Proclamation 3717—State and Municipal Bond Week

Over 70 percent of all Americans now live in urban areas. These are also the areas which will receive the greatest impact from the growth of our population in the years ahead. By 1975, we will need schools for 10 million additional children, welfare and health facilities for five million more people over the age of 60, and transportation facilities for the daily movement of more than 200 million people.

In the remainder of this century—little more than 30 years from now—we will have to build in our cities as much as all we have built since the first colonists arrived in the New World. Our urban population will double, and the amount of land falling within metropolitan areas will also double. In this short time we must virtually rebuild the entire urban United States.

One of the most effective tools for financing such growth is the State or municipal bond issue. State and municipal bonds build hospitals, schools, sanitation facilities, pumping plants for water, roads and bridges—all the many facilities needed to create a wholesome environment for our cities.

These bond issues represent local initiative and local responsibility in meeting pressing community needs. They are in the best tradition of our American system of Government and our American system of enterprise.

To create fuller understanding of the opportunities and benefits to community life which are provided by State and municipal bonds, the Congress by a Joint Resolution, approved April 16, 1966, has requested the President to issue a Proclamation designating the week beginning April 17, 1966 as State and Municipal Bond Week.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning April 17, 1966 as State and Municipal Bond Week, in recognition of the role that State and municipal bonds play in building a better community.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this sixteenth day of April in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninetieth.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

By the President:

DEAN RUSK

Secretary of State