[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 46 (Monday, November 22, 1999)]
[Page 2404]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 7253--National Family Week, 1999

November 19, 1999

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    Families are the foundation of our individual lives and the life of 
our Nation. We turn to our families for the nurturing, guidance, and 
unconditional love that sustain us; from them we learn the values and 
convictions that sustain our society.
    I am proud of my Administration's commitment to providing families 
with the resources they need to flourish. We have strengthened family 
incomes through the Child Tax Credit and by increasing the minimum wage 
and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and today the yearly income 
of a typical American family is higher than it has ever been in our 
Nation's history. We have opened the doors of higher education by making 
student loans less expensive and easier to repay and by providing new 
tax credits and larger Pell Grant scholarships. We are also working to 
ensure that parents have access to quality and affordable child care for 
their children. These and other family-friendly policies, such as the 
Family and Medical Leave Act I signed into law in 1993, have helped 
parents to balance the demands of work and family and have brought 
increased financial security, expanded opportunity, and renewed hope for 
the future to families across America.
    As we look to that future, we must not forget our rich history. We 
are fast approaching the dawn of a new millennium, and my Administration 
is marking this historic milestone with family-oriented programs that 
honor the past and imagine the future. Through ``My History is America's 
History,'' a project sponsored by the White House Millennium Council and 
the National Endowment for the Humanities, we are encouraging our 
Nation's families to rediscover America's history by recording and 
preserving their own stories and passing them on to the next generation. 
Through remembered conversations, restored photographs, treasured 
letters, diaries, or other keepsakes, each family can recognize and 
preserve its part in America's rich and complex story and give a 
priceless gift to the future.
    As we gather in our homes once again at this time of thanksgiving, 
let us recognize that the family members who surround us are among the 
most precious blessings in our lives, and let us pledge to keep their 
stories alive for the benefit of generations to come.
    Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, 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 November 
21 through November 27, 1999, as National Family Week. I call upon 
Federal, State, and local officials to honor American families with 
appropriate programs and activities, and I urge all the people of the 
United States to reaffirm their family ties and to share their family 
histories.
    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day 
of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, 
and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred 
and twenty-fourth.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., November 22, 
1999]

Note: This proclamation will be published in the Federal Register on 
November 23.