The Freedom Budget for All Americans as an Economic Plan
Abstract
In the second part of the sixties, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin envisioned an ambitious economic plan aimed primarily at eradicating poverty and joblessness for all Americans and significantly expanding the boundaries of Johnson’s Great Society. It never gained traction and by the end of the Johnson Presidency was relegated to the margins of historical memory. While the recent literature on the Freedom Budget has argued that the program was politically infeasible, this paper sustains that the Freedom Budget as a plan was economically infeasible. After a summary of the aims and content of the Great Society and the Freedom Budget, this paper determines that a main point of the program’s irrelevance lies to some degree in the implausibility of its economic assumptions and in the denial of any necessary economic trade-off.
Keywords: Freedom Budget, Keyserling, Johnson Administration, Great Society, Keynesianism.
References
Andrew John A, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1998.
Canto Victor A, Douglas H Joines, Robert I Webb (1983) The Revenue Effects of the Kennedy Tax Cuts". In Foundations of Supply-Side Economics: Theory and Evidence, edited by Victor A. Canto, Douglas H. Joines, and Arthur B. Laffer, 72-103. New York: Academic Press.
Carter David C (2009) The Music Has Gone out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965-1968. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Crespo Ricardo F (2014) A Reassessment of Aristotle’s Economic Thought. New York: Routledge.
Dallek Robert (1998) Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973. New York: Oxford University Press.
D'Emilio John (2003) Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. New York: Free Press.
“Freedom Budget†for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, to Achieve Freedom from Want. New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 1991 (1st edition 1976).
Heller Walter W (1977) Statement, in The 1977 Economic Report of the President, 161. Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, 95th Congress,. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Johnson Lyndon B (1966) Conversation with Bill Moyers on Sargent Shriver, Politics, and the War on Poverty. 26 December 1966, White House Tapes, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin.
Johnson, Lyndon B (1971) The Vintage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Keyserling, Leon H (1966) A Freedom Budget for All Americansâ€. Washington, D.C.: Conference on Economic Progress, 1966.
Keyserling, Leon H (1975) Full Employment without Inflationâ€. Washington, D.C.: Conference on Economic Progress, 1975.
Keyserling, Leon H (1978) Goals for Full Employment and How to Achieve Them Under the ‘Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978’â€Washington, D.C.: Conference on Economic Progress, .
Keyserling, Leon H (1962) Hearing before the Committee of Financeâ€. US Senate, Revenue Act 1962, HR 10650, part 8, 3297.
Keyserling Leon H (1983) How to Cut Unemployment to Four Percent and End Inflation and Deficits by 1987. Washington, D.C.: Conference on Economic Progress.
Keyserling Leon H Keyserling to Johnsonâ€. 25 November 1966, box 119, White House Central Files, Name Files, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.
Keyserling Leon H (1969) Letter to the Editorâ€. New York Times.
Keyserling Leon H (1962) One Prescription For Unemploymentâ€, The New York Times, Magazine section, pp. 10G, 56G-57G.
Keyserling Leon H (1963) Statement of Keyserling. Conference of Economic Progress, Washington D.C..
Keyserling Leon H (1970) The Economic Record, The New Republic.
Keyserling Leon H (1977) The humphrey-hawkins bill full employment and balanced growth act of. Washington, D.C.: Conference on Economic Progress, 1977.
Kotz Nick (2005) Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Le Blanc Paul, Michael D Yates (2013) A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Lekachman Robert (1966) The Ages of Keynes. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lippermann Walter (1964) Today and Tomorrow. New York Herald Tribune.
McChesney Martin, William (1963) Testimony, Joint Economic Committee. In Records, 10-11. Washington, DC: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1 February.
Meltzer Allan H (2010) A History of the Federal Reserve Vol. 2, Book 1, 1951-1969. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Michelmore Molly C (2012) Tax and Spend. The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Pear Robert (1993) Poverty Bigger, Deeper, Younger, Getting Worse. New York Times, 10 October 1993.
Sloan John W (1985) President Johnson, The council of economic advisers, and the failure to raise taxes in 1966 and 1967. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 15(1):89-98.
Wehrle Edmund F (2004) Guns, Butter, Leon Keyserling, the AFL-CIO, and the Fate of Full-Employment Economicsâ€. Historian 6(4):730-48.
