COLUMBIA--Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman on Sunday visited the historic home of a leader of the South Carolina civil rights movement to unveil his anti-poverty plan.

The Connecticut senator said he would pick up where former President Clinton left off and cut the poverty rate to the lowest in history.

"When I am president, if you are working your heart out every day as millions of Americans are, you will not live in poverty," Lieberman said. "The ladder of opportunity will be there for you to climb. And the rungs on that ladder will be sturdy -- not slippery as they are today."

Lieberman's plan calls for expanding Individual Development Accounts, special savings accounts that match investments dollar for dollar on the condition that proceeds be used to buy a home, invest in a small business, or upgrade education. He said he wanted to increase the earned income tax credit and take the next steps of welfare reform by increasing child care funding and expanding aid for legal immigrants.

The number of people living in poverty is a "moral scandal," Lieberman said. The number has grown by 3 million people during President Bush's last two years in office and is now the size of the population of California, nearly 35 million residents, he said.

In South Carolina, one in seven people -- and one in five children -- are living in poverty.

Other parts of Lieberman's plans include:

-- Creating a new public-private partnership to target the resources of the business community toward poor schools;

-- Providing a homeownership tax credit to lenders who fund low-interest, low down-payment mortgage for low income first-time homebuyers;

-- Providing $1 billion in new funding for the Social Services Block Grant, a funding source for anti-poverty programs;

-- Setting up programs to help workers purchase dependable automobiles, creating ride-share programs, and expanding transit;

Lieberman told supporters in Modjeska Monteith Simkins' historic home that his participation in Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington in 1963 strengthened his desire for public service. Simkins' home was used as a meeting place for social change in South Carolina, as the black woman helped draft the legal petition for Briggs v. Elliot, the South Carolina case that was part of the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit regarding segregated schools.