 Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Secretary of Labor William Broad. Thank you very much. I just welcome you and express my pleasure and appreciation that you're coming. There are over one million disadvantaged young people in this country who do not at the moment have employment. Please sit down. Thank you. It makes it easier on the people behind you. But these young men and women really seek more than anything else, that first opportunity to get a job skill so that they can acquire the pride and self-respect that comes from human productivity. Today we are announcing the expenditure of $824 million for the summer program. 775,000 young people will gain summer jobs, programs will be run through the states and local governments. And most of all, we will have the active support and participation of the private sector. That is what makes all of these programs so fundamentally not only worthwhile but workable. And for that I'd like to express personally my very deep gratitude to you for all the support that you have given this and similar programs to give our young people that first meaningful job experience and the opportunity to become prideful, productive members of this very exciting country of ours. I thank you very much. Well, Secretary Brock and distinguished guests and ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the White House. I know one young person that isn't lacking for a summer job. As a matter of fact, she has a permitted job daily on her radio station. Kelly is a sports announcer. These past couple of months as the trees have begun to leaf out and the flowers to blossom, spring has come to America and America that is in good economic health for more than two years. Our economy has been growing steadily. This morning at 8.30 the Commerce Department released some additional figures that indicate that very definitely. Our basic industries have achieved new productivity while technological breakthroughs involving the computer and the microchip have produced entirely new fields of services and goods and nearly all 8 million jobs have been created and more than 200,000 last month alone. As summer follows spring, inflation will remain low and our economy will continue to grow, creating still more jobs. Yet even in these good economic times, thousands of young Americans, as Bill has told you, have trouble finding summer jobs. Many live in parts of our inner cities where there are few employers, some are black or Hispanic and suffer from higher rates of unemployment than other young Americans. Ironically, the very young people who will find it hardest to get work will be the ones who need jobs the most. To them a summer job means a chance to escape poverty and disadvantage, a chance to get the work experience that would enable them to climb the economic ladder. I think many of us here remember summer jobs. I remember, and I remember they taught me a great deal about the satisfactions of good honest work. I was 14 when I got my first summer job and before that summer was over I was laying hardwood floor, I was shingling roof painting and using a pick and shovel to dig for foundation on house construction. I have to confess that pick and shovel work got a little heavy at times. I was one day, I was hard at it, swinging a pick and I had that pick right up over my shoulder for another blow when the noon whistle blew and I just said that's it. And I didn't complete the swing, I just dropped the pick behind me and stepped out from under it and then I heard a rather profane and angry voice behind me and I turned around and there stood the boss with the pick embedded in the ground right between his feet. So ever since that I've kept in mind a simple lesson. If you start swinging, finish. But I kept thinking that those summer jobs might have been impossible for me to get if certain laws in place today had been in effect back then and maybe in our effort to do good, maybe we haven't been as successful as we thought we were when we passed some of those laws. Under the current minimum wage law, for example, many young people have been priced out of the labor market. To put these young Americans back in the market, we have proposed the youth employment opportunity wage, legislation that would allow employers to hire young people at a lower minimum wage during the summer months. Our bill would increase summer employment opportunities yet provide explicit safeguards to protect permanent employees and the young people themselves. The youth employment opportunity wage has wide support, including the endorsement of the National Conference of Black Mayors. For thousands of young Americans, it would represent breakthrough legislation. Let's hope that Congress will act soon. In the meantime, our administration will continue its work to provide summer jobs for young Americans. We firmly believe that the surest source of real work, not make work, is in the private sector. So at the center of our efforts lies a partnership between the government and the private sector. As part of our Job Training Partnership Act this year, our summer youth employment program includes nearly $825 million in funding for state and local governments. And these governments have available some $100 million left over from the $825 million granted them last year for summer employment. So these levels of government can use this over $900 million this summer to work with other non-profit concerns as they provide work experience for more than 850,000 young people. Private efforts in the summer jobs program can offer still more opportunities. Last summer, for example, television stations like WDAF in Kansas City aired summer jobathons. Newspapers like the Atlanta Journal Constitution permitted youngsters to run jobs wanted ads for free. Corporations like Walt Disney, productions hired thousands of young people, and enterprises like Chevron, Sun Company, and Hewlett Packard contributed facilities, personnel, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. This summer, as in years past, the White House Office of Private Sector Initiatives will receive help in overseeing the summer jobs program from the National Alliance of Business. Bill Kohlberg and the other executives of the NAB have my deepest thanks. This year's spokesman for the summer jobs program will be the members of the American Sportscasters Association. Vin Scully, as a representative of that association, you have my gratitude. And Vin, coming from somebody who used to do a little sports announcing himself, I'd like to say you're one of the very best. Finally to the 170 representatives of corporations and private industry councils who've received summer jobs awards, many present today, our congratulations. You've already done much for young Americans, and I know that this summer you'll do still more. Together, we can provide summer jobs for hundreds of thousands of our young people, and so doing we'll help to teach them the spirit of enterprise to give them the most important kind of capital, not the kind that accumulates in banks, but that which through actual work experience is stored up in the heart and mind. So thank you. God bless you. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I play a very small and modest part here. Frankly, I am well over my head. It's a long way from a baseball dugout to the Rose Garden, but I'm honored to be here. All of us in the American Sports Broadcasters Association of America realize there are two great gifts that we can receive in this world. One is good health, and the other is time. Time perhaps is the most precious, and the reason for all of this is to avoid the greatest crime of all, which is killing time. So we are trying to help the underprivileged youth of America so that they will not kill time and that they will work for themselves and for the betterment of our country. During the course of the summer, the fall, the winter, and hopefully from now on the American Sportscasters of America will remind the youth if they want to come to us for counsel, for advice, we even have a scorecard so that they might check off the right things to do in looking for a job. So that's why I'm here, to join with the National Alliance of Business to salute you folks and also to make this presentation. It could very well be a belated gold mic for his work at the Drake Relays, or it could even be for his outstanding work broadcasting for the Chicago Cubs. But it's not. Instead, this award today is from the American Sports Broadcasters Association of America to the President of the United States, the Honorable Ronald Reagan, for his constant efforts on behalf of the youth of America. Sir, it is yours. Well, I can't help or can't find the words to thank the American Sportscasters Association. I can't say one thing, Vin. You said it was a long way from the dugout to the rose garden. How do you think I feel? Well, thank you all and thank all of you very much. Thanks very much.