in November 1963, Kennedy planned on proposing anti-poverty legislation in the 1964 State of the Union address that Johnson ended up giving. In that address, Johnson stated, "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it".

The War on Poverty was heavily criticized by conservatives and has been treated as an "idealistic touchstone" by liberals for decades, although some liberals felt that the War on Poverty did not go far enough with its reforms. Deregulation, growing criticism of the