Proclamation 6470—National Consumers Week, 1992

American consumers enjoy access to a marketplace of goods and services that is unparalleled in terms of variety and quality. This thriving marketplace has been made possible by our Nation's free enterprise system, which provides opportunities and incentives for businesses to improve productivity and performance while generating the competition and accountability that lead to greater options for consumers. During National Consumers Week, we recognize that the decisions that consumers make help to encourage innovation and technological progress, thereby spurring our Nation's economy.

The theme of this year's observance, "Operation Wise Buy," underscores the fact that educated, informed, and responsible consumers have an important role to play in ensuring the success of our free enterprise system. Education, of course, begins at home: where we choose safe, healthy foods and products, where we teach our children the value of saving and investing for the future, and where we help them develop the knowledge and skills that are necessary to perform basic tasks such as reading labels and following written instructions, comparing costs and balancing a checkbook, and protecting themselves against fraud. By instruction and example, we can help our children to become wise, responsible consumers.

Recognizing the rights and interests of consumers as well as the impact that their choices have on the marketplace, the United States has been working to empower consumers of all social and economic backgrounds through education. By supporting consumer education and basic economic instruction in schools and other institutions, and by encouraging the dissemination of consumer-related news and information through government agencies, civic organizations, business, and the media, we are giving consumers the tools they need to navigate successfully through the increasingly complex global marketplace.

Here in the United States, we have traditionally relied on consumers and private industry to balance each other's needs and interests in the marketplace, with government intervening only when it is required to ensure fairness and the safety of goods and services. As history shows, the strongest economies are those marked not by excessive government regulation, but by a philosophy of government, businesses, and consumers working together to build a brighter future for all.

Now, Therefore, I, George Bush, 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 beginning October 25, 1992, as National Consumers Week. I encourage all Americans -- particularly business owners, educators, public officials, consumer advocates and members of the media -- to observe this week with appropriate programs and activities that emphasize the role that consumers play in keeping our markets open, competitive, and fair. I also urge them to highlight the importance of education in helping citizens to become responsible consumers.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and seventeenth.

GEORGE BUSH