The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is away on visits to public television stations and a book tour. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then Senators Kyl and Leahy debate the future of the detention prison on Guantanamo Bay; new reports track the growth of HIV in the United States; Paul Solman looks at the income cap solution for Social Security; and the split in big labor gets wider.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: Suicide bombers in Central Iraq killed at least 36 people today, most of them Iraqi security personnel. In Khalis near Baqouba, a man in an Iraqi army uniform blew himself up in a mess tent filled with soldiers. At least 26 people died in that attack. Hours later in Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed ten people when he rammed two police cars. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the mess hall attack. Also in Baghdad today, a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol freed an Australian hostage. Douglas Wood, a 64-year-old engineer, was abducted in late April. He was found hidden under a blanket inside a house in a Sunni district of the capital. His captors told soldiers he was their sick father. An Iraqi hostage was also freed. Three insurgents were arrested. In Australia, Prime Minister Howard welcomed the news.

PRIME MINISTER JOHN HOWARD: I understand that he is well; he is undergoing medical checks at the present time. I know that all Australians will be jubilant at this news. This man has suffered immensely and I want on behalf of all of the parliament to pay tribute to the dignity and strength of his family.

RAY SUAREZ: The Australian government refused to meet the kidnappers' demands that its 1,400 troops leave Iraq. Officials insisted no ransom had been paid for Wood's release. Back in this country, senators argued over what rights should be granted to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The hearing came in response to recent criticisms about the treatment and conditions of prisoners held there. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy called the facility " an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and remains a festering threat to our security." The Deputy Associate Attorney General, J. Michael Wiggins, defended the Bush administration's policy. He said: "It's our position that legally (the detainees) can be held in perpetuity." We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. New information came to light today concerning Iran's disputed nuclear program. Wire service reports say Tehran acknowledged to U.N. weapons inspectors last month that it experimented with small quantities of plutonium as late as 1998. That's three years later than previously admitted. The International Atomic Energy Agency could release the report as early as tomorrow. Autopsy results released today found that Terri Schiavo had massive and irrevocable brain damage. She was also blind and there were no signs of abuse. The 41-year-old Schiavo died in March after her husband won a legal battle with her parents over the removal of her feeding tube. Pinellas county medical examiner Jon Thogmartin said she died of dehydration and not starvation. There was no chance her condition could have improved.

JON THOGMARTIN: Her brain was profoundly atrophied. The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain. This was due to diffuse hypoxic ischemic damage. There was massive neuronal loss or death. This damage was irreversible and no amount of treatment would have regenerated the massive losses of neurons.

RAY SUAREZ: The autopsy findings were consistent with her husband's contention that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. The cause of her original collapse was left undetermined. A Food & Drug Administration staff review found a new heart- failure drug, Bidil, reduced deaths and hospitalizations in African-Americans. Nitromed, the company that makes Bidil, is specifically targeting the medicine to black patients. An advisory panel meets tomorrow to decide whether to recommend it for FDA approval. Five of the nation's largest labor unions moved closer to breaking away from the AFL- CIO today. The heads of the affiliate announced the formation of the Change to Win Coalition. In Washington, Teamsters president James Hoffa said the coalition was formed to bolster union membership rolls.

JAMES HOFFA: We can either stay and do what we've been doing for the past 20 years and I think everybody agrees that not working. The number of people -- our density in the labor movement is every day in the work force. We must change the way we do things. Our union is changing and the AFL-CIO must change also.

RAY SUAREZ: We'll have more the labor story later in the program. In economic news, consumer prices fell in May for the first time in nearly a year. The Labor Department reported today prices fell 0.1 percent last month, led by a 2 percent drop in energy costs. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 18 points to close at 10,566. The NASDAQ rose more than five points to close just under 2075. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, HIV in the U.S., the Social Security shortfall, and a labor family split.

FOCUS - SHUTDOWN?

RAY SUAREZ: Now the escalating debate over what to do about the American prison in Guantanamo and the detainees who are being held there. Kwame Holman begins our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: In recent weeks, there has been growing debate over whether Guantanamo Bay should be shut down. It follows allegations of abuse of the Quran, which sparked bloody riots in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And most recently, a leaked interrogation log from the prison described controversial tactics used on the suspected 20th 9/11 hijacker. Vice President Cheney and other top officials of the Bush administration have defended the prison.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: If we didn't have that facility at Guantanamo to undertake this activity, we'd have to have it someplace else because they're a vital source of intelligence information. They've given us useful information that has been used in pursuing our aims and objectives in the war on terror.

KWAME HOLMAN: Today, Congress entered the debate. Several Senate Democrats, including Vermont's Patrick Leahy, repeated concerns about the treatment of the detainees, as the Judiciary Committee launched into a review of the administration's legal procedures at Guantanamo.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Guantanamo Bay is an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and it remains a festering threat to our security.

KWAME HOLMAN: However, committee chairman Arlen Specter reminded senators the purpose of today's hearing was not to recount the recent charges of abuse, but for Congress to develop the legal framework for holding and questioning prisoners.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: The focus of today's hearing is going to be on the procedures used with detainees. We do not have within the scope of this hearing the issues of torture or mistreatment.

KWAME HOLMAN: And on the first panel of witnesses, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, speaking for the Department of Defense, assured members that the more than 500 prisoners at the camp were being afforded legal protection.

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: The rules of evidence and procedure established for trials by military commission compare favorably to those being used in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. These rules are consistent with our national commitment to adhere to the rule of law.

KWAME HOLMAN: Ohio Republican Mike DeWine asked Gen. Hemingway why it was taking so long to prosecute the detainees, noting that many have been imprisoned for more than three years.

SEN. MIKE DeWINE: Explain to me, you know, what's going on here? This seems to be a horribly slow process.

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: Well, in the first place, the primary reason that we hold people is to get them off the battlefield, and secondarily to gain intelligence.

SEN. MIKE DeWINE: I understand that.

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: Until the intelligence effort has concluded on any particular detainee, the law enforcement effort really doesn't commence. Once we know that the intelligence people have finished in their analysis of the individual, we look at what they have collected and make a determination whether or not this individual is a candidate for trial by military commission.

KWAME HOLMAN: Hemmingway noted that 23 detainees have been released to date. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein cited the case of a specific Guantanamo detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard and driver. Although he's been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes against the U.S., Hamdan is not accused of taking part in any specific act of violence.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: He's been there four months in isolation, contrary to Geneva Convention, and he could be there, essentially, forever. That's what... how I interpret what you've said. If it's different, please tell me.

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: Well, he is not being held contrary to the Geneva Convention. He's being held humanely.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: In isolation --

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: And it's my understanding that he is in the general population at Guantanamo Bay.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Let me ask you this. So pre-commission, housing in solitary for seven months is not a violation of the Geneva Convention?

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: I wouldn't consider the conditions under which he was held to be solitary confinement. I've seen the facilities. From what the people at Guantanamo Bay have told me about the conditions and the treatment he received, I wouldn't call it solitary confinement. He was removed from the general population, but I would not call what he was in solitary confinement.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Would you call it isolation?

BRIG. GEN. THOMAS HEMINGWAY: I would call it segregation.

KWAME HOLMAN: Appearing frustrated by the Democratic charges of abuse, Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions weighed in.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: This country is not systematically abusing prisoners. We have no policy to do so and it's wrong to suggest that, and it puts our soldiers at risk who are in battle because we sent them there and we have an obligation to them not to make the situation worse than it is. If we made errors, we'll bring them up and prosecute people.

KWAME HOLMAN: During the hearing, just one senator, Democrat Edward Kennedy, called for closing down Guantanamo. Late today, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed reports there have been discussions within the Bush administration about doing just that.

RAY SUAREZ: Margaret Warner has more.

MARGARET WARNER: And with me are two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who took part in today's hearing. Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat. Welcome to you both.

Sen. Leahy, as we just saw you began the hearing very critical of what's going on at Guantanamo, but after hearing from different Defense Department and Justice Department witnesses, were you reassured at all that in fact these detainees are being afforded the proper level of legal rights and legal protection?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: We have an awful lot of questions left on the table. One of the basic questions I asked the military, how many people do we have down there? He said well, approximately... I said exactly how many. "Well, we don't know; around 500 and some odd." I said, "Where are they from?" Are they all from Afghanistan? There's 40 some nationalities. I said, "Do they come from other countries?" "Well, here and there." I'd like more specific answers. The question isn't Guantanamo by itself. Obviously, if we're holding people, we're going to hold them somewhere. The question that the rest of the world keeps asking this nation, this great nation of ours is what is this legal limbo they're being held in? How do you get them out of that legal limbo? And I hope that the hearing may have pushed us closer to finding a way to have something other than this legal limbo.

MARGARET WARNER: But do you feel from what you heard today that they are in a sort of legal limbo?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: I believe they are. And when you go three years -- first they said they wanted to have military tribunals because they would be quicker. It went three years; you didn't have a single military tribunal. There is no plan exactly how they're going to be handled. We, Both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have offered to sit down with the administration and write legislation that would give them such a plan. I think it's way, way overdue.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Sen. Kyl, what was your reaction to today's hearing? Did you feel the Defense Department and Justice Department had an appropriate legal framework, or do you think these detainees are in a kind of legal limbo?

SEN. JON KYL: Well, they are not in a legal limbo any more than any other prisoners in any other war were in limbo when they were captured. The concept here of capturing people in the battlefield is to get them in a position where they can't cause you anymore harm. And, secondly, for those who can give you good intelligence information, obtain that information, too, to prevent further harm to your troops or to civilians in the case of terrorists. That's the purpose for detaining these prisoners, these combatants who were shooting at our troops. Now, there are some who believe that they should be tried. Tried for what? You don't try prisoners of war. You hold them until the conflict is over with. There are some who have been accused of war crimes or who will be accused of war crimes. They will receive trials through military commissions that have been set up and the rules of procedure for those have been described. And they're complete and thorough. And I don't know of anybody who is suggesting here this evening that those rules are not appropriate. What has happened is that the U.S. Supreme Court has said that because Guantanamo is under U.S. control, some rules relating to U.S. procedures apply, including habeas corpus, which means that the people have a right to have their status reviewed. And after that ruling, the status of every one of these detainees was reviewed. Some of them were released as a result of that review. But the kind of people who remain held are terrorist trainers, bomb makers, extremist recruiters and financers, bodyguards of Osama bin Laden, would-be suicide bombers, folks like this. They're the ones that continue to be held -- not in limbo as if they have some right to determination and trial by jury or something, but being held until this conflict over with so they don't cause any more harm.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that what you are saying, Sen. Leahy, that these people deserve a trial by jury? Why isn't the kind of hearing they have enough?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: We could set up hearings, but the Constitution says, and it's very clear, the Congress will make rules concerning captures on land and water. We haven't made any rules on this. We've offered to sit down. They've gone outside the Geneva Convention and some points they'll say it applies, other points it doesn't. Let us make a very clear statement to the rest of the world what they are. If they're going to say we are going to hold them until hostilities are over, if hostilities are defined as being under a terror threat, that's going to happen for the rest of our life. Do we hold them for the rest of our life? And then the idea that they were caught on a battlefield. Some were. Some were turned over to us by bounty hunters who may have had other reasons... and when they tell us... first they talk about they're all from Afghanistan. Then they say wait a minute, there are 40 different nationalities. They may be from other countries. We're sorry, we don't know where they're from.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me cut to the larger issue here that has come up a lot. And I'll stay with you, Sen. Leahy, and then to you, Sen. Kyle. Some members of the Senate, Sen. Kennedy on your side of the aisle, have said it is time to just shut Guantanamo down; it's become too much of an embarrassment and a lightning rod for criticism internationally. Are you for shutting it down?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Both Republican and Democrats have said that; the president's own cabinet is now saying we are considering that. What I'm far more interested is not so much Guantanamo but saying to the rest of the world we have rules and we're going to follow rules. Today we do not. I don't care what anybody says. We do not have rules, not consistent rules.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Kyl, what is your view? Sen. Martinez, a Republican of Florida, has also called for shutting it down. What's your view on that?

SEN. JON KYL: I don't know that he has called for shutting it down. I think we need to be careful about exactly what people have said about studying the issue or looking into it. But it absolutely should not be shut down. We spent a lot of money, I think over $150 million to construct a really good facility for holding people, a facility in which they are treated very well. They are not abused. The Geneva Convention Accords have not been violated, I repeat not violated and therefore there is no point in shutting this facility down. Senator Leahy is right about one thing. The question is not about the facility. If you didn't hold them there, you would have to hold them someplace else. The question is what are the appropriate procedures? And I also concur it would be perfectly appropriate for Congress to write those procedures but we haven't done so. If we do so, they will presumably apply. In the meantime, the United States Military and Department of Justice responding to the United States Supreme Court decision, has established the procedures under the combat status review tribunals as well as the military commissioners that try those cases where there is actually an allegation of a war crime or a crime that has been committed.

MARGARET WARNER: So Sen. Kyl, staying with you, would you support Sen. Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee who said today he did think that in fact you all, beginning with your committee and then the full Senate and the Congress, should, in fact, get into this now, not just leave it to the Defense Department and the courts?

SEN. JON KYL: I would support that. But I do it not on the basis that somebody up to now has been doing it all wrong, but rather because we have that authority and I would rather, for to us do it than to have the courts try to sort it all out. Just bear a couple other things in mind here to put it in perspective. The idea here is to try to separate out those who need to be held from those who could be released. Well, we released a bunch of them and guess what? Twelve of them, at least that we picked up subsequently, went right back to fighting us again. And, again, the point of keeping prisoners during a conflict is so that they don't go back and hurt your people again. And the war on terror, it is true; they don't all come from Afghanistan. They come from a lot of places in the world and you don't know where they are going to strike.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Sen. Leahy, if the Congress were to get into writing new rules, and you'd be obviously involved in this, are you saying that these detainees should be thought of as Sen. Kyl does, as essentially - they're not - he didn't use the term "prisoners of war," but as enemy combatants in a time of war, or are you saying they're entitled to the full rights of criminal defendants in our system, including the right to see the evidence against them?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: I'm saying that they have rights far beyond what we have said. We are, after all, the nation that justly deserves a reputation of being the nation that follows the rule of law more than any other nation. We are not doing it here. I think we have to show the rest of world not that we say, well, we can hold them forever so long as there's any terror threat, well, that will last throughout your lifetime and my lifetime, but rather say, we are saying for procedure, we are either going to charge them with something or we are going to release them. Some, we are now finding, were picked up, not because they acted again us, but now that they have been held for several years, I suspect they have a great deal of resentment against the United States and they may be against us.

MARGARET WARNER: You are saying they need to be charged...

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Charged or released. Basically it comes down... a simplification would be charge them or get rid of them. The idea of holding them for the rest of their lifetime makes no sense. One of the administration witnesses said today they could be held indefinitely, be held forever. That is not the signal we want to send the rest of the world.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Kyl, are you saying we could, the U.S. could hold them in perpetuity?

SEN. JON KYL: Well, sure. That's been the case with every war. You wait until the war is over to release the prisoners. This is not sport fishing, you know, catch and release. This is serious business. What would you charge them with - that they were fighting us and that they might fight us again and you're going to go back and find somebody that was in Afghanistan, this guy, and have him come testify that yeah, if he were released, he would probably fight again - in no conflict ever - just take World War II, for example, did we ever try anybody. We never charged the German POW's and tried them; we simply held them until the end of the war was over. And that's the same thing here.

MARGARET WARNER: When do you think it war will be over? I mean, do you agree with Sen. Leahy, that it could be your lifetime, all of our lifetime?

SEN. JON KYL: Well, I don't think the war on terror is going to last that long. But let's assume that it's going to last a long time. Obviously, as time goes on, we have to make a determination. There is an annual review of every one of these people as to whether they still pose a risk. Based on that review, they are either retained - detained, or they're released. As I said, unfortunately, twelve of the people who have been released went right back to fighting us again. So we made a mistake there. But if we can conduct that review and we determine that the people are no longer a threat to us, I'm all for releasing them. Until then, you need to detain them.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen. We have to leave it there. Thank you both.

SEN. JON KYL: You're welcome.

FOCUS - TRACKING AIDS

RAY SUAREZ: For the first times since AIDS was discovered more than 20 years the number of Americans living with HIV infection has surpassed 1 million. That's according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention released this week at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta. The study also found that one quarter of those living with HIV are unaware of their infection; nearly half are African-American; and three quarters of those infected are male.

To discuss what's behind these numbers, we're joined by, Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, deputy director of CDC's National Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention; and Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute.

Dr. Valdiserri, that number, 1 million, it's kind of staggering. What does that stat tell you? And is there both good news and bad news embedded in that number?

DR. RONALD VALDISERRI: Well, what it tells us is that because of the improvements in treatments for HIV, that Americans are living longer than ever before and that is certainly very good news. However, when we think about the increase of people living longer combined with a relatively stable rate of new infections, what that translates into is more and more people living with HIV. And what that tells the public health community is that we need to really begin focusing our prevention efforts on people who are living with HIV to help them ensure they don't pass that virus on to their partners.

RAY SUAREZ: The report says about 40,000 new people are infected every year. What do we know about those new cases? Who are they? How do they contract the disease?

DR. RONALD VALDISERRI: That's our current estimate. And based on the best available information that we have right now, we know that African Americans are overrepresented in the overall burden of HIV infection in the United States. HIV is increasingly a disease of women, though men still account for most of the infections in the United States. And we know that male-to-male sex contact is still a very significant mode of transmission in the U.S.

RAY SUAREZ: Phill Wilson, that incidence, thathigher incidence of African Americans, it's not a close call; it's ten times higher among black Americans than whites. How do you explain that?

PHILL WILSON: Well, I think there are a number of issues at play here. First of all, the African American is community is still suffering from the misconception that HIV is still a white disease and as a result, people don't believe it is a problem that they have to deal with. Secondly, there is not the kind of infrastructure and capacity needed to fight the disease in black communities.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there something about the way that it is being spread? Who is picking up the infection that makes this population particularly vulnerable?

PHILL WILSON: There are three populations particularly vulnerable in the African American community: Men who have sex with men, women and young people. Among women with AIDS in America black women represent over 60 percent of the new HIV AIDS cases in this country. Black gay men still represent over 30 percent of the new HIV AIDS cases among gay men and over 50 percent of the new cases are young adults. And of that population, over 60 percent of them are black. So young people, gay people, women, poor people, are all particularly impacted by the disease.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there women who are contracting HIV from male partners who, without their knowledge, are having sex with other men?

PHILL WILSON: Well, that is an issue that we have been dealing with for sometime now. There is not sufficient data to tell us how big of a problem that is in driving the epidemic among women. The causes of the epidemic among black women tend to be drug use and increasingly heterosexual contact.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Valdiserri, you mentioned at the beginning the fact that people are living successfully and living longer with HIV these days. Has that in any way contributed to the abandonment by some people of the vigilance, the safe sex practices that had been preached to people so heavily in the '80s and '90s?

DR. RONALD VALDISERRI: Yes, there is certainly substantial evidence that complacency about HIV AIDS, some of which is due to the fact that it's no longer the immediate death sentence that it once was, that some of that complacency is in fact contributing to individuals not being as safe as they might be. I think it's important to point out though, that improved treatments are not the cause of the situation. It's the perception, unfortunately, of the American public at large, and also people who are at risk for HIV that this is no longer a serious health problem in the United States. And conferences like the one we just concluded in Atlanta are very important opportunities to get the word out to remind all of America that HIV AIDS remains a very, very serious health problem.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, it's interesting that you say that because while, on the one hand, you say that the word is not out there in quite the same way, that there is not this perception that contracting HIV is a death sentence, is there anybody 20 plus years on who doesn't realize that a certain set of practices can lead to an infection that creates havoc in your life?

DR. RONALD VALDISERRI: Well certainly young people today know more about HIV than they did in the early '90s, but I think it is very important to make a distinction between having a basic knowledge about HIV AIDS and having the skills and attitudes and beliefs that one needs to practice safer behaviors. It is true that people need to have accurate information. But accurate information alone is not going to result in safer behaviors -- so many, for instance, so many of the studies are showing that among African American gay and bisexual men who are infected with HIV, they don't perceive that they were at risk for HIV. Now do they know what the virus is and do they know how it was transmitted? Yes. But what we have to do is a better job of making sure that our programs help people identify their own individual risks so that they can take action to protect themselves and protect their partners.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Phill Wilson, the report indicates that a tremendous percentage of bisexual and gay African Americans are already infected, and that many of the transmitters didn't know they were infected. So what's the public health prescription at that point? Do you start prescribing to all gay and bisexual men that they at least get tested and know their status?

PHILL WILSON: I definitely advocate that people know their HIV status. Knowing your status can save your life. But I also think that we also need to focus on the fact that we know that HIV is spreading in this population and yet we are investing fewer dollars today on prevention than we were last year or the year before. So while we have more people living for a longer period of time and a greater need of targeted prevention, we have fewer resources to address the problem.

RAY SUAREZ: Do you think that this report accurately captured the status of the community that you are advocating for?

PHILL WILSON: I think that the report does accurately characterize the scope of the epidemic among black men who have sex with men. What is alarming is that these numbers are unprecedented anywhere on the planet, that when you look at the hardest hit parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, you don't see numbers that are equal to the numbers that we are finding among young black gay men in America.

RAY SUAREZ: So what's the prescription, Dr. Valdiserri, from your point of view? What are the action points going forward from here?

DR. RONALD VALDISERRI: Well, I think what Phill said makes a lot of sense. I think it is important that we remind everyone that there is no single solution to this problem and that when we're talking about stopping the epidemic, we have to employ a comprehensive approach using a variety of approaches. Certainly, getting people to learn their serostatus, to find out whether or not they're infected is extremely important. You started off this segment by the very sobering statistic that a about a quarter of the million people infected with HIV in the United States don't even know that they're infected. Certainly this is not good from a medical point of view because it means they're not accessing lifesaving treatment. But it's also a very serious problem from a public health point of view because likely many of these individuals are spreading the virus unknowingly. They don't know that they're infected; they're not taking steps to prevent the spread of the virus. So certainly early diagnosis is important; it is not the only action that we need to take. We need to invest in efforts to work with people once they're diagnosed, to provide them information and support to maintain safer behaviors. And we have to continue to work with very high risk groups who are not infected to make sure that they don't become so.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Valdiserri, Phill Wilson, gentlemen, thank you both.

FOCUS - LIFTING THE CAP

RAY SUAREZ: Still to come, Social Security's funding problems, and a labor family feud. Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston, has been looking at possible changes to the Social Security system. Tonight, he explores the question of whether some taxes could be raised to close the funding gap. Here is his report.

PAUL SOLMAN: Earlier this year, we produced two stories on ways to close the projected Social Security funding gap, discussing them with young working students at a Boston community college. One way was to raise the retirement age; a second, to decrease benefits. We explained and then took votes. The proposals were rejected resoundingly. But there was another response.

SPOKESPERSON: I always enjoy Mr. Solman's features.

PAUL SOLMAN: We got a fair number of viewer e-mails, including several like this one.

SPOKESPERSON: I hope you have another segment on the possibility of raising the cap at which we stop paying the tax. Sincerely, Genevieve Leblanc, Eugene, Oregon.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, Ms. Leblanc, since you went to the trouble of dramatically reenacting your e- mail for us, the least we could was look into your question: What about closing the funding shortfall by lifting the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes? ("Pomp and Circumstance" playing ) and where better to ask about caps, we thought, than here: Commencement at Columbia University, where the typical graduate is likely to out earn the income cap eventually, and graduating MBA's, according to last year's numbers, will start out-earning the cap right away with an average starting salary of -- get this -- $143,682 a year. So we rounded up a group of MBA's and their parents for a mini-symposium with economist Stephen Zeldes, an expert on the financing of Social Security.

STEPHEN P. ZELDES: Right now, you pay 12.4 percent of earnings up to a cap of $90,000. That is split between employee and employer, but no taxes are collected on any earnings over $90,000 per person.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now the income cap on the payroll tax has risen slowly since 1982, indexed to average earnings. If earnings continue to rise, as in the past, the cap would rise but not nearly enough to keep pace with projected Social Security benefits. Removing the cap entirely, thereby imposing a flat tax of 12.4 percent on all earnings - essentially a $100 billion a year tax increase on the wealthy-- would more than completely close the funding gap. Even lifting the tax cap today to, say, $150,000 by using a different index would solve more than half the problem. But such calculations beg the question: Why was there a cap in the first place? Well, Social Security was controversial when it was first created. President Roosevelt was careful to sell it as insurance, not welfare.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-stricken old age.

PAUL SOLMAN: But to some of the wealthy, this must have sounded like welfare, which their Social Security taxes would be paying for. To get them on board, an upper limit was placed on income subject to the Social Security tax.

PAUL SOLMAN: Can I ask you one quick question. You just put him on hold for just a second?

MAN: Okay.

PAUL SOLMAN: To most people though, at least on and below the sidewalks of New York, raising the income tax cap on Social Security seemed an obvious solution.

MAN ON STREET: There shouldn't be a cap on it. Everyone should pay. Up as high... as long as you're making the money, you should have to pay on it.

WOMAN: That makes a lot of sense.

MAN: Yes, of course, because then it would help the lesser person.

WOMAN: I'd be in favor to lift it.

MAN ON STREET: It's just a tiny, little bit that richer people have to pay and they won't feel it.

PAUL SOLMAN: So if you made $500,000 a year, you think you wouldn't mind paying an extra $50,000-$60,000 for Social Security?

MAN ON STREET: So that all the people can be safe? Yes, I wouldn't mind.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now most of those we spoke with probably made less than $90,000 a year. Maybe class resentment was a factor here. And, of course, we were in New York, perhaps the bluest city in the bluest state. But a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in February, found that two-thirds of Americans supported applying a Social Security tax on all income. And at Columbia, folks who'll obviously be affected by a rise in the tax cap, supported it almost as enthusiastically as those out on the street.

PAUL SOLMAN: How many people are in favor of at least raising the cap to $150,000? (hands raised) There was, however, an articulate holdout.

ADRIAN JONES, Graduate, Columbia Business School: Certainly you can't tax just a tiny portion of the people to get yourselves out of this problem.

PAUL SOLMAN: You can. You mean you shouldn't.

ADRIAN JONES: But... correct. (Laughter) I'm not a part of that population right now, but...

PAUL SOLMAN: But you hope to be.

ADRIAN JONES: I hope to be, yes. (Laughter) Between now and 2045, I hope to have a few years where I'll be in that part of the population.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, it turns out, does one our dozen or so interviews out on the street.

PAUL SOLMAN: You want there to be a ceiling?

MAN ON STREET: Yeah.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because maybe you'll be making that kind of money, yes?

MAN ON STREET: Almost. (Laughter)

PAUL SOLMAN: An important reminder, then, from our man in the van and the freshly minted MBA in the back row: Some people hope they are going to be wealthy and think the American dream involves not being penalized for it.

SPOKESMAN: That's what makes the country great, is that we're all optimistic and that we think that we're going to reach that bracket, whether we make it or not.

PAUL SOLMAN: So everybody thinks they're that fellow up there and it's a good thing they think that?

SPOKESPERSON: Everyone strives to be what that guy hopes he will be. ( Laughter )

ADRIAN JONES: I feel a little bit less isolated now. ( Laughter )

PAUL SOLMAN: Reminiscent of President Roosevelt's worries about alienating the wealthy, there were two other arguments against raising the income cap without raising benefits commensurate with the higher taxes.

JAY WEISS, Parent: "A", I think it's unfair, and "b", I think it's going to create an incredible incentive for people to find a way to beat that system. What you are describing is a system where the person pays in and gets nothing back at the end on that level there, and I think that's where you'll lose people.

STEPHEN ZELDES: One of the reasons that even the democrats are concerned about breaking the link between contributions and benefits is, is exactly this: That they're worried about losing the political base for Social Security.

PAUL SOLMAN: Of course fairness is in the eye of the beholder, as even people who'd probably be subject to the increased taxes were at pains to point out.

MICHAEL ROBINSON, Graduate, Columbia Business School: If one is a teacher, a fireman or a police officer, all your income is going to be under the Social Security tax. But if you're a managing director at Goldman Sachs and so on, only a very small percentage of your income is goingto be under that tax.

PAUL SOLMAN: So his notion of fairness, in other words, is it's not fair that you make a million dollars a year and you only pay Social Security taxes on $90,000 of it. Whereas if you made $50,000 a year, you're much closer to the bone and you're paying taxes on...

MICHAEL ROBINSON: Everything you earn. Everything you earn.

PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, high earners get a lot of their income not from pay, but from investments on which there's no payroll tax at all.

GINA GELD, Parent: You don't have any Social Security on stocks, bonds, capital gains, etc. And a lot of the higher income individuals got a substantial tax break under this administration. So we have already given benefits to the people who are in the higher brackets.

PAUL SOLMAN: But wait a minute. What if we raised the cap on payroll taxes, and at the same, time hiked Social Security benefits for high earners?

MICHAEL ROBINSON: I'm fine with the benefit adjustment for people who are rich.

PAUL SOLMAN: And you think that's fair?

MICHAEL ROBINSON: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: And you think that's not fair?

ADRIAN JONES: If you got benefits on the full, you know, however many million, and if those benefits were, you know, level with what other people get in their benefits, then it might be more acceptable.

PAUL SOLMAN: But even if most of these folks, and most Americans, don't seem to buy the arguments against raising the cap, they may have to acknowledge one made by economist Zeldes: That taxing the rich could have unintended economic consequences. Such as:

STEPHEN ZELDES: That people supply less labor. They work less because more of their labor income is being taxed. So there's a disincentive, perhaps, not to work as much.

PAUL SOLMAN: And a disincentive for employers to hire workers making more than $90,000 a year since employers pick up half of the payroll tax tab.

ADRIAN JONES: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you raise the costs to employ someone, then you're going to have fewer people who are going to be employed.

PAUL SOLMAN: At the end of the day, there were, as usual here on the NewsHour as in life, arguments on both sides of the debate over raising the cap on payroll taxes.

MUSIC: Start spreading the news...

PAUL SOLMAN: But there's one final point to make and it concerns the trend toward income inequality. That is: High earners have been reaping almost all the economic gains of recent years, yet those gains haven't been shared with Social Security.

MUSIC: And find I'm a-number one top of the list...

PAUL SOLMAN: As folks at the top earn more and more, Zeldes explained with slides, a growing share of total U.S. Income is exempted from payroll taxes.

STEPHEN ZELDES: It's now 15 percent. It used to be 10 percent.

PAUL SOLMAN: And this trend is exacerbating the looming shortfall in Social Security. I've read people saying the fact that so much of the money is now exempt from Social Security taxes is part of the reason Social Security is under-funded. Is that true?

STEPHEN ZELDES: Yes. The greater the growth of wages of those under the Social Security earnings cap, the less of a problem we have moving forward for Social Security.

PAUL SOLMAN: How to get more wages under the cap? Well, it turns out that raising the cap to $150,000 today would get us back to the historical average: Taxing 90 percent of total U.S. wages instead of only 85 percent as we do right now. It's a proposition our very non-random New York sample seemed to favor, but perhaps because it would raise taxes on the highest American income earners and give them an incentive to oppose or evade the Social Security system, it's a proposition that hasn't seemed to find much favor in the world of politics.

FOCUS - LABOR PAINS

RAY SUAREZ: Jeffrey Brown looks at the big problems facing organized labor and its own internal fight for the future of the movement.

SPOKESMAN: I turn this gavel over to the next president of the AFL- CIO, John Sweeney. ( Applause )

JEFFREY BROWN: Ten years ago, John Sweeney took over as president of the AFL-CIO. He was widely regarded as a reformer who could help revitalize the labor movement. Sweeney spoke to the NewsHour's Jeffrey Kaye in 1997.

JOHN SWEENEY: I believe that the work that you see the unions and the AFL-CIO doing now and organizing is an indication that we're going to turn the numbers around and the... you will see a steady building of a stronger labor movement.

JEFFREY BROWN: But the long- running decline of the labor movement has only continued. In the 1950s, unions represented about 35 percent of the American workforce. Today, just 13 percent of workers belong to a union and in the private sector just 8 percent. Now, a rift is developing within big labor itself, over its future direction, and perhaps, survival. The Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, the largest of the AFL-CIO'S members, has threatened to leave the labor federation unless dramatic changes are made. In Washington today, SEIU President Andrew Stern was joined by the heads of four other unions to announce the formation of a new group called the Change to Win Coalition, demanding, among other things, much stronger organizing efforts by the AFL-CIO.

ANDREW STERN, President, Service Employees International Union: Our goal here is to build something stronger, and that is just what we did here today. We made a commitment that we go well past the AFL-CIO regardless of what happens and regardless of what each individual union decides to do, that we've decided that we need a labor movement that grows stronger, not smaller.

JEFFREY BROWN: The five coalition members represent five million of the nation's 13 million union workers. They'll now take their demands to next month's AFL-CIO annual convention, when John Sweeney will run for a new term as president.

JEFFREY BROWN: And joining us now to discuss labor's struggle is Charles Heckscher, director of the Center for Workplace Transformation at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. And Jonathan Tasini, president of the Economic Future Group, a national consulting group and a longtime writer on labor and economic issues. Welcome to both of you.

Jonathan Tasini, starting with you, what does this new coalition group want?

JONATHAN TASINI: I think they want to try to turn the labor movement around. The labor movement is dying and their basic issues is they want to put more money into organizing and organize the global employers and national employers and try to turn the labor movement's misfortunes around. I think they also want to force some changes in the structure of the AFL-CIO.

JEFFREY BROWN: When they talk about organizing efforts, where do they see that potential?

JONATHAN TASINI: Well, the fact is that when you're almost less than 8 percent in the private sector, there is nowhere to go but up. Certainly the large employers like Wal-Mart, we talk about the Wal-Martization of America, Wal-Mart would be a key target; the hotel industry, much of the service industry, many telecommunications industries and computer. There is a lot to organize.

JEFFREY BROWN: What does John Sweeney and much of the AFL-CIO still with him, what is their response?

CHARLES HECKSCHER: They believe they can put more money into organizing within the existing structure of the AFL-CIO and that will help turn things around. The new coalition wants to go much further, put more money in, make a more radical change. But I think the issues between the two have not fully crystallized. What is going on now is really a reexamination of the foundation, the basic strategy of the labor movement, rethinking of the identity and nature at a level which hasn't been done since the 1930s.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, tell us a little bit more about that, Mr. Heckscher. It is right to see this current struggle in the context of a broad decline in the labor movement?

CHARLES HECKSCHER: Yeah, this is not a familiar hi feud. This is-- this is not a family feud. This is a real outcome of the transformation in the society and attempt by the labor movement to come to terms with it. And it has been a struggle that has been going on for many years now and has now reached a point where a number of people, including the Service Employees Union feel it's a crisis and that we need to put everything back on the table, rethink issues from the beginning.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you see it that way as well?

JONATHAN TASINI: I think Charles is right. I want to add one point that I think overlays this entire discussion. It is important to talk about what is going on in the labor movement. We have to look at what is happening out there in the marketplace. Never before has the labor movement seen the kind of anti-union, aggressive attempts by corporations to bust unions and break unions and prevent people from organizing. It is almost impossible to organize a union under today's labor laws. People are fired every day, disciplined. It is an extremely hard environment to organize. Having said that, what the five unions - I call them the insurgents - are trying to do, as Charles said, pour more money into organizing, take much more radical steps and in some way, tip the balance back towards workers so they can try to organize despite the legal barriers to that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Some of the things that are often talked about as having weakened labor are only growing; the globalization of the marketplace, for example.

JONATHAN TASINI: Right. Certainly globalization - let's go back, stay here in the United States. I mean, even if globalization was happening, if there was a reasonable framework under which workers could organize here, I think every poll shows continuing support for unions. Forty million more Americans would want to be in unions if they had a chance to organize inside the labor movement. You mentioned the global economy. One of the things that I've noticed in the two camps is nobody has really figured out the question of China. And I do not think that the labor movement can survive if we do not figure out how to solve the question of China, both not just at the low end, but within a couple of three years China is going to be competing with the United States as a high skilled area, too.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Heckscher, how do you see these outside forces affecting this struggle and the response from labor to them?

CHARLES HECKSCHER: Well, I think it is - these do represent fundamental shifts in the economy that are transforming the lives of everyone and labor has faced these before in its history and what has happened that there have been splits before, most notably in 1935 when the CIO split from the AFL, and that generated a great deal of creative thinking and new forms of organizing and a new way of developing strategy within the labor movement. I think we are at that kind of moment now where the structures of labor that would develop around mass production, large industries, auto and steel and so on are no longer matched very well to a global and increasingly professionalized economy and that new forms of organization are needed to make... to play the role of representative of the worker's voice.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Heckscher, I asked Mr. Tasini this before, but when this new group talks about new efforts in organizing, where is the potential for new union members?

CHARLES HECKSCHER: Well, one answer is what Jonathan said which is that they're everywhere. The question is what is strategic. And that's really the question that Andy Stern and SEIU are raising. Where do you have to go to get some real weight in the economy and in the society so that labor's voice will be heard clearly, and that is almost certainly, in companies like Wal-Mart, which is transforming the service economy and in some of the large growing international finance and banking sectors and so on which are also having a huge impact on an increasing number of workers' lives. So it's not just -- one of the things that Stern is stressing let's not just organize anyone we can get our hands on or anywhere, let's really think in a unified strategic way about how to grow the labor movement.

JEFFREY BROWN: Jonathan, in what ways does the outcome matter to those people outside the labor movement?

JONATHAN TASINI: Well, I think you can trace the decline in wages. You can trace the elimination of defined contribution of pensions, the lack of health care that everybody is suffering in America to the decline of unionization. When unions are strong, workers have bargaining power. When unions are strong, people's wages are protected. When unions are strong, people have more rights in the workplace. And the labor movement has always raised wages not just for people it represented but wages for everyone and benefits. To the extent that again we see what Charles referred to as the Wal-Martization of America, I think you can tie that directly to the decline of unionization.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Heckscher, a brief response on that, the implications here?

CHARLES HECKSCHER: I think it is clear we are in uncharted territory as the labor movement declines because there has never been a real industrial democracy which has not had a healthy labor movement. The labor movement acts as a way of resolving disputes and representing interests in a fair and orderly way. And without that, we have... what we did have for a period in the 1930s of initially cynicism and disaffection which you can see in some of the polls and ultimately the possibility of real conflict, so I think it is in everyone's interest to develop not necessarily the familiar forms but some form of employee representation which will make those interests heard.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Charles Heckscher and Jonathan Tasini, thank you both very much.

CHARLES HECKSCHER: Thank you.

JONATHAN TASINI: Thank you.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major developments of this day: In Iraq, suicide bombers in killed at least 36 people. A joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol freed an Australian hostage. Terri Schiavo's autopsy showed she had massive and irreversible brain damage. And this evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to block the FBI and Justice Department from using the Patriot Act to search library and bookstore records. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks for watching and good night.