How poor is poor?

Jonah Goldberg, as quoted on numerous blogs (I'm not sure I'm strong enough to go reading Town Hall myself just yet):

Indeed, the underlying assumption of the War on Poverty (and the New Deal) that government should make sure no one is poor is now widely accepted on both the left and the right.

While I can't speak for all Democrats or liberals, just this one, my own feeling is that he's missing a few words there: government should make sure no one is so poor that they can't escape poverty, with or without "bootstraps". And it seems to me there's still a long ways to go before that can be reasonably claimed to be the case.