Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality

by Lily Geismer

However, the War on Poverty was contested from the outset: Congress approved less than $1 billion for the program in 1964, as compared with, for example, the $5.1 billion granted to NASA for the space race that same year or the $2 billion per month that was being spent on the Vietnam War by 1966.32 The lack of funding made Gary Hart’s claim that the War on Poverty was to blame for the federal deficit especially unfair.

One of the first things Bruce Reed did when setting up his new office at the White House Domestic Policy Council was to tape the words “end welfare as we know it” to the wall.

The fate of ShoreBank provides one of countless examples of the tragedies created by the conviction of members of the Clinton administration that financial deregulation and the tools of the New Economy provided a path to doing good. The institution’s demise also reveals the limits of relying on nonprofits for the solutions to larger problems of economic underdevelopment and to provide a social safety net. Even an organization as innovative and well connected as ShoreBank, with visionary and committed leaders like Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton, proved unable to eradicate the root causes of poverty or comprehensively combat problems of capital disinvestment and structural inequality.