$15 Trillion for What? The War on Poverty
From 2012
Lyndon Johnson in 1965 announced a war on poverty. That became the political umbrella for what has turned out to be $12 trillion (in today’s dollars) down the proverbial drain. Another $3 trillion came from state and local governments.
One of the most famous and enduring of Johnson’s programs was food stamps. The program has a snappy new title: SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). It no longer involves physical coupons. It uses cards that look like credit cards. This is far more efficient than coupons.
SNAP is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is clear who the beneficiaries of SNAP are: the agribusiness firms. No poverty for them!
Under George W. Bush, enrollment in the subsidized food program grew by over 150,000 a month. It is now climbing at over 400,000 a month. Enrollment is now over 46 million people. This is about 15% of all Americans.
This rate of growth is considered too low by the Department of Agriculture, so it is running advertisements to get more people signed up. It has spent about $3 million over the past four months.
After all, if people don’t know that they can get free food, the government needs to help them find out. The fact that the program has existed for 47 years should not be taken into consideration. Word has not gotten out yet.
According to the Cato Institute, a Washington research organization, in 1965 about 19% of Americans were listed as being in poverty. Today, it’s 15%. In 1965, the rate was falling. Today, it’s rising.
Federal, state, and local spending to fight poverty ever since 1965 totals about $15 trillion, with $12 trillion coming from Washington.
In 2011, Washington spent $668 billion on 126 poverty-fighting programs.
The programs are permanent. They employ people. Programs are not cut off in Washington. Once begun, they last. They have constituencies.
It does not matter which political party is in power. The programs grow.
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Published June 28, 2012. The original is here.
This estimate was low. In 2014, the Heritage Foundation estimated that the programs had cost $22 trillion.
Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.
It posted a graph on the government's estimates on poverty in the USA.
Then it posted another graph on the federal government's expenditures vs. poverty.
Summary: Overall, 100 million individuals—nearly one in three Americans—received benefits from at least one of these programs. Federal and state governments spent $943 billion in 2013 on these programs at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. (Again, Social Security and Medicare are not included in the totals.) Today, government spends 16 times more, adjusting for inflation, on means-tested welfare or anti-poverty programs than it did when the War on Poverty started. 
In fiscal year 2013, the federal government ran over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provided cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans.