Passing the Food Stamp Program

The Social Security Administration maintains an online collection of President Lyndon B. Johnson's phone conversations regarding the development of some of his Great Society Programs. The site is located at http://www.ssa.gov/history/LBJ/lbj.html. Go to this site and listen to tape number WH6404.09 (3020) in which Johnson discusses his feelings on his administration's proposal to create the food stamp program. Based on LBJ's conversation, how might one argue that the food stamp program was crafted with many interests, not just the poor's, in mind?




National health care

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) describes itself as a "single-issue organization advocating a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health care program." The organization maintains a web site, which is located at http://www.pnhp.org/. Go to the PNHP web site and review its mission statement. Then follow the group's "basic information" link to obtain a fact sheet on the single-payer national health program that it supports. How does this reform proposal differ from the current health care programs-Medicare and Medicaid-that the United States has today? What evidence from the past suggests that politically, the single-payer approach would be an extremely difficult one to pass in the United States?