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Indeed, the entire Harlem program has been a tragic fiasco. Conceived in the hope that it could improve life in the prototypical Negro ghetto, the program has stumbled and stagnated under the leadership of HARYOU-ACT. The agency, directed by Powell Henchman Livingston Wingate, originally hoped to get $118 million in federal, city and private funds for an immense three-year program. So far, it has received barely $10 million—including $3,456,096 in OEO money—and even that turned out to be more than it could account for. Close to $400,000 could not be traced, and Shriver's OEO turned off the federal spigot for five weeks while HARYOU launched an audit under the supervision—naturally—of Livingston Wingate. As a result, North America's most crowded Negro slum has been largely deprived of the benefits it now desperately needs.
Comedies of error have also plagued OEO. After North Tonawanda, N.Y., School Superintendent Maurice Friot requested funds for a year-round Head Start program, OEO officials demanded considerable additional information, including how many men in the area had been rejected by draft boards. Inasmuch as Head Start deals with four-and five-year-olds, Friot thought this an unreasonable demand, protested to Washington. OEO withdrew the question. A more pointed criticism was leveled recently by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, which reported that the OEO is now giving the 100 poorest counties in the U.S. less anti-poverty money than the 100 richest.
Fuddle Factory. "There are bound to be some casualties in any war," says Shriver. His own war is still in its experimental stage, too young to be judged an overall failure or a probable success. In any case, Shriver has no doubts that it is worth fighting. Disturbed by the criticism that has plagued him from the first, Shriver confided during a recent audience with the Pope: "Some people are quoting the Bible against us in the poverty war, saying, The poor always ye have with you.' " Did His Holiness know an effective rejoinder to that? He did indeed. "Tell them," enjoined Paul, "that they are also commanded by the Bible to feed the hungry and clothe the naked."
Of course. But could the job be done differently and better? Many critics, mostly on the left, argue at least that it should be done more expensively. Labor Leader Walter Reuther complains that the Administration is doling out anti-poverty funds "with an eyedropper." Liberal Economist Leon Keyserling maintains that the effort requires at least $15 billion a year, roughly ten times what Johnson has been spending. Not to be outdone, a group of New York civil rights leaders has demanded an appropriation of $41.6 billion a year —more than one-third of the entire national budget—to combat poverty over the next five years.