TODAY I asked the Congress to enact a new charter for the young people of America. Although the progress in this area has been great, too many boys and girls still remain untouched by our great and prosperous society.
There is much that we can and that we should be doing about this.
We should strengthen Head Start and extend its reach by Follow Through in the early school years.
We should begin a lunch program for undernourished preschool children.
We should improve health services for children and for expectant mothers. We should increase our social security payments for more than 3 million dependent children.
We should launch a new attack on juvenile delinquency.
We should provide healthy summer recreation.
And we should make this commitment to our youth because it is right, and because it is wise, and because, as our great President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "the destiny of American youth is the destiny of America."
Note: The President recorded the statement for radio and television broadcast. It was not made public in the form of a White House press release.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on the Message on America's Children and Youth. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/237596