End of OEO

There is now a general assumption among both Democats and Republicans in Congress that the antipoverty program will be cut apart this year - that spending will be reduced and the Office of Economic Opportunity dismantled. The administration continues to talk hopefully, in public, of keeping the program in tact with minor concessions to critics. But officials admit in private that they are in for trouble on the Hill. Democratic legislative leaders report -- many of them quite happily -- that most members of their own party in Congress would like to see drastic revisions. And Republicans are sharpening their knives.

The issue is not simply one of size, though civil rights and anti-war leaders are already assailing the possibility of cutbacks, linking reduced spending on domestic problems with the war in Vietnam. President Johnson's request for $2.06 billion -- an increase of about $460 million over this year's appropriations -- will be pared by the legislators. Republicans have called for a cut of $400 million; even the previous Congress, considerably more sympathetic than this one, cut $138 million from the administration's original request.

Quite apart form the level of expenditures, however, Congress likely to make changes in the organization and content of the program that will be just as damaging. Congressional leaders of both parties are now planning to climate the office of Economic Opportunity and divide its programs among the old-line departments. Unless the administration accedes, Rep. Goodell (R.N.Y) recently warned, they "may well kill off the whole thing." OEO has failed in these first three years to perform many of its most important tasks, but sacrificing the program to the Departments will only worsen the situation. HEW will be no more successful in coordinating the activities of other Departments and may not even feel the responsibility to do so. Eliminating OEO, officials lament, will mean the end of a period of "trying, testing, and learning."

As for the content of the programs, the administration has retreated in some areas, in the hope of forestalling further attacks. Earlier this month, it ruled out the use of federal funds for "illegal picketing or demonstrations," barred antipoverty workers from "partisan political" activity, and provided that local Job Corps centers must screen out young men who have records of "violent antisocial behavior". It also announced that OEO would emphasize greater state participation and require annual audits of all local antipoverty agencies.

The first of these changes reflects an attempt to drain much of the political clout from the Community Action program, ont of the most controversial components of the federal antipoverty package. In addition to financing local agencies like Action for Boston Community Development, Community Action funds have been used for community organizing among the poor -- building neighborhood associations that could effectively represent the demands of the poor and mobilize protest if the establishment refused to comply.

This activity -- marches to city hall, for example, to protest poor housing by dropping rats at the Mayor's feet -- have won the antipoverty program few powerful friends. And most congressmen have heard loud and clear the squaks of mayors, landlords, and voters back home.

Similarly, barring young men with police records represents an effort to preclude the sort of disorders and protests that have provided Republicans with ammunition against the antipoverty program in general and the Job Corps in particular. There have been only a few incidents at the 117 Job Corps Centers, but they have been well-publicized and embarrassing.

Both changes dilute what until now have been considered essential elements in the antipoverty program. Community Organization, where successful, was bound to lead demonstrations and protest, since associations of the poor would find the normal channels of complaint frustratingly slow and unproductive. The Job Corps was designed explicitly for the "disadvantaged" -- and themost disadvantaged would be precisely those who had records of "antisocial behavior." President Johnson may win time with these concessions, fighting a holding action against critics until he has resources and political support to expand the program. But he is abandoning the strategy that he hailed so confidently in 1964, and returning to the uncoordinated and ineffective administration of welfare and income transfer programs that the nation has haphazardly accumulated over the past thirty years.