The Politics of Anti-Poverty.

JOHNSON, Andrew, 1808-1875; NIXON, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994

The administration led by U.S. President Richard M. Nixon is getting hard on the war against poverty. The focal point of current debate on poverty is the five-year-old Economic Opportunity Act, heralded by President Andrew Johnson as "a total war on poverty?' The law, and the Office of Economic Opportunity which administers "key portions of it, has proved a magnet for controversy from the very beginning. The agency's resources and powers never justified the total-war label, since it spends less than 10c of the federal anti-poverty dollar. Yet OEO has been under continued attack by politicians as too troublesome by militants as too tame, by liberals as too cheap, by conservatives as too expensive.