You can choose to try to deflect responsibility for the compassionate changes wherever you wish, but you cannot legitimately deny that living in America as a member of the hard working poor hadn't been been improving steadily over the middle of last century, and that there were people who supported those changes on moral grounds.The definition of poverty had to change to keep the "need" for the poverty "programs" and to provide government workers a job - especially high-paid administrators.
Assuming that that's even remotely relevant (and of course, I don't believe it is), better that government be working to make the lives of those less fortunate better rather than working to pad the pockets of rich executives of companies that supply the tools of war against other nations.Government always needs a "war on (fill in the blank) to justify its ever increasing size.
The problem with that logic is that many people - right now, most people - disagree with your sentiment that stopping doing what we're doing now is better than continuing to do what we're doing now with regard to the less fortunate. The medicine may not be curing the disease, but it is relieving some of the suffering, and that's better than just letting the patient writhe in misery.I don't claim to have the answer, but doing MORE of what doesn't work (as we are now doing) seems the definition of insanity.