 poverty rate was closer to 5 percent. In 1990-2007, the entire increase in official poverty was among Hispanics.
• Many of Johnson’s Great Society programs, including the venerated Head Start, have been disappointing. While Head Start, for example, produced gains in 3-4 year-olds, again according to Samuelson, these advances mostly disappeared by the third grade. Others, such as the community action programs to which columnist John Feehery called attention last month, were disasters.
• Charitable giving does much to aid the poor but according to New York Times columnist David Brooks: “the entire $40 billion that Americans donate to human service organizations annually, it would be enough money to give each person who receives federal food assistance only $847 per year.
• Federal spending on just the “means-tested” programs increased from $55 billion in 1972 to $588 billion in 2012. That does not include such programs as Social Security and Medicare.
• Poverty still persists, obviously enough, among those who are unemployed and under-employed. According to the Budget Committee, “those who worked only part time had a poverty rate similar to the national average—14.9 percent….finally, 23.6 percent of adults above the age of 16 who did not work at all were below the poverty line.”
• Another prime consideration, obviously enough, is education. From the Budget Committee:  “According to the Pew Economic Mobility Project, 47 percent of those born in the bottom quintile will remain there if they are unable to complete college. Contrast that with their peers who do manage to complete college—only 10 percent will remain in the bottom quintile (Yet Martha Bailey and Susan Dynarski find that gains in college completion have overwhelmingly favored those from high-income families. Over a 20-year period, completion rates for the top quartile increased 18 percentage points while rates increased only 4 percent for those in the lowest quartile”).
• From the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Only 24 percent of fourth-graders eligible for free lunch are at least proficient in match, in contrast, 59 percent of those who are not eligible reach the same standards.

Economic vitality, access to the workforce, educational opportunity, human compassion and charity, and Federal assistance are all essential ingredients to eradicating poverty. But there is one other.

The Budget Committee report highlighted it: “Perhaps the single most important determinant of poverty is family structure. For all families, the poverty rate was 13.1 percent. But 34.2 percent of families headed by a single parent were considered below poverty…”

Michael Gerson, writing in the Post: “The tie between single-parent households and poverty is an economic, not a moral assertion. Poor single parents naturally find it harder to hold full-time jobs and invest in the welfare of their children.” From Samuelson: “Worse, the breakdown of marriage and spread of single-parent households suggest that poverty may grow. From 1963 to 2012, the share of families with children under 18 headed by a single parent tripled to 32 percent. It’s 26 percent among whites, 34 percent among Hispanics and 59 percent among African Americans.” Children of single-parent households face a harder future. They’re more likely to drop out of school, get pregnant before age 20 or be unemployed. Poverty,” he wrote, “ becomes self-perpetuating.”

The Budget Committee report didn’t get much attention. Chairman Ryan did some interviews and got his message across, something about “reimagining”] welfare in the new budget proposal he will submit. But the media was nonchalant. Ho-hum. Republicans?  Poverty? Solutions? Can’t use them in the same sentence. Can’t fathom. Not news.

Maria Shriver, on the other hand, addressing the condition of single moms in what she humbly called The Shriver Report, got the full Monte, even a trip to the White House to share her findings with President Barack Obama.

More on that in the next installment.

So here we are, fifty years later, poverty in America and throughout the globe for that matter, remains one of the most perplexing challenges we face.

Regrettably, the Budget Committee report won’t be the catalyst for action anytime soon. We are headed into yet another meaningless Federal budget debate in Congress, followed by yet another off-year election with its righteous windstorms, character assassinations, and the usual panoply of fraudulent simple solutions to complex problems. No one brought that reality home better than the Democrats senior member of the Budget Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland who responded to the report with a partisan campaign message rather than a public policy message: “The GOP has never really given up on Mitt Romney’s attack on the 47 percent.” Short, not so sweet and for any hope of bipartisan consideration of welfare reform, terminal.

Poverty in America today is a modern political and social tragedy. Millions of American families marooned in poverty because we can only come to terms with the welfare condition once every other generation despite what we know. It is also a tragedy for the middle class Americans who must pay for the waste and duplication and progressive socialism that holds back those in the most need.

We know we must create more and better educational opportunity. We know we need wider and better access to jobs and the training and skills needed to fill those jobs. We know we must clean up the wasteful mess of 92 assistance programs that now cost us almost $800 billion a year, with critical emphasis on entitlement reform. We know we must encourage charitable giving. Most importantly, we know we must do much, much more to stimulate economic growth, like finish tax reform, expand energy production and improve the American infrastructure, for example.

And we know, we must do what we can as a society, as religious people who share  common values and beliefs, to save the American family.

The election will be over soon. Maybe then….

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.