The Great Society

The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States first announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio University, then at University of Michigan, and subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. 

Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide in the 1964 election that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.

Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Since Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs of Medicare and Medicaid were amended to Social Security in 1965, healthcare costs have exploded as a percentage of GDP.

How much of the economy? Four times as much. Not only does America spend more on healthcare than any other developed country, it’s also near the top in public spending.

While much of this increase can be attributed to an increasingly elderly population (62 million will be on Medicare by 2020), those who drafted the Medicare and Medicaid legislation and passed them also predicted that the programs would be able to contain costs. 

Obamacare is slated to add $6.2 trillion in debt according to the Government Accountability Office and as confirmed by Medicare’s chief actuary. Medicare itself was billed as sustainable on a 1 percent payroll tax, and its costs blew by seven times original cost estimates a long time ago.

And as Guy Benson of Townhall noted, “the federal government’s own bookkeepers have once again determined that President Obama’s so-called ‘Affordable’ Care Act is driving up overall health spending” — from 4.5% growth to 6.1% growth slated for next year.

Poverty hasn’t been reduced under the so-called “War on Poverty” — despite spending $15 trillion “fighting” it.