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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

War on Poverty

  • Remember the War On Poverty?, By Saul Friedman, July 18, 2010, The Huffington Post: “Long before there was a war on terrorism and the war on drugs, the nation declared war on poverty. Specifically, Lyndon Johnson in his first State of The Union, in 1964, declared amid great cheers from the Congress, an ‘unconditional war on poverty in America’ and he pledged not to rest ‘until that war is won.’ In his last State of the Union in 1988, Ronald Reagan, who had been no fan of Johnson’s agenda, declared to snickering lawmakers, that in the War on Poverty, ‘poverty won…'”