Before signing the summer youth employment, recreation, and transportation supplemental appropriation bill, I do want to thank the Members of Congress, both the House and the Senate, both Democratic as well as Republican, for the quick action in getting this supplemental appropriation bill through.
It amounts to about $473 million. It will provide approximately 840,000 job opportunities for young people in the summer of 1975.
We do have a very high unemployment rate, particularly among the youth. And the youth not only need the jobs to keep active but they also need the employment and the compensation in order to return to school, if they are in college, or otherwise in the educational process.
I think this legislation administered by the Department of Labor, primarily under Secretary Dunlop and by the Community Services Administration, will do a fine job. The funding that comes from this appropriation bill will make a good many jobs available for the youth of America in the summer of 1975.
So, I thank the Congress. I am grateful for the good job that I know will be done by the Department of Labor and the Community Services Administration. So, it is with great pleasure that I sign this supplemental appropriation bill.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 3:37 p.m. at a ceremony in the Cabinet Room at the White House.
As enacted, the bill (H.J. Res. 492) is Public Law 94-36 (89 Stat. 215).
Gerald R. Ford, Remarks Upon Signing a Summer Youth Employment Bill Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/257046