PUBLIC LAW 98-8 —MAR. 24, 1983 97 STAT. 13 Public Law 98-8 98th Congress An Act Making appropriations to provide productive employment for hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans, to hasten or initiate Federal projects and construction of lasting value to the Nation and its citizens, and to provide humanitarian assistance to the indigent for fiscal year 1983, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following sums are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, for the fiscal year 1983, and for other purposes in order to increase the wealth of the Nation, putting women and men back to productive work made necessary by the conditions described as follows: Mar. 24, 1983 [H.R. 1718] Emergency jobs appropriations. TITLE I—MEETING OUR ECONOMIC PROBLEMS WITH ESSENTIAL AND PRODUCTIVE JOBS CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS It is the sense of the Congress that the continued economic recession has resulted in nearly fourteen million unemployed Americans, including those no longer searching for work, rivaling the actual numbers of unemployed during the Great Depression. Other millions work only part-time due to the lack of full-time gainful employment. The annual cost of unemployment compensa- tion has reached the staggering total of $32,000,000,000. The hard- ships occasioned by the recession have been much more severe in terms of duration of unemployment and reduced percentage of unemployed receiving jobless benefits than in previous recessions. Actual filings of business related bankruptcies for the year ending June 30, 1982, reached a total of seventy-seven thousand as com- pared with a prior year figure of sixty-six thousand. Business fail- ures are up 49 per centum compared to one year ago. Delinquencies are many times greater. The American farmers are more than $215,000,000,000 in debt. Hundreds of thousands of farmers are faced with bankruptcy. It is essential that interest rates, which have been reduced follow- ing a General Accounting Office investigation of the Federal Re- serve System at the request of the Committee on Appropriations on April 26, 1982, continue at present or lower rates with due regard for controlling inflation so as not to have an opposite effect of driving interest rates upward for business, industrial and agricul- tural recovery. Under these circumstances, the Congress finds that a program to provide for neglected needs of the Nation which results in produc- tive jobs, and to provide humanitarian assistance to the indigent and homeless, to be very strongly in the national interest.
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