Legislation: No Help Wanted

It was designed as both a conservation program and a job-training measure. Approved overwhelmingly by the House and Senate, the bill would have provided $225 million for an American Conservation Corps, patterned after the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, to employ up to 37,000 teen-agers on federal property. Supporters said it would help reduce the nation’s 18.8% teen-age unemployment rate. To President Reagan, however, the measure represented a “discredited approach to unemployment.” In vetoing the bill last week, he stated, “America’s unemployed youth would be better served by reducing federal spending so that more resources are available to the private sector.”

One of the bill’s sponsors, Democratic Congressman Augustus Hawkins of California, accused Reagan of insensitivity. Said he: “The President has demonstrated how unresponsive he is to the willingness and eagerness of jobless young people to perform useful work.” Countered White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater: “The recovery has been creating more jobs in one month than this entire program would ever create.”