DOMESTIC POLICIES UNDER KENNEDY AND JOHNSON

Early in his administration John Kennedy stated that America was on the brink of entering into a New Frontier. The press from this point on dubbed his domestic policies “New Frontier” policies. Kennedy had plans to stimulate the economy and to seriously attack poverty in America (The Other America by Michael Harrington was published in 1962; this book outlined the plight of America’s poor and had a great effect on Kennedy and his circle). Kennedy supported several important domestic programs, including a Medicare program (later approved during the administration of Lyndon Johnson) and substantial federal aid to education and to urban renewal.

Very little of Kennedy’s domestic agenda was adopted by Congress. His plans to cut taxes and to increase spending on education never even got out of congressional committee. One of Kennedy’s domestic successes was to convince Congress to raise the minimum wage from $1.00 per hour to $1.25. Kennedy also established a Peace Corps program, in which young men and women volunteered to help residents in developing countries around the world.

One program that was considered a top priority by both Kennedy and Congress was the space program. Kennedy was barely in office when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space. In early May America put its first man in space (Alan Shepard), and in February 1962 John Glenn (later a United States Senator) became the first American astronaut to orbit the earth. During this era Kennedy also made the bold promise that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

The New Frontier programs ended permanently when John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was in Texas to heal wounds in the local Democratic party and to rally support for the 1964 presidential election. Kennedy was riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas when he was killed. An ex-marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with Kennedy’s death. Oswald never went to trial because he was shot and killed by a Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, two days later. The Warren Commission was formed to investigate the assassination; the report of this committee firmly supported those who said that Oswald acted alone. To this day there are those who maintain that a conspiracy was responsible for Kennedy’s death.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn into office shortly after Kennedy’s assassination. In the year after Kennedy’s death, Johnson was able to get much of Kennedy’s domestic policy plans through Congress. Johnson had been the Senate majority leader before becoming vice president, and in early 1964 was easily able to maneuver the previously rejected Kennedy tax cut through Congress.

Johnson ran for reelection against Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater was a conservative from Arizona who was too far to the right for mainstream America to accept. He spoke of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam and famously stated that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Lyndon Johnson won nearly 62 percent of the popular vote and was able to institute his own economic plans in 1965; in a speech early in that year, Johnson stated that his goal was to create a Great Society in America.

In speech after speech Johnson stated that it would be possible to truly end poverty in America. The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs was created as a Cabinet-level department. In 1964 Johnson had begun the VISTA program, which organized volunteers who worked in the poorest communities of the United States. In 1965, Congress passed Johnson’s Housing and Urban Development Act, which organized the building of nearly 250,000 new housing units in America’s cities and authorized over $3 billion for further urban development. Johnson’s major initiatives in education authorized grants to help schools in the poorest sections of America and established Head Start, a program to help disadvantaged preschool students. In 1965 Johnson established a Medicare system, which provided hospital insurance and medical coverage for America's senior citizens, and Medicaid, which assisted Americans of any age who could not afford health insurance.

The Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson positively impacted the lives of thousands of Americans, but frustration set in when it appeared that large amounts of poverty remained in America. In addition, the cost of Great Society programs put a strain on American taxpayers (some of whom resented the fact that their taxes were going to help poor people). However, it should be noted that the number of those living in poverty was cut by at least 40 percent by Great Society programs. Many of these programs ended up being reduced or eliminated because of the expenses of America’s war in Vietnam.