Commentary One great mystery is the persistent refusal of those on the left to abandon what is clearly not true. That is, that the means for reducing the burden of poverty is more government spending. It all really started in the 1960s under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He declared in his State of the Union address in January 1964 an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Despite tens of trillions of spending since then, poverty remains, and so does the conviction of progressives that it can be wiped out with government spending. Worth recalling is that the avalanche of government spending launched in the 1960s was followed in the 1970s by runaway inflation. We now face the latest round of this misguided idea with the expansion of the Child Tax Credit in the Build Back Better Act—now derailed thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin. Fellow Democrats are now all over the …