Proclamation 5766

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

More than 17 million Americans own a small business; and the rest of us benefit from their ingenuity, enterprise, and hard work. These entrepreneurs employ half of all Americans in the work force. These achievements and the American heritage of economic liberty that helps make them possible are truly fitting reasons for each of us to join in observance of Small Business Week.

Today, small businesses provide well over two-thirds of all new American jobs, as well as 40 percent of our aggregate national output; the bulk of new American products and technologies; and more than two-thirds of all first jobs. The majority of jobs held by younger, older, minority, and female employees are in small business. In the next quarter-century, fully three-fourths of all new jobs created in America will have their genesis in small business.

The development of new enterprises depends on many factors, including the hopes, dreams, and hard work that have always characterized America's entrepreneurs. But it also depends on a climate hospitable to small business-a climate marked by a lack of government interference in the marketplace; low taxes; low interest rates; and the basic freedom to strive for and create progress, prosperity, and opportunity for ourselves and our fellow Americans. Government, the servant of the people, must make sure that it does not harm that climate, which is so necessary to our Nation's well-being and future.

The small business men and women of our land truly follow a great heritage and foster good for America.

Now, therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of May 8 through May 14, 1988, as Small Business Week, and I urge all Americans to join with me in saluting our small business men and women by observing that week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 4:51 p.m., February 2, 1988]