Harris’s ‘Opportunity Society’ is in the shadow of LBJ’s War on Poverty

Vice President Kamala Harris has touted an economic vision for America called the “Opportunity Society.” The agenda harkens back to the days when presidents distinguished policies with slogans like the “New Deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the “New Frontier” of John F. Kennedy.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty”; as such, it is appropriate to consider how the Harris plan for economic reform compares with that of an earlier Democratic administration.

The Harris economic agenda targets the middle class almost exclusively. Central to the vision are federal subsidies, like $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, tax credits ranging from $3,600 to $6,000 per child for families, expanded subsidies for Obamacare health insurance policies and a cap on insulin costs and out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs.

It is clear that Harris wants to position herself as the champion of a striving middle class. Nonetheless, critics can point to the plan’s reliance on Congress to pass major legislation when that institution struggles to take attendance these days. Most curious is her lack of ideas for how to better manage the economic programs already administered by the executive branch.

Most dispiriting is that the Harris agenda gives short shrift to what Sen. Bernie Sanders called the “neglected working poor,” and in particular Black men. Harris, in a recent interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, was asked how she plans to win over Black men estranged from the party. She answered, “I’m working to earn the vote — not assuming I’m going to have it because I am Black.”

Her answer failed to show awareness of the dilemmas of young men. For example, in this post-affirmative action era, Harris could have spoken out to assure the many Black students taking it on the chin that things will be alright. While enrollments for Black women have held firm, Black men without athletic skills are an endangered species in higher education — declining by nearly 40 percent between 2011 and 2020, and in free fall after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

Harris also missed the chance to encourage young men to consider the option of the skilled trades under the Biden-Harris industrial policy. The administration has yet to demonstrate how the vast federal investments of $454 billion for infrastructure and $19 billion for electric vehicle retooling will benefit working-class Black men. Surely, as a former attorney general, she must be aware of the decades of discrimination and exclusion faced by Black skilled workers in the construction trades?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example, documented workplace bias in the construction industry in a 2023 report. For years, immigrants both legal and illegal have been a source of pliable labor for the industry. The racial demographic in the construction industry today is 60 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Black American.

Harris could take a page from LBJ’s campaign strategy and tell voters about her vision for managing the machinery of the state. Johnson ran in 1964 by promoting a transformational package of executive office programs and legislation known as the “Great Society.” It was one of the largest social reform initiatives in modern history, and the economic center piece was the “War on Poverty.”

Under the War on Poverty, LBJ sought to use the presidency to abolish economic inequality. In March 1964, in a special message to Congress, he introduced the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Economic Opportunity Act. The goal was to help the working poor break the poverty cycle through a series of federally sponsored interventions.

LBJ came to understand the desperation of poverty when growing up in hardscrabble southwest Texas. He promoted the reforms during the campaign, saying, “this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside.”

Workforce development was a critical component of the plan. Under the Job Corps, about 100,000 disadvantaged men received trade skills training and worked on federal conservation projects. The program underwrote state and local government efforts to improve trade skills for 200,000 men and women. And it funded a national work-study program that enabled 140,000 poor Americans to go to college without taking on debt.

Under the Community Action Programs, Johnson encouraged localities to experiment with solutions to the poverty in their midst. Perhaps the most enduring economic reforms were the Food Stamps program to improve nutrition among the poor and Head Start, created to ensure that poor children had an opportunity for early education. It has served over 32 million vulnerable children since then.

In 1965, as an extension of the War on Poverty, Johnson signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medicare covered the costs of hospitals and doctors for the elderly; Medicaid covered healthcare costs for the poor. Over time, the combination of anti-poverty programs established a critical safety net for Americans.

Returning to Harris’s “Opportunity Society,” the focus on the middle class tends to mirror the Democratic Party’s shift to the center in the 1990s. Harris, unlike LBJ, came from a background of comfort and can appear detached from the downtrodden. As I have suggested, her campaign may want to revisit the ideas for a “Black Men’s Agenda” introduced in Stacey Abrams’s 2022 campaign for governor of Georgia.

A potential Harris “Black Men’s Agenda” should include policies on voting rights, criminal justice reform, health insurance access, debt reduction and workforce development in support of the infrastructure investments. And particular focus can be given to the issues of immigration and youth development.

First, Harris can show a degree of independence from congressional Democrats by demanding amendments to the oft-touted bipartisan Senate bill on border security to include guidelines to safeguard local resident access to community resources and to prioritize American workers in competing occupations.

Second, Harris should promote initiatives for the uplift of young men estranged from the economic system — and often from society itself. She should revisit former President Barack Obama’s initiative, the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, which promoted a support system for boys.

But most of all, if Harris truly wants to champion an opportunity society, the campaign should resurface the spirit of LBJ’s War on Poverty to meet the challenges of today.

Roger House is professor emeritus of American Studies at Emerson College and the author of “Blue Smoke: The Recorded Journey of Big Bill Broonzy” and “South End Shout: Boston’s Forgotten Music Scene in the Jazz Age.” His forthcoming book is “Five Hundred Years of Black Self-Governance.”