Marketplace - Biden’s “Great Society”

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Medicare, Pell Grants and the Immigration Act of 1965 were all passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Several important government agencies were formed too. In fact, some historians argue that LBJ’s Great Society agenda was the last major shift in the relationship between the executive branch and the U.S. economy. In this episode, how does legislation passed under President Joe Biden compare?

Hi, I'm Kyle Rizdal, the host of How We Survive. It's a podcast from Marketplace. In 1986, before I was a journalist, I was flying for the Navy. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It was the Cold War and my first deployments were intercepting Russian bombers. Today though, there's another threat out there, climate change. This could be the warmest year on record. Climate change is here.

Temperatures here are warming faster than anywhere on earth. And while the threat seems new, the Pentagon's been funding studies on climate change since the 1950s. I think we will put our troops and our forces at higher risk if we don't recognize the impact of climate change. This season, we go to the front lines of the climate crisis to see how the military is preparing for the threat. Listen to How We Survive, wherever you get your podcasts.

What if you took a year and did a lot of deep reporting on what it looks like to have the government in this economy. You'd have to do a wrap-up show, right? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Carl Rizdal. It is Wednesday today, the 2nd of October. Good as always to have you along, everybody. We have been working on a series called Breaking Ground

for the past year about how the federal government is changing this economy and its role in it in complicated, invisible, and sometimes contradictory ways. We've done stories about infrastructure spending in Las Vegas. We're trying to get the kids across the street and it's almost like impossible. The Inflation Reduction Act in northern Minnesota. I see the future of Red Lake being a wholesale energy provider. The CHIPS Act in Phoenix. This is the big one of the biggest construction sites I've ever seen. And and I don't expect you to remember this but we started this series back in January with a story about history. The New Deal it was an investment not only in our roads not only in our schools but in democratic

life. We did that we took you back more than 90 years because the New Deal was a turning point in the relationship between the federal government and the economy. And it felt to us during the first 18 months or so of the Biden administration that the investments the White House was making in industrial policy specifically were a turning point two. Not a New Deal-sized turning point, but the biggest change in the way government is in this economy since Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society of the 1960s. Those three presidents, FDR, LBJ, and President Biden, all took office during moments of crisis. FDR had the Great Depression,

LBJ the assassination of President Kennedy in the Civil Rights Movement, and Biden, of course, the pandemic. And they use those moments, those windows of opportunity to rethink how government is in this economy. So today we're gonna wrap up our series with another story about economic history and what it might teach us about the moment we're living through now. Back in time we go.

The day? May 22, 1964. The place? Oh, in the Big House, of course. Oh yeah. The Big House, for those unfamiliar, is the University of Michigan's football stadium in Ann Arbor. It was not as big as it is now.

They've added another 20,000 seats. That's Roger Loewenstein. He's a former civil rights attorney, TV writer, and charter school founder. Also, Michigan class of 1964. He was the undergraduate class president that year. Gotta love these old magazines. He came into Marketplace World headquarters in Los Angeles with pictures from graduation day. My graduation speaker was LBJ. I was one of two students on the speaker's platform.

President Johnson, who'd taken the oath of office six months earlier, agreed to give the commencement address in place of Kennedy, who had originally been scheduled to do it. Remarks of the president from the University of Michigan stadium in Ann Arbor. After an introduction and some thank yous, President Hatcher, he got to the meat of it. I have come today from the turmoil of your capital

to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country. I was actually reading over his shoulder on the teleprompter. Roger Loewenstein and another student, Ron Wilton, noticed one passage in particular. The great society, and on the teleprompter scroll, it was underlined twice and in caps. For in your time, we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the great society.

Johnson had first used that phrase in a speech at Ohio University a couple of weeks earlier. But here, in this speech, he really laid it out. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. And those freshly minted college graduates, they were not impressed. The phrase, the great society, seemed to Ron and me to be, you know, cornball beyond belief. The great society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind. Ron, who was much more clever than me, leaned over and whispered in my ear, He said, okay, next year we're going to have the Peachy Keen Society. It is a challenge constantly renewed.

And we were like, ah, you know. So we were totally, you know, unaware that this was, you know, history in the making. Will you join in the battle to build the great society? You know, I just reread the speech for the first time in 60 years or whatever, just this morning. And I would give anything to have politicians that would give that kind of speech today. The thing about history is that you don't always recognize it in the moment it's being

made. But 60 years on, we've got some distance. And if we can understand how Johnson did what he did, how he changed the government in this economy, it might help us better understand what's possible or not possible today. A lot of the work that he did has directly impacted my life as well as the lives of millions of people and in fact the entire country. Melody Barnes is the executive director of the Karsch Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia. She's got 25 years of public policy experience including in the Obama White House, and she's a scholar

of LBJ. Why does that president and that period of history interest you? Well, on a very personal level, I was born in 1964. So I was born the year that Lyndon Johnson ran for the presidency in his own right. And so one, I feel the direct impact and I'm fascinated by the way that the great society changed the course of our country, that it gave me an opportunity to go to school, work in government, and to ultimately work for the president of the United States, which was something that I'm sure in 1964 was probably inconceivable

to most people, that an African American woman would be able to do that. The Voting Rights Act and other pieces of the Great Society changed the face of America and it changed who was able to achieve within it. And that included people like Melody Barnes, who worked for the first black president of the United States on education reform and the Affordable Care Act, which built on Great Society policies. So that's one reason. Two, because I, having spent so much time in government, I'm fascinated by the relationship

between government and its citizens. And Johnson had significant impact on that relationship. And the final thing I would say is that Johnson is, he's a conundrum, he's a fascinating person. We play that game of the 10 people living or dead that you would invite to your dinner party. And Lyndon Johnson would definitely be invited to my dinner party. President Johnson died in 1973, just four years after leaving the White House. But he is among the most studied presidents in American history.

A Southerner with a segregationist voting record, who went on to champion transformative civil rights and economic legislation. Let's talk government and citizens and power, honestly, because when you talk about Lyndon Johnson, you have to talk about power. Was it the man and his experience that let him get done what he got done,

or was it the moment, his experience that let him get done what he got done? Or was it the moment, right? 1964 after Kennedy, before the guts of Vietnam, right? What do you think? I think it was C, both, all of the above. Because one, he was a student of government. He wanted to be president when he was in middle school. And his classmates who teased him about it and laughed at him,

he told them that he would be president and that he would not need their votes. Johnson was, of course, a creature of government. Before becoming vice president in 1961, he spent 25 years in Congress, eventually a Senate majority leader. And he loved those institutions. At the same time, it was the moment. A rare window of opportunity. He seized on the moment, the assassination of President Kennedy, to determine that he was going to use the power that he had fought for, scrapped for,

to achieve a new way for citizens to engage and to be a part of America. But without that moment, it wouldn't have mattered. I'm paraphrasing here, but he famously said something like, you know, if you don't use the power of the presidency, then what the hell is the presidency for? Do you have an anecdote, a story that sticks in your mind that applies to that? Well, again, you know, within a day or two, President Kennedy being assassinated and knowing the history of Johnson, he was a vice president that was all but forgotten.

So all of a sudden, he finds himself president and he is sitting in his home. He hadn't even moved into the White House with his aides. And he's talking about what he wants to get done. He has a very clear list. And on that list are some of the things that President Kennedy had put forward but were stalled in Congress, including civil rights. And his aides were looking at him and basically saying, you know, dude, what are you thinking? You can't, you know, great idea, but you can't get that passed.

And he looked at them and said, what the hell is the presidency for then? And he decided to use the power that he had amassed over 20 plus years in Washington to accomplish something that many people thought was unimaginable. Unimaginable, until it wasn't. These days the idea of the federal government without Great Society programs is unimaginable. Medicare is the second biggest line item in the federal budget. That's around 14 percent of total spending. About a third of U.S. college students get Pell grants and more than 73 million people are enrolled in Medicaid. None of that existed before the Great Society. We talk about LBJ as this paragon of power, and he was,

but I think what's rarely mentioned, Kai, is how he used that power. Power, opportunity, and the future of government in this economy, after the break. These are the last few days of our fall fundraiser and we're making progress toward our goal of 2,500 Marketplace investors. This is a different kind of goal for us, one that centers on your participation. Whether it's your first ever donation, you're able to chip in again, or you're starting or increasing a monthly gift, every single gift counts.

So please, stand up as one of our vital Marketplace investors and do it by Friday. Go to marketplace.org slash donate. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. We've been talking all year in our series Breaking Ground about how government investment in the economy, like the kind made by the Biden administration

through the bipartisan infrastructure law, the IRA and the CHIPS Act, can take decades to pay off. Today, for the last installment, we're going back to the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. We're gonna hope you guys know where we're going. LBJ is memorialized on a little island in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Do I need a jacket?

No, we're going to walk and talk. That's Melanie Chukas Bradley. I am a naturalist and the author of eight books about nature in the Washington, D.C. area, and we are now strolling through the LBJ Memorial Grove on the Potomac River. I've been to Washington DC a zillion times. I have never been to the LBJ Memorial Grove. You know, I think it's one of the most obscure memorials in Washington, partly because of the location. We should say location-wise, we're right in the flight path of National Airport. Yes. So that's going to be happening all morning.

Absolutely. Minus the planes flying overhead, it is actually a peaceful scene. There are willow oaks, a grove of pine trees, views of the Potomac River, and a 19-foot tall, rough-cut granite monolith as a memorial. It's 43 tons of granite, and it was brought from a quarry in Texas not too far from his ranch. There's a line in the Great Society speech where he talks about some very lofty goals and ideas and then he says the Great Society is a place where man can renew his contact

with nature. And it's interesting to me because you don't think of LBJ as a conservationist president. I know. And he's much better known for his great society programs and of course for the Vietnam War, which overshadowed his presidency. But he once said, I would have been content simply to be a conservation president. I saw that line and I said, really?

Yes. But then you read up a little bit. Oh yes, so more than 3.5 million acres were added to the National Park Service during the Johnson administration. Many laws were passed to protect air and water. The Wilderness Act was passed. Here comes another plane. We're under the white path. You can add to that list the National Historic Preservation Act, the Highway Beautification Act, and a whole bunch trees planted throughout

Washington D.C. You're taking us off the beaten path. Is this an authorized walkway by the National Park Service? I'm just saying. It's the most direct way up to the Monolith. Had to step over a few roots and a few pine needles. This is a great view. Look at that. So there's the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. You can see the Capitol.

This is stunning. Half a century after President Johnson left office, you can look downriver from this memorial and see the trees planted 60 years ago by the Johnson administration that now bloom every spring. Why does that matter when we think about LBJ and the Great Society and what he did? when we think about LBJ and the Great Society and what he did. Because he linked social equality, the health of our country, he linked it with a healthy environment.

The Johnsons did not separate their passion for a healthy environment from their passion for a healthy society. healthy environment from their passion for a healthy society. By linking civil rights to the environment, to health care, and to other economic policies that affect how people live, Johnson put the federal government into places it hadn't been before. To this day, economists and politicians debate the government's role in this economy, even as the changes the great Society brought to this country are still playing out.

They debated so much so that the defining biography of LBJ is still being written. Look, I've got a question of my own before we really start, and this is the most important question I'm gonna ask you all day. I imagine you're in somewhat regular contact with Robert Caro, yes? You know, yeah, he's here frequently enough.

When's the damn last volume coming out? Yeah, of course that's the inevitable question. I don't think he knows lower than anyone else. Fine, fine, fine, fine. The guy I'm talking to is Mark Updegrove. He's presidential historian and the CEO of the LBJ Foundation. You know, LBJ is a fascinating president and probably the most consequential of my lifetime. In so many ways, he can't be explained.

We talk about LBJ as this paragon of power, and he was. But I think what's rarely mentioned, Kai, is how he used that power, how he expended the political capital that he garnered throughout the course of his political career. And that can still be seen in the laws that he put on the books during the course of his presidency, which continued to resound in 21st century America. My working thesis as we started working on this program was that what Biden had been

able to do in the first 18 months of his presidency was the biggest change in how the government is in this economy since Lyndon Johnson in 1965. He has not been able to be as progressive for a lot of political reasons that Johnson wasn't dealing with in 1965. But what do you make of my working thesis? What do you make of that idea? I think you're dead right. I think Joe Biden is the most important

legislative president of the 21st century. But to your point, Kai, Joe Biden has so many more limitations than Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson faced in the 20th century. That idea is worth a minute here, how Joe Biden's moment was different than Johnson's. 72% of Americans had faith in their government in 1965 when LBJ earns the presidency.

That number is 22% today. That's really important. Just 22 percent of Americans in 2024 say they quote, trust the government in Washington to do what is right. That's from Pew. As Mark Updegrove said, it was better than 70 percent back in the 1960s. And finally, you have the fragmentation of media, which is an enormous difference between you have the fragmentation of media, which is an enormous difference between the America that Joe Biden governed and the America that Lyndon Johnson governed. And I think that makes it very difficult for any president to contend with. Let me back you up for a minute. That thing you said about Biden being the most consequential president since Lyndon Johnson. We've had 60 years

to digest what LBJ did. We've barely had, we haven't even had 60 months to digest what Biden did. Why do you say he's so consequential? Well, I'd say it's the most consequential legislative president. And it's partly because Joe Biden, like Lyndon Johnson, understood government. He understood power. He understood the way that legislation gets passed. He spent 36 years in the Senate, eight years in the vice presidency, now almost four in the presidency. So he gets this stuff in a way that other presidents might not necessarily get. And I think he understood and loved legislation in a way that Barack Obama didn't.

Same with Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, right? Kennedy was powerful in his own way, just as Barack Obama was, but they didn't love the legislative process. And I think that spurred Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden to do things that other presidents might not have done. Remember what we said about windows of opportunity? FDR had one. LBJ had one.

And Biden had one too in the back half of the pandemic with majorities in Congress. Yes, thin ones, where he was able to use his experience in Washington to pass industrial policy legislation that's expected to put trillions of dollars into this economy in the coming decades. You're a presidential historian. Let me ask you to be a presidential futurist here for a minute. It's been 60 something years since the Great Society. Are we going to wait another 60 years for another sort of moment of change in how the government is in this economy now?

You know, Kai, for the reasons I just enumerated, it would be extraordinarily difficult for a president to mobilize that kind of support. So historians are lousy futurists. We have books on our shelves, but not crystal balls, but I think it would be very difficult to find a moment in America's future where you have that kind of unity, where you have that kind of bipartisanship that allows for programs like the Great Society to roll out. The only thing that might bring us to that place is some sort of externally driven crisis.

But I see that as being the only way that Americans might come together in a moment that would allow for us to reach for something far beyond ourselves. We started this project, Breaking Ground, with a thesis. That what President Biden was doing with industrial policy was the biggest change started this project, breaking ground, with a thesis. That what President Biden was doing with industrial policy was the biggest change to the federal government's role in this economy in more than half a century. And we've spent more than a year talking to people across the country who are filling out the paperwork

to get that money, or who are gonna be on the receiving end of some of those investments. Some of the voices have made it to air, a lot of them haven't. And even though it's still very early days for the Biden era industrial policies, and even though they are very different from the Great Society or the New Deal before it,

if they work the way they're designed, and that is still TBD, they're gonna change people's lives. They're going to change people's lives. This final note on the way out today, an epilogue of sorts to the series, an update on some of the people we met along the way. Joey Paske is the director of public works for the city of Las Vegas. We talked to her in November of last year about that city's $24 million federal grant from the bipartisan infrastructure law, which is meant to revamp streets along Stewart Avenue

in historically underserved East Las Vegas. We have looked at all of the roads in the city. We know which ones have the highest concentrations of crashes that cause fatalities and serious injuries. Chunga Stewart is one of those. The update? Technically, we haven't received any federal funds yet as our agreement needs final approval by the State Department of Transportation.

Paperwork gets you every time. Las Vegas is using local funding to tie them over, but so far, $1.8 billion in federal grants have been awarded through that program nationally. Next, we go up to northern Minnesota, where plans for a solar farm on the Red Lake Nation are moving right along thanks to grants from the federal government. Eventually when it's all set and down, it's around the $30 million mark. That's Bob Blake. He's a tribal citizen up there, the founder of a solar development company too.

It's a lot of money and it's going to make a difference in the community. And in Phoenix, at least one of the single moms we met at a semiconductor technician training course, Gabriella Medina, has started an apprenticeship at Intel. And by the end of the year, we should be journeymen. Also, this happened a couple of weeks ago, TSMC, the big Taiwanese chip maker that's building three factories in Phoenix, has actually started making some chips there. Not quite full production yet, but they're getting there. Andy Corbin was the project producer for this series, Maria Hollenhorst and Sarah Leeson were

the episode producers Sophia Terenzio provided research support for us. Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Jessen Dooler, Drew Jostat, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Furp. He mixed the whole series for us, made it sound good. Juan Carlos Torrado and Becca Weinman as well. Jeff Peters is the manager of media production. I'm Kyle Rizdall. We will see you tomorrow everybody. This is APM. Are you a fan of robot sci-fi time traveling podcasts? Then you'll love Six Minutes. But don't take my word for it. We've got over 15,000 reviews on Apple podcasts alone.

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