2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Salon: "America has never recovered from Ronald Reagan. That’s why Bernie Sanders is so important." [View all]jwirr
(39,215 posts)bag. He did add people to Social Security and he helped the Veterans.
But when it came to the small farmers who were being pushed out by the "bigger, better and more" movement he did nothing. He also never looked to see if the other programs dealing with hunger, housing, disability,etc. were working. They were being run by the states and it all depended on what state you lived in. Often states allowed local social workers or others to deny the programs to people they did not think were worthy. You can just imagine what was happening to poc and others.
Eisenhower did not look at that part of social programs at all. In my small community in Iowa poor families in the school district were often given left overs from school lunches because it was the cooks who saw the hunger.
If I am not mistaken it was JFK or LBJ who finally took a look at this and started federalizing the programs.