The Great Society

The Great Society was the domestic program of President Lyndon Johnson, enacted between 1964 and 1968. It included Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the legislation that launched the War on Poverty.

President Johnson laid out the Great Society in a commencement address at the University of Michigan in May 1964. His vision was to use the federal government to end poverty and racial injustice. The legislative wave that followed was the largest since the New Deal. The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. The Economic Opportunity Act, which created Head Start, Job Corps, and Community Action Programs, followed the same year. The Voting Rights Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed in 1965. Medicare and Medicaid were created the same year. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 reshaped American immigration policy. The Higher Education Act expanded federal student aid. The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities were established. The Public Broadcasting Act created PBS and NPR. The Great Society expanded the federal role in healthcare, education, civil rights, and antipoverty policy in ways that have lasted. Medicare and Medicaid alone now pay for roughly a third of American healthcare spending. The poverty rate fell from 22 percent in 1959 to roughly 12 percent by 1969. Critics argue that some Great Society programs created dependency and produced unintended social consequences, particularly in welfare policy as it was structured at the time. Defenders point to the durable expansion of access to healthcare, education, and the vote. The Vietnam War, escalating during the same years, consumed federal resources and political attention. Johnson chose not to seek reelection in 1968. The Great Society did not fulfill all of its goals. It did fundamentally enlarge the role of the federal government in American life.