The 1960s opened with record prosperity: real GDP growth averaged 4.5 percent, and America’s middle class had become the envy of the world. Yet Johnson framed the new abundance as obligation, not reward: “The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life.”

By 1938, the Commerce and General Welfare Clauses no longer constrained federal action as the Founders envisioned. The Supreme Court had blessed nearly unlimited congressional spending and upheld vast regulatory power under the Commerce Clause. What followed was not chaos, but organization—the creation of a permanent machinery to manage the new federal scope. This was the birth of the administrative state.