Shortly after assuming the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson announced his commitment to a war on poverty. That was the unofficial name of legislation first introduced by Johnson in his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964.<\/p>\n
In the\u00a0 2012 presidential election, the code word for equality was \u201cmiddle class.\u201d Certainly the middle class has been and still is in need of economic support from the government as well as from the wealthy households that are making more than a quarter of a million dollars each year. President Obama has been consistent in standing by his pledge that federal income taxes for the wealthy be raised from 35% to 39.6%.<\/p>\n
Those in the middle class are generally active voters who were committed to maintaining the limited wealth that they have accumulated and retaining jobs that allow them to garner each year at least a livable wage or more. It is important for every politician who wants to win his or her race to focus the campaign toward the needs of the middle class. Republicans also try to appeal to the middle class, even though their policies generally favor the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and the poor.<\/p>\n
Lyndon Johnson grew up poor along the Pedernales River in central Texas. He experienced the rugged chores of farming as his family struggled to make ends meet. He also went from town to town peddling various wares. In 1926, Johnson enrolled in Southwest Teachers College. from which he graduated,\u00a0 and then found a job teaching in a one-room school house. This was obviously quite a difference from Mitt Romney, whom you might remember as the most recent Republican candidate for president.<\/p>\n
While Barack Obama did not grow up as poor as LBJ, he clearly was aware of the plight of those with little or no money, because of his three years as a community organizer in Chicago. Even though he directed most of his comments in the campaign toward helping the middle class, he never lost sight of the needs of the poor, who he came to know so well after college and in the years that followed. His concern for the poor goes beyond those in the United States; it is essential to his international strategy, in which he strives to eradicate poverty in developing countries. He believes that eliminating income inequality in poor countries around the world is an essential part of strengthening global stability and promoting peace. As Zachary A. Goldfarb reported<\/a> in the November 23 edition of the Washington Post,<\/p>\n When Barack Obama published his autobiography, \u201cDreams From My Father,\u201d about racial identity in 1995, he talked with his neighborhood newspaper in Illinois, the Hyde Park Citizen, about the economic disparities he had seen while exploring the world as a child and young adult.<\/p>\n \u201cMy travels made me sensitive to the plight of those without power and the issues of class and inequalities as it relates to wealth and power,\u201d he said in that interview. \u201cAnytime you have been overseas in these so-called third world countries, one thing you see is a vast disparity of wealth of those who are part of the power structure and those outside of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Goldfarb goes on to say:<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s actions as president provide a glimpse of how he views legislation as a means to his end. His health-care reform law, aimed at covering as many of the uninsured as possible, takes a shot at addressing income inequality by imposing new taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Beginning next year, upper-income earners will pay new surcharges that will result in an average additional tax bill of $20,000 for the top 1 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The poverty rate in the United States has grown considerably in recent years. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports<\/a>,<\/p>\n For half a decade, the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has increased each year, from 12.3 percent in 2006 to 15.1 percent in 2010. Today the Census Bureau released its analysis of U.S. poverty in 2011, and the official poverty rate essentially held at 15 percent, meaning that 46.2 million people live below the poverty line.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n