Aug. 20, 1964 - A smiling President Johnson signed today his $947.5 million antipoverty bill.
It was a perfect summer morning, and the President moved the ceremony to the broad steps overlooking the White House Rose Garden.
There, squinting into the bright sun, he promised that “a new day of opportunity is dawning” for the nation’s poor.
“The days of the dole in our country are numbered,” he said.
The program is designed to wage a nationwide attack on poverty and its causes. It has been estimated there are between 30 and 35 million Americans living in poverty or on its fringes.
Administration leaders have said the antipoverty program will attempt to “break the cycle of poverty” and make “taxpayers out of taxeaters.”
Federal funds would be used for a variety of programs, including job training and basic education for idle young men and women, part-time jobs for teenagers and college students, community antipoverty projects, loans to low-income farmers and businessmen, and a domestic peace corps.
It was the first major legislative program to come exclusively from Mr. Johnson’s Administration, and the President beamed happily on the almost exclusively Democratic gathering. Republican leaders in Congress had been invited but did not attend.
Although the focus of the signing ceremony was on poverty, there were political currents in the air as well.
Standing side by side, right behind the President, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Mayor Wagner of New York talked softly.
Later, they declined to say if they had discussed Mr. Kennedy’s expected Senatorial candidacy from New York.
Also right behind Mr. Johnson was Senator Hubert Humphrey, Democrat of Minnesota, who may be the President’s choice for Vice President.
Farther back in the crowd was the other half of what politicians are calling the “Minnesota twins” — Senator Eugene McCarthy, another Vice-Presidential possibility.
Each received a pen, a long handshake, and a few private words from the President.
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