Special Message to the Congress Transmitting a Report on the Community Work and Training Program

To the Congress of the United States:

Once again we have evidence that public assistance is best achieved when we help the poor to help themselves.

This is documented by the report I transmit today on the Community Work and Training Program authorized by the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962.

These amendments gave new opportunities for community work and training to thousands of unemployed parents of dependent children.

Title V of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 gave further impetus to this program. It reinforced the original Act by providing the counseling, education, health, job placement and other services necessary to give the individual a new start in life.

Experience under these programs has shown that many people--now unemployed and living in poverty--can help themselves. Three-fourths of the 133,000 welfare recipients who have enrolled in these programs since 1964 have been helped:

--22,100 have already found jobs.

--70,200 are in training for productive employment.

--3,500 are taking advance vocational instruction.

--6,700 now have the training and marketable skills that should enable them to find jobs soon.

In short, 102,500 Americans and their families have been given hope where hope did not exist before. This is an impressive record.

But no statistics can measure the gain in self-respect to these parents. These programs substitute a productive job for a life on welfare or in poverty. They provide the opportunity to break the vicious cycle of welfare dependency and poverty which burdens our society.

I urge the Congress to extend and make permanent this program to bring help to unemployed parents and through them hope to our most disadvantaged children.

I urge the States to study the lessons we have learned and to avail themselves fully of the promise which these programs hold.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

March 6, 1967