The first Great Society program to address the "War on Poverty" was the Economic Opportunity Act.
The "war on poverty" was proclaimed by US President Lyndon Johnson in his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964.
Johnson proposed a package of anti-poverty legislation that was estimated to account for about 19 percent of the population. The State of the Union speech was followed by the congressional vote on the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity to administer local applications of federal funds targeting poverty, as well as the Social Security Act of 1965 creating Medicare and Medicaid.
