The New Frontier was the legislative program John F. Kennedy announced when he ran for president in 1960. It called for economic reforms to counter the lagging economic growth of the Eisenhower years and to "get the country moving again." But in office Kennedy proved unable to win passage of many of the items on his agenda, including Medicare to provide medical help for the elderly, programs to rebuild the inner cities, and an increase in federal funding for education. Congress did raise the minimum wage from $1.00 to $1.25 an hour and added 3.6 million workers to the rolls of those eligible to receive it. Kennedy also won support for expanding Social Security benefits and made $4.9 billion available in federal grants to cities for mass transit, open spaces, and middle-income housing.
Nevertheless, Kennedy could not, in the main, overcome a congressional coalition of Republicans and conservative, mostly southern Democrats. Only after his assassination in 1963 were many of his proposals enacted. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, building on the national feeling over Kennedy's death, declared a "war on poverty" and pushed much of the New Frontier program through Congress. Expanding it into his Great Society program, Johnson won passage of Medicare, the Job Corps, vista, Head Start, and several major civil rights laws.