Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Our commitment to fairness means that we must assure legal and economic
equity for women, and eliminate, once and for all, all traces of unjust
discrimination against women from the United States Code. We will not
tolerate wage discrimination based on sex, and we intend to strengthen
enforcement of child support laws to ensure that single parents, most of
whom are women, do not suffer unfair financial hardship. We will also take
action to remedy inequities in pensions. These initiatives will be joined
by others to continue our efforts to promote equity for women.
Also in the area of fairness and equity, we will ask for extension of the
Civil Rights Commission, which is due to expire this year. The Commission
is an important part of the ongoing struggle for justice in America, and we
strongly support its reauthorization. Effective enforcement of our nation's
fair housing laws is also essential to ensuring equal opportunity. In the
year ahead, we'll work to strengthen enforcement of fair housing laws for
all Americans.
The time has also come for major reform of our criminal justice statutes
and acceleration of the drive against organized crime and drug trafficking.
It's high time that we make our cities safe again. This administration
hereby declares an all-out war on big-time organized crime and the drug
racketeers who are poisoning our young people. We will also implement
recommendations of our Task Force on Victims of Crime, which will report to
me this week.
American agriculture, the envy of the world, has become the victim of its
own successes. With one farmer now producing enough food to feed himself
and 77 other people, America is confronted with record surplus crops and
commodity prices below the cost of production. We must strive, through
innovations like the payment-in-kind crop swap approach and an aggressive
export policy, to restore health and vitality to rural America. Meanwhile,
I have instructed the Department of Agriculture to work individually with
farmers with debt problems to help them through these tough times.
Over the past year, our Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives has
successfully forged a working partnership involving leaders of business,
labor, education, and government to address the training needs of American
workers. Thanks to the Task Force, private sector initiatives are now
underway in all 50 States of the Union, and thousands of working people
have been helped in making the shift from dead-end jobs and low-demand
skills to the growth areas of high technology and the service economy.
Additionally, a major effort will be focused on encouraging the expansion
of private community child care. The new advisory council on private sector
initiatives will carry on and extend this vital work of encouraging private
initiative in 1983.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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