1 CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION AND ...

esponsibility to open up opportunities for the less-
fortunate. As a Congressional aide, New Deal administrator,
and Congressman during the 1930s, Johnson became deeply
enamored of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his "New
Deal." Johnson believed that the New Deal showed that
government policies could make life better for the poor and
downtrodden. 65
In other words, the emergence of a War on Poverty
reflected modern liberalism's belief in the benefits of a
strong, activist federal government. 66 However, the Johnson
administration rejected redistributing income to the less-
fortunate (commonly called "welfare") or having the
government employ the poor. Instead, the War on Poverty
would provide the poor with greater opportunity to improve
their own economic condition. Economic development,
education, and other government services would give the poor
the chance to help themselves. Antipoverty policy sought to
change the poor, not the American economy. (The economy
itself would be managed to insure the long-term growth
necessary to pay for antipoverty and other new programs
without having to raise taxes or redistribute income.) 67
65 Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and
His Times, 1908-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1991), 77-80, 107.
82.
66 Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism, 1,
67 Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 30-34;
Bernstein,
31