Welfare hasn't reduced poverty, says expert

An expert on welfare reform says the war on poverty has been a debacle and has achieved the exact opposite of what President Lyndon Johnson wanted.


Robert Rector, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation's DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, says self-sufficiency was LBJ's primary goal in launching the war on poverty.
"Lyndon Johnson did not want to increase the number of people dependent on government aid," Rector points out. "He said rather, 'I don't want to just reduce the symptom of poverty. I want to eliminate the cause of poverty.'

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