on the 22nd of November 1963 following the assassination of President JFK Lyndon Baines Johnson who had acted as vice president was sworn in as president on March 1964 he declares a war on poverty through the Economic Opportunity Act which job creation and education being the top priorities for example the job course helped roughly 100,000 people receive either jobs or training whereas states and local authorities were made responsible for helping 200,000 more in January of 1965 Johnson was sworn in as president after actually winning an election with the promise of a Great Society being the foundation of his campaign the Great Society program had very ambitious goals which required of course a lot of money so as to pay for one program for poor students to affordable inner-city housing through the Housing and Urban Development program three infrastructure improvements through programs like the Highway Beautification Act for air and water quality improvements and so on aside from all that more and more money had to be spent on the Vietnam War and in the end Johnson was contested on all fronts with Democrats increasingly criticizing the involvement of the US and Vietnam and Republicans criticizing the high levels of domestic spending in the end Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for another term