The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, Moslem militants in Trinidad released their hostages and surrendered, Pres. Bush called on the Democrats to come up with a budget plan, an 81 year old mercy killer was granted clemency by Florida's governor. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, Kwame Holman reports on what is happening to the B-2 bomber [FOCUS - B-2 OR NOT BE-2?], Defense Sec. Dick Cheney and Congressman Ron Dellums differ on how, where, and why [FOCUS - ON THE DEFENSIVE] to cut defense spending, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault [SERIES - THROUGH THE SAFETY NET] tells the story of a drug treatment program for mothers in St. Petersburg, Florida. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The hostage standoff in the Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tabego ended today. Moslem rebels surrendered after releasing the 43 people they'd taken captive on Friday. More than a hundred rebels were involved in the coup attempt. They had taken over the parliament building and the nearby television station. They were recommending the resignation of the prime minister, who they released yesterday. They also wanted new elections. A Trinidad military spokesman said all rebels are now in custody and they will be charged with taking part in the rebellion. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Pres. Bush today gave the Democrats until the weekend to come up with a budget plan. He delivered the message to 150 Republican Congressmen and Senators at a White House breakfast. They told reporters Mr. Bush will go on the political offensive during Congress's August recess if the Democrats do not respond. House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich was one of those who explained the President's position.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Minority Whip: I think that the first phase of the summit has collapsed. I think the President is committed to trying to resurrect in September, and I'm more than willing to work with him do that, but I don't see any evidence of the Democrats negotiating in good faith. I think that what they've been doing on the House and Senate floor undercuts everything that they've been saying in private rooms, but the President is a very private man.

MR. LEHRER: Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta said the Democrats would be happy to offer a plan when the Republicans did but not before. On another budget matter, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin talked about his committee's vote last night to cut $24 billion from the administration's defense budget request. The cuts include the B-2 bomber and sharp reductions for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Aspin explained how the committee arrived at those cuts.

REP. LES ASPIN, [D] Wisconsin: I think it's a combination of the changes in the Soviet threat and the changes in the budget deficit situation, and essentially, I think that the committee is looking ahead and making a judgment that looking where the defense budgets are going and where they're likely to go over the next five years, something has got to go. Looking over the major weapons systems, you've got to take something out, and one that was the candidate, the lowest priority of the five major weapon systems, was the B-2.

MR. LEHRER: The full House will consider the bill in early September. We'll have more on this story after the News Summary. The Senate today voted to bar members from receiving outside speaking fees. It was passed as an amendment to the campaign finance reform bill. Currently, Senators are allowed to accept up to $27,000 a year in honoraria. Republican Leader Bob Dole said it should have included a pay raise. Last year, House members gave themselves a 25 percent pay raise when they banned honoraria.

MR. MacNeil: An 81 year old man who killed his wife because she was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease was granted clemency today. Rozwell Gilbert was sentenced five years ago to life imprisonment in Florida for shooting his wife of 51 years. He said it was a mercy killing. Florida's Governor, Bob Martinez, said he decided to have Gilbert released out of compassion because Gilbert's health was declining.America

MR. LEHRER: Hurricane Bertha claimed a ship and the lives of at least three of its crew members today. The storm hit a Greek freighter about 340 miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Its 27 man crew abandoned ship early this morning. Other merchant ships rescued other sailors, but three died after falling overboard. Three others are missing. Coast Guard officials in Texas said the oil spill in Galveston Bay appears to be shrinking. They said clean up crews have recovered some of the 500,000 gallons spilled and other parts of the 17 mile long slick appeared to be congealing. Federal officials today approved the use of oil eating microbes to help the clean up.

MR. MacNeil: The nation's economy will continue to grow sluggishly according to a government report today. The Commerce Department's Index of Leading Economic Indicators was unchanged in June. Only four of the eleven indicators that make up the index increased. The index forecasts economic activity for the next six to nine months.

MR. LEHRER: Sec. of State Baker met with Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze today in the Siberian City of Ehrkutz. They went fishing and they talked about plans for a third summit between Presidents Bush and Gorbachev, U.S. Soviet economic relations, and arms control agreements. Tomorrow they will discuss the civil war in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union launched another space ship today. Two cosmonauts were aboard. They will hook up to the Soviet Union's orbiting space station known as the Mur. They will relieve the two Cosmonauts who have been up there for more than five months.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary. Now it's on to the first defense budget battle after the cold war and more in our series, people who have fallen through the safety net. FOCUS - ON THE DEFENSIVE

MR. LEHRER: Defense and the new world of no cold war is our lead story tonight. Yesterday the House Armed Services Committee voted a major hit on the defense budget, eliminating the B-2 bomber, two missile programs and 129,000 troops among other things. In dollars, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees together have now voted to cut nearly $25 billion from what the Bush administration wants. Defense Sec. Dick Cheney does not like that and is here to tell us why. Democratic CongressmanRon Dellums is here to tell us why big cuts are possible and probable. They will follow the story of the budget cutter's biggest target, the B-2 bomber. Kwame Holman reports.

MR. HOLMAN: After years in top secret development, the first and so far only B-2 Stealth Bomber took flight last July. The manufacturer, Northrop Corporation, and the air force eagerly showed off the B-2's unique bat winged design, crammed with classified technology, and that technology is expensive. Each manned bomber costs about $840 million. It's the most expensive aircraft ever built. The Pentagon said the B-2 would be worth it, its radar absorbing surface and sophisticated electronics would make it virtually undetectable to enemy air defenses, its mission to deliver nuclear warheads deep inside the Soviet Union.

SPOKESMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and the President of the Soviet Union.

MR. HOLMAN: But times have changed in the two years since the B- 2 was unveiled. Better than ever relations with the Soviet Union combined with unprecedented political pressure to cut the federal deficit have made the defense budget a major target. In that atmosphere, Congress called for drastic cuts. Defense Sec. Dick Cheney responded with suggestions of his own. In the high profile B-2 program, the administration scaled back its request from 132 planes costing $75 billion to 75 bombers with a price tag of 61 billion. But Cheney pointed out that the Soviets are still modernizing their strategic nuclear weapons and therefore, at least 75 B-2s are still needed.

DICK CHENEY, Secretary of Defense: [April 26] To have a credible force and a force that you can manage and do something with, you need about two wings of aircraft, about thirty aircraft in each wing, a total of sixty aircraft which you would actually have deployed. You need additional aircraft because sometimes some of them are going through maintenance and for training and so forth. If you go much below two wings, the deployable asset that remains to you isn't much good frankly.

MR. HOLMAN: But even Cheney's scaled down request is in trouble. Although Congress has never scrapped a major strategic program, the B-2 last week lost a pivotal supporter in House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin.

REP. LES ASPIN, [D] Wisconsin: [July 23] The question is does the country need the plane, can the country afford the plane, and the real questions have to do with the size of the defense budget, and what's happening with the Soviet threat. Those I think are the real driving factors and I think that those are the factors on which we will decide on whether we should buy the plane or not, and I looked at those factors and decided against it.

MR. HOLMAN: A year ago Aspin helped save B-2 funding. His reversal signaled that the House Democratic majority was unlikely to vote for the B-2. His announcement was a major boost to congressional critics of the bomber. In addition to the plane's high cost, those critics question whether the B-2 is a necessary part of the nation's strategic nuclear deterrent. The also cite recent evidence that the plane may not be as invisible to radar as originally advertised. Final detectability tests won't be complete for three years.

REP. JOHN KASICH, [R] Ohio: Why the heck would we want to pour all this money into a system that can be detected and base our arms control posture on a system that's dubious at best and we aren't even going to know if it's going to work until 1993? I mean, this is really a very poor posture for the United States to be in.

REP. DONALD DELLUMS, [D] California: Our nuclear deterrence is more than sufficient without a manned, penetrating bomber. This is an anachronism, this is a concept of the past.

MR. HOLMAN: Liberal Democrat Ron Dellums and conservative Republican John Kasich are the organizers of an anti-B-2 coalition that's been meeting for more than a year. The unusual group failed to kill B-2 funding in the House last year, but their dogged lobbying of House colleagues this year is credited with helping freeze B-2 production at the 15 planes that already are in production.

REP. KASICH: In the last couple of weeks I probably visited personally about 20 members in their office and there are a lot of these people who I think, they're really moving our way.

REP. DELLUMS: This should be the year when you make the decision one way or the other.

SPOKESMAN: Buy it or don't buy it.

REP. DELLUMS: Vote it up or vote it down.

SPOKESMAN: I think you're absolutely right, Ron. I mean, I think we need to make this the up-down vote and make a decision this year.

REP. DELLUMS: That's one way you smoke these guys out.

SPOKESMAN: And the corporate world out there, the people involved in producing this thing, they need to know too what their future's going to be. I mean, they know whether they're going to be building the B-2 or whether they're going to be building something else.

MR. HOLMAN: With such a well organized effort afoot to terminate the B-2, Sec. Cheney returned to the Hill in June to help rally the bomber's supporters.

SEC. CHENEY: I don't want to give a long winded speech or presentation this morning. I think all of you are obviously supporters of the program or you wouldn't be here. We've got some new materials that the Air Force has just prepared that I've asked everybody to go ahead and take if you want. It's all unclassified.

MR. HOLMAN: But after this meeting of the so-called B-2 caucus, proponents admitted they faced an uphill battle to save the bat winged bomber from budgetary extinction.

REP. ROD CHANDLER, [R] Washington: [June 7] I think the possibility of the B-2 being killed by Congress is a very real danger and I think frankly if the vote were held today, I think it would lose, so this is a process now I think where you either win over some supporters or you lose the program.

REP. BOB McEWEN, [R] Ohio: We've already paid significant amounts of money. Now it's a matter do we take the plane or not. We've already invested it. It's ready to go. This is a revolution in aircraft. This is as different as the jet engine was to the rotary engine. This is the technology of the future.

MR. HOLMAN: But B-2 proponents are finding it especially difficult to realize that future because the aircraft's main contractor, Northrop Corporation, faces criminal and civil corruption charges involving the B-2 and other weapons it builds. Another blow to the B-2 came yesterday. The House Armed Services Committee, as expected, voted no more than the 15 in production bombers and called for significant cuts in several other defense programs. The B-2 issue still must be reconciled between the House and the Senate, but it's clear Sec. Cheney and the Pentagon now face tough fights on the B-2 and virtually all other major weapons systems.

MR. LEHRER: And now to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Mr. Secretary welcome

SEC. CHENEY: Good evening Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Is the B2 dead?

SEC. CHENEY: Not it is not dead but it is clearly in trouble. I mean, it is going to be the source of great controversy this year. The Senate may vote thisweek on the floor. Right now I think that we probably have the vote to prevail in the Senate but clearly it is going to be a subject of major controversy until we resolve the defense bill by the end of the year.

MR. LEHRER: Why are you hanging in there on the B2?

SEC. CHENEY: I think the thing is Jim everybody talks about the changed threat and there is no question that a changed threat has occurred. But we think that we ought to reshape our military forces in response to the changes in the threat and where those changes have come are the Warsaw Pact and perhaps the elimination, if you will, for the need to fight a major land war in Europe. That leads you to change force structure, take down divisions in the Army, stop producing the Apache Helicopter, stop producing the F15 Eagle fighter that was designed for that European battle., What hasn't changed in terms of Soviet threat are Soviet strategic capabilities. They are not cutting back on strategic forces at all. They are continuing the pace with new modern systems and so if you look at the military threat that we are forced to deal with as a nation then we ought to be stopping M1 tank production. What we should not stop is our strategic modernization program the B2. The House Armed Services Committee has got it just backwards. They want to force me to buy more M1 tanks while I have 7900 already in the inventory. I have more already than I can use. But then stop those programs that are aimed specifically at meeting the strategic threat.

MR. LEHRER: What have they got wrong?

SEC. CHENEY: Well what they have got wrong is that they are saying that the changed Soviet threat justifies cancelling the B2 bomber but what has changed is not the Soviet strategic threat what the B2 is designed specifically to deal with. What has changed is their conventional threat in Europe. That is what they want to force me to continue to do. So they use the rational of the Soviet threat but the reality of the changes we are seeing in the Defense Program made by the House Armed Services Committee don't match the changes in the threat.

MR. LEHRER: But they would argue that there is more to a threat than just hardware but the political threat has also been diminished. I mean the idea of using these strategic weapons has gone down and down and down and that must be weighed in. You don't weigh that at all with you it is strictly a numbers thing?

SEC. CHENEY: I do weigh it in. We have made a lot of changes in the strategic program. For example we are close to getting the start agreement which will mean a significant reduction in ballistic missile war heads on both sides. So we are getting ready to reduce our Minute Man Force in the field. We have agreed to cap the Trident program, at 18 Submarines. Originally we had planned to go to 21 or 22. We've agreed to cut back on the B2 bomber from 132 to 75. Part of that is a reflection that Eastern Europe is no longer a part of the Warsaw Pact, is no longer a military threat. All of those targets that were in Eastern Europe are no longer there. So we can reduce our capabilities in that regard but what hasn't changed in terms of Soviet efforts, Soviet capabilities is continued robust development of strategic systems and yet the advocates of cutting the B2 basically want to end our effort to modernize our own strategic forces.

MR. LEHRER: The possibility of using these weapons that part of the equation has been reduced has it not?

SEC. CHENEY: It has but there are two things that we focus on when we talk about the possible threat if you will. One is intentions the other capability. Intentions can change over night. You can get new leadership in the Soviet Union, some crisis develop, those intentions change. Capability takes a very long time. We have been working on the B2 for some 12 or 13 years and the danger is that we will make the mistake of assuming that current Soviet intentions are improving then we can get rid of capability that we may need at some future point. The heart of the question of Strategic weapons is maintaining strategic deterrent. That we maintain the capability to respond to any attack on the United States with a devastating overwhelming force and that is required no matter how friendly relations have gotten between us and the Soviet Union.

MR. LEHRER: It can't be done with out the B2?

SEC. CHENEY: I think the B2 is crucial because that is what preserves the Triad, that we have a diversified force, sea base submarines, land base missiles and air the bombers and the B2 is a key part of that.

MR. LEHRER: You have a problem with their vote to reduce troop strengths by 129,000?

MR. LEHRER: I do. Again my friends and former colleagues on the Committee are asking with that kind of reduction of military personal over the next 14 months that we are going to have serious damage to the force out there. We have an all volunteer force. There is no one eager to get out and go home and this was true after some of our major conflicts in the past. Everybody volunteered to serve today. So numbers of that size 129,000 military personal is going to do a lot of damage.

MR. LEHRER: Damage to national security or damage to the 129,000 members?

SEC. CHENEY: Both. The force if you have to start hollowing it out. For example we have to stop all recruitment and all accessions for a period of time then you get this window in there that will rumble through the force for the next several years. You won't have new recruits going through the training establishments. You won't have privates for the divisions and the young sailors for the Navy. It is a very complex process trying to manage something as complicated as the military personal system. You can not just go in and pick out a 129,000. That means that I have no choice but to force people to leave. I have to fire people rather than through careful management of the system and attrition. Another intriguing thing here Jim is the Committee is trying to have it both ways. Forcing me to take out a 129,000 people. Refuse to let me close the Second Armored Division, a member of the Committee is trying to protect that. Legislation that would make it impossible for me to close any military bases in members districts over the course of the next two or three years. I mean in effect what we get ourselves in to is the desire to cap on one thing but to tie my hands so I can't do things in an intelligent fashion that would protect our capabilities.

MR. LEHRER: We had a report this afternoon that you are about to announce more base closing. Is that right? This week?

SEC. CHENEY: No there will not be any announcements this weeks but in effect what I have told everybody we are in fact as we do our own long range planning over the next four or fives years we are planning on a reduction of close to 25 percent of our existing forces. To do that we also want to be in a position where we can close bases so we can get rid of our mode and unneeded bases and I will as the services make recommendations to me as a part of that process have some new base closing to announce. These will be candidates. We are not ready to do it this week but there will besome in the future,

MR. LEHRER: Isn't the whole thing in terms of Congress. Some members of Congress want to cut defense spending but they do not want to cut bases in their districts. However you turn around and you have the B2 caucus those are members of Congress that could care less about anything other than keeping the B2 because a part of it is built in their district. So you have to play it both ways. You are playing the same game they are aren't you?

SEC. CHENEY: In fact there is very strong strategic military rational for why we need the B2 bomber. It has very little to do with being manufactured in members of districts.

MR. LEHRER: In terms of support in the House is concerned the people who attend these caucus meetings are people who represent districts in which the B2 is made. Is that right?

SEC. CHENEY: I wouldn't go that far.

MR. LEHRER: I recognized a couple of them.

SEC. CHENEY: Members get paid to represent their districts but I don;t think that it would be fair to say with respect to the caucus. A lot of those members are there because they believe in a need for that capability. And I will say on behalf of those who disagree with me as well. I am sure that there are many who are sincerely motivated by their view of what is required for national defense and not motivated just by parochial considerations. I would argue that the notion that the Committee is responding to the changed threat with that Bill there is a disconnect there because a changed threat would allow us to take some systems they do not want to take down.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary do you feel that you are swimming up stream with a lot of wind and a lot of things not at your back?

SEC. CHENEY: There is no question Jim that this is a very difficult job these days. There is an ambivalent feeling about it. On the one hand there is this great sense of what we have achieved over the last 45 years. We adopted a strategy after World War II, we've built alliances, we've deployed forces and in effect won the cold war. The others guys are in retreat. The Soviets are withdrawing from Eastern Europe. Their system is the one that is in collapse. So there is a great sense that the Organization that I am in charge of has in fact won one of the great victories with out firing a shot in history. On the other hand we are now in a position as the budget committee comes down, as the top line of the defense budget comes down we get in to a position of trying to manage that in an intelligent fashion. Trying to get Congress to give me the flexibility to do it is a very tough assignment. No question about it.

MR. LEHRER: Do you feel that you have lost control over defense or the Defense Department than prior Secretaries of Defense because of this. Do you feel that everybody else is running this thing instead of you right now?

SEC. CHENEY: No I don't have that sense at all. What I amazed by is the professionalism of the people inside the Department. The services have been very good. It obviously is a traumatic kind of thing for a Department to go through but it also provides some opportunities. Opportunities to ask some very difficult questions that normally don't get asked in normal budgetary times and you have a growth budget. That is the kind of thing a company goes through when it has to retrench, cut back and reduce. From that standpoint I am sure elements of it are healthy and hopefully we will emerge from it stronger and more capable than we were when we started the process because we will have gone back and reviewed some assumptions that haven't been checked in a long time.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary thank you very much.

SEC. CHENEY: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: And now a perspective from the House Armed Services Committee, Congress Ron Dellums, Democrat of California joins us from a Studio on Capitol Hill. Congressman first of all you were all celebrating today. Why do consider this such a big vote?

REP. DELLUMS: Well because I think that for the first time in a very long time we made policy decisions and attempted to bring some sanity to our military budget. I would like to say at the outset that action that we took dealt with several realities. A, the reality of changes in the World. B, the reality of budget constraints. I might point out that when the House of Representatives debated the budget we were talking about a 100 billion dollar budget deficit. Mr. Darman several weeks ago pointed out we were 68.8 billion dollars off. So the size of the budget deficit grew from 100 billion to 168.8 billion dollars. That is a reality. And thirdly the political reality of the human needs of people in this country and I think that I am very pleased because we brought that sense and I think that what we attempted to do for the first time in the 20 years that I have been in the Congress cancelling a major weapons system. Was to strike a very significant blow at the trend toward the nuclear arms race. We have voted to reverse that trend.

MR. MacNeil: Congress so what you are saying is this was as much of an attempt to meet the changed threat of the Soviet Union as you see it, as it was also to make bigger defense cuts so that the cuts in domestic programs required by deficit reduction won't be as severe as they might otherwise be. Is that part of your motive?

REP. DELLUMS: Exactly and I found it very interesting when I listened to Secretary Cheney. I can appreciate that he is Secretary of Defense and he is viewing the World as Secretary of Defense. We have a responsibility to view the World in its totality. That means we have the responsibility to address the budget realities of this country. You can't continue to pay for all this stuff. The World is changing and you can't continue to pay for all of this and there are human needs and it seems to me that the rational mind step forward and say what programs do you not need. With respect to the B2 bomber. Let's for example take Mr. Cheney's statement that the Soviet Union is modernizing its weapons capability. And I would say even if you accept that there is no rhyme or reason for the B2 bomber. First of all it is not affordable. We are talking about 70 to a 100 billion dollars over the life cycle cost when we have major deficits and major needs in this country. Number two you are talking about a plane that has no mission. When we challenge the strategic mission that it could some way find relocatable targets. Several hundred million dollar plan flying over nuclear rubble after a nuclear exchange to find a relocatable target. Then they said may be we can use it in a third World scenario. Why do we need an 850 million dollar plan to raid a third World country that does not even have a nuclear defense. This challenges rationality.

MR. MacNeil: Let's look at something else Mr. Cheney said. He said you on the Committee have understood the changed Soviet threat just backwards. That it is true that the conventional threat in Eastern Europe has changed but the strategic threat remains and the B2 is part of modernizing the triad to keep the American deterrent in place. You want more tanks that he doesn 't need. You don't want to B2 which he sayshe does need?

REP. DELLUMS: I am not sure that I am a defender of all the things that the Committee did but let's look at Mr. Cheney's assertion that you need the B2 bomber to modernize the air wing of our nuclear triad. I suggest that when we change the name of the air breathing wing of our nuclear triad we modernized our nuclear triad. We have the B1 bomber, we do have cruise missiles, we do have stand off capability and I find it fascinating and interesting and factual that a bi partisan group of people came together for the first time in the 20 years that I have been in Congress and started to ask the very same questions of the B2. Do you need it, can you afford it and are there alternatives. We said no we don't need. We said no we can't afford it and finally there are much cheaper alternatives than to spend mega billions of dollars on a plane with a dubious mission.

MR. MacNeil: Leaving that argument aside since we have heard both sides of it what about Mr. Cheney's assertion that he has got the votes in the Senate probably to keep it. What do you think? And that you will end up having to bargain for more than you want when you reconcile with the Senate?

REP. DELLUMS: Well I think that we will go to the Senate and over the years that I have gone to conference there is a bargaining situation. But I think that the overwhelming majority of the American people understand the absurdity of the B2 bomber. They understand the budget crisis that we are in. They understand that the World is changing and they understand that human needs need to be death with. In that regard the conferees on the House side are prepared to sit with the Senate for a significant amount of time. I think that Senator have got to decide how they are going to address the budget. They have to deal with the reality that there is a 168.8 billion dollar budget deficit and I think the Senators have to decide whether they agree that the cold war is over and march forward in to the 21st century. I think that if they do we are going to stop the B2 bomber other than the 15 we have already obligated ourselves to build.

MR. MacNeil: You are trying to save money on the defense budget and yet your Committee has put in 403 million dollars for the V22 Asprey Plane which the Secretary of Defense is trying to cancel. Your Republican colleague on the Committee says that is pure pork barrel for a Congressman on your Committee from Texas and Pennsylvania where that plane is made. Did you have to buy votes against the B2 by funding the Ausprey.

REP. DELLUMS: No as a matter of fact the overwhelming majority of the members on the Sub Committee and the full Committee support the V22 for whatever reason. I am not standing here as an ardent supporter of the V22 program. We put together a package V22 was in that program. I think that we need to look at the V22 downstream. The problem there is that the House of Representatives the Congress of the United States is engaging in a relationship with the Administration that we have a right to reprioritize just as the Secretary of Defense has the right to offer his program. I have great respect for Mr. Cheney. I have been dealing with these issues longer than Mr. Cheney has. I have been on the House Armed Services Committee for the 18 of the 20 years that I have been there. Mr. Cheney has been the Secretary of Defense for a much shorter time period than that. That is not taking anything away from Mr. Cheney but there is competence and expertise in the House of Representatives. We have the capability to reprioritize.

MR. MacNeil: Explainyour program which is part of this effort to provide money for defense industries to change to civilian production. How would you chose them? Who would you give money to and how would you deal with a firm like Northrup if you are cutting back on the B2 when Northrup is now facing criminal charges in alleged corruption on the B2 and other weapon systems. How do you go about choosing industries to do it too?

REP. DELLUMS: You asked that question in a long fashion. I am not sure what you are trying to elicit. But I am an ardent supporter of economic conversion. But if the military budget is going to go down cuts are going to be made, great dislocation is going to take place and I think that we have a responsibility to engage in economic conversion. I think one aspect of it is to bring the workers, bring the community and also bring industry in to the whole issue of planning how we move toward conversion. We have to move away from a heavy reliance on militarism and military hardware to prop up America's economy. I think that most American people understand that. No one has ever walked up to me and demanded that they work on the B2 bomber but most people who are unemployed have walked up to me and said I would like very much to work. I think that we have a responsibility to respond to those folks. With respect to corporations that have ripped off American then we ought to prosecute them to the full extent of the law and remove them from such programs. There are other entities in the community that can assist us with the appropriate economic conversion to rebuild our cities, rebuild our infra structure, rebuild our mass transit and do a number of other things that will solve human problems on one hand but generate major employment on the other.

MR. MacNeil: This action of your Committee yesterday comes in the first year of realization that the Cold War has apparently ended. Is this the big cut in defense based on that reaction and is it just nibbles after this in succeeding years or are there more big cuts next year and year after and so on?

REP. DELLUMS: This is just the beginning. I think that there are many additional big cuts that will happen down stream. This year we affected personal. I think the N strengths and force structure continue to be an issue that lies out there. There are a number of big ticket items, new attack fighter planes, new helicopter, new ships. Many of these things are going to have to be looked at. I think that this is just the opening gambit. The Budget Summit gets off dead center with the 168.8 billion dollar deficit may be the best case scenario. We may have to end up cutting even deeper than that.. The fact that we stopped the B2 bomber and restructured certain programs we are focusing on B2 but I think that we did many other significant important things. I think this is just the beginning.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman Dellums thank you for joining us.

REP. DELLUMS: Thank you. SERIES - THROUGH THE SAFETY NET

MR. LEHRER: Next tonight another of Charlayne Hunter-Gault's continuing reports on solutions aimed at people in the so-called "under class". Tonight she looks at a program designed for the newest group of people who have fallen through America's social safety net. Her story begins in Dun Eden, Florida.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Renita Mount is a 29 year old X-ray technician at Neese Hospital in Dun Eden, Florida. She's a hard worker, often putting in 12 hour days at the hospital. Those overtime hours are especially important because Renita Mount is a single parent, separated from her husband and trying to make a better life for herself and her six year old son, George. After work, she picks George up a day care center, drives home, and then almost immediately begins her other job. This isn't the only team effort for the Mounts. They're also working to reestablish the family bonds of their relationship after being separated for almost two years. During that time, George was being reared by his grandmother because his mother, Renita, was a drug addict.

RENITA MOUNT: I was on crack and probably for about six months. When I started doing that I was going totally downhill, so my family had hassled me, it was like, you got to do something, you got to do something, so I went into a 30 treatment center which was truly commercial and my husband's insurance at the time, he had an excellent policy, so they had me there 3 1/2 months because the insurance paid for it. So I left, and then I started doing out- patient. Every 30 days I'd go out and use. And each time I'd go out, it was worse than before and I would get extremely suicidal, I slit my wrists twice, and it's like the last time I went out, my out-patient counselor said, you need long-term help.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Renita Mount found that life saving support at PAR, a drug treatment program in St. Petersburg that's been in operation for over 20 years. PAR, which stands for Parental Awareness and Responsibility, is a non-profit organization which serves about 38,000 people. Most of its funding comes from the federal government. PAR's focus is on prevention, education, treatment, research, and evaluation. Most of its clients are addicted to crack cocaine. About three years ago, PAR began a special residential treatment program called PAR Village, a so- called therapeutic community which places specific emphasis on treating drug addicted women and their children. Today about 40 women and their children live there, usually staying between 18 and 24 months. Bob Neri is director of the residential program.

BOB NERI, PAR Program Director: We believe that people living together with a common problem and with a shared commitment to help each other can be a group of experts in helping learn how to help each other solve each other's problems. So we depend on the residents primarily to help each other, and the staff provides some guidance boundaries for that to occur, but really a lot of getting better for the residents depends on them being willing to help themselves and the commitment from the other members of the community to help that person.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: PAR's long-term residency program gives recovering addicts the time they need to focus on themselves and the issues that led them to drug dependency. 31 year old Vivian McMiller was addicted to crack and alcohol before coming to PAR a little over a year ago.

VIVIAN McMILLER: I became a part of going to jail and I was on two years probation. I am still on probation because I can't pay my restitution so it'll be extended until I pay it off, so I'm not close to PAR or nothin' but I know I needed help with bein' so I decided I got to get my life together sometime. And also I did it for my kids because I'd been taking them through so my help.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Toya, who is 15, had been living with her mother just three months when we met the family. Doriele, who's six, joined them just two weeks before. Ms. McMiller said having her children with her during this time of recovery has made all the difference.

MS. McMILLER: I feel it is real important, especially at Toya's age, because she was around a whole lot of drug areas and stuff and like her boyfriend was a dope dealer and she was staying with my sister, where she does crack and stuff like that. And my sister was like telling her negative things about her, calling her all kind of names, and with me having her there, I can tell her things like you know, you're a nice kid.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: To help recovering mothers, PAR provides what it calls therapeutic day care for their children. Its goal is to reduce the developmental lag caused by the drug exposure. The counselors test the children to assess individual needs and then design treatment plans for them. Donna Sicilian operates the Village's developmental center for children.

DONNA SICILIAN, Children's Services: Probably the two most common areas that we've seen are with their language skills, their abilities to speak, and also with able to do little tasks, little things that require real fine movements, so that's a lot of areas that we target in. Like with the language, a lot of it is just reading to them and talking to them, those kinds of things. They didn't get a lot of verbal skills. That's with the older children. And then with the infants, we see they have a lot of difficulty with vision, vision kinds of problems, and doing some of the things that maybe a baby four months of age that wasn't drug exposed can do, and these children that were exposed to cocaine and other drugs have a lot of trouble doing, and that includes things like walking and pulling themselves up, sitting without assistance. [CLASS SESSION]

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In keeping with PAR's commitment to treat the entire person, not just their addiction, residents are encourage to pursue high school diplomas or go off grounds to a junior college or perhaps a vocational school. Residents can also get training at a real job. PAR Industries is six years old and staffed by residents.

ROBIN MILLIGAN: What I do learn here is how to work in an atmosphere and be relaxed and to work under stress and to deal with that, because a lot of times prior to what led up to my drug use was I worked in a very stressful job and I didn't handle that stress very well.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Robin Milligan's crack addiction cost her her marriage and her two children, ages 5 and 13. They now live with their father, about a 3 1/2 hour drive away. She sees them every two months and says she misses them terribly. For Vivian McMiller having her kids at PAR Village seems to have given them another chance, especially Toya.

MS. McMILLER: When her grades came up from F's to A's and B's, it's real important to let her know that she is somebody and she's worth it. For Doriele, she's still young yet, and I love them both. It's important for her to be here too to feel the unity of the family.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The founder and president of PAR Village is Shirley Coletti, nicknamed the Mother Teresa of Drug Treatment. Ms. Coletti, a former nurse, started the program some 22 years after two of her own teen-agers got involved in drugs. She has often testified in Congress on drug-related issues, and worked with Nancy Reagan on the "Just Say No" campaign. I spoke with Shirley Coletti at PAR Village. Tell me about what you do for the women in the program.

SHIRLEY COLETTI, Founder, PAR: Traditionally, treatment programs are designed for young men, 25, 28 years of age, frequently with a criminal justice background, criminal justice involvement. There has been very little attention given to structuring, designing and developing programs specifically for women, and the one thing that we have discovered in the past five, six years is that women do not do well in a group setting where there are men where it's a confrontational setting. Women do much better when they have their own women's group so that they can deal with their problems in the open and not be concerned about some man putting them down. We know that one of the major barriers to women staying in treatment is that they have other children at home and they have no one to take care of them, or if grandma is taking care of them, she can't take care of them for more than a month or so and they need long-term care. We've learned a lot. One of the things that we've learned is that when we had heroin addicts come in for treatment and they found they were pregnant, women, and they found they were pregnant, almost invariably they would give up narcotics and give up heroin when they found out that they were pregnant. It's sort of like we like to think that that maternal instinct clicked in and I think probably did. That is not true with crack cocaine. The cocaine, the crack cocaine is so highly, highly addictive that women will say, gee, I'm going to give it up, or I'd like to give it up, and just find themselves unable to give it up, and then when they find out they're pregnant and they'll think, well, maybe if I could just get a little bit of treatment or a little bit of help, but the majority of time in this country when they seek help, people turn them away because they're pregnant. I mean, to be a pregnant substance abuser in America is like the plague is on you, and especially if you don't have money to go into one of the very expensive private treatment facilities. We approach it from the standpoint that this woman has a serious drug problem, she is a human being, and then we approach it from some special needs that a woman may have, and then we approach it from special needs that a mother who has one or two other children may have. A woman, whether she's pregnant or not, will not stay in treatment if she can't see her children occasionally. So there has to be an accommodation for that. There has to be an understanding that this mother will want to see her children, there needs to be visitation opportunities set up for the mother. There are just a lot of special little things that a program can do in developing the design of the program that will help retain women in treatment.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There seems to be a widespread belief that once you're addicted to crack cocaine you're hooked for life. Is that just not true?

MS. COLETTI: That's just not true. That's just not true. It's not an easy drug to deal with. It changes behavior, makes paranoid behavior, aggressive, hostile, angry people, who normally would be loving. You know, the difference in the heroin addict and the crack addict is that the heroin addict was always sort of laid back and pretty easy to deal with, as a matter of fact, committed some crime, but not nearly the same level of crime that the crack addict did, because someone on crack feels that they'll never be arrested, that they'll never have to pay the price.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How do you deal with them and how hard was it to make that transition from heroin to cocaine addicts?

MS. COLETTI: Well, I know our treatment staff have commented to me that when they began seeing people come in with this terribly aggressive behavior, that they began then to realize that we needed to adjust our treatment as with the babies for instance and with the toddlers that we're dealing with. Our teachers in our child development center, which is the children of substance abusers center,will tell you that the first thing they learned as teachers is that you become very regimented and you teach these children, you go from an activity to another activity to another activity, and their children are constantly kept busy, and what we have found in this center is that we cannot overstimulate these children, they cannot be involved in the rough housing, and the very raucous activity that you perceive your little toddlers to be involved in.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why?

MS. COLETTI: Well, they become just terribly overstimulated and they become totally unruly. So what we have found, and research by the way backs this up even with the infant, rather than the fast rocking or the fast bouncing a baby up and down is that we now know you're better to hold that baby up and down, upright position, and sort of very slowly, very slowly rock the baby. You don't have a lot of noise. You know, usually in a preschool nursery setting you'll have a lot of quick, fast music, and a lot of times, the children just don't respond well to this. So we have had to sort of design a whole different day care setting for our youngsters, a lot of quiet time, a lot of down time for the children to take a nap and to rest, their backs are rubbed and they're massaged sort of soothingly, and that's very successful with these children. A lot of mothers don't understand this and they become very frustrated in dealing with their children.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is this part of the program too, to help the mothers?

MS. COLETTI: Yes, to teach the mother, to teach the mother and have her understand that possibly the damage to the central nervous system of that baby is so that you cannot overstimulate them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are some of the biggest problems that a program like yours faces?

MS. COLETTI: Funding. It's very difficult to establish a quality program and never know from one funding cycle to the next or from one congressional year to the next or one election to the next what the future holds for your program if you are federally funded or state funded. As an administrator that has caused me more heart ache and more problems than anything I can think of.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why is that a problem, since there seems to be widespread agreement that drugs is a crisis in this country?

MS. COLETTI: It is a major crisis and I have not heard many people say that it isn't, but you know, the money never seems to get down to the community level. It always, you hear about it in Washington, you hear people discussing it on the evening news, but then when you wait for the check to arrive, it just seems to never arrive. So one of the things that we need in the community, grass roots organization like PAR, is that we need to know that there's a five year funding plan there, that you can develop your program, that you can have some continuity of services available to your people, and that would be very helpful to us. That would be helpful throughout the country as a matter of fact.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are you saying that the so-called war on drugs just is wrong?

MS. COLETTI: I think the priorities of the war on drugs is wrong. I think that we need to give equal consideration to treatment and prevention as we do law enforcement. I believe that you need a full court press. I think you need interdiction efforts, you need law enforcement, and you need treatment and you need prevention, and unless you have all of those components equally funded so that we can provide adequate services, we really will lose this war. I have no doubt of that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But equally funded. Let's say you had to establish priorities because funds are limited. How would you allocate the resources?

MS. COLETTI: Well, I'll use Florida as an example. On any given day, we spend approximately $7 million a day to maintain the present prison population in this state. That's a lot of money. Now if you took a portion of that money and adequately treated some quality residential treatment programs and good drug rehabilitation programs in the state, you could accomplish a great deal more by putting that drug abuser in a treatment center for several months than you could putting them in a prison bed for three, four, five months, and then not addressing their treatment needs, and then letting them back out on the streets, because ultimately, they get right back into trouble with drugs and they go right back in the system. We know that 77 percent of the people we treat in our residential program that have come to us through the Department of Corrections are non-recidivous. They have not gone back and broken the law and gotten themselves arrested. That's a very high success rate. So what would I do if I could be king for the day? I would fund good programs, good treatment programs. I would certainly continue funding prevention programs and I would strive not to have a papyri of services. I think that we have experimented enough. I think that there's about five different modalities of treatment that need to be put in place. We think any one of these will work, but the message that we wish to get across is that you cannot lock people into one modality of treatment and expect everyone to be treated the same and everyone to respond the same. It just doesn't work. We need to have a cookbook. We need to say all right, this community, this is what you want, this is what it will cost, and this is the training that needs to take place around that, and fund it, and let's do it, rather than talk about it and haggle about it. Everybody's trying to reinvent or invent something new. I don't think it's out there. I think that you need to take a fairly solid approach and realize that there's not a quick fix, not a quick cure to this problem.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What else has to happen in society's attitudes to make a program like yours succeed?

MS. COLETTI: I think that the clergy has probably done less than any one section of society that I know of. I know a lot of times in a lot of communities that they've taken somewhat of a leadership role, but you know when you think of all the empty church halls and the recreation centers that are not used during the day or during the evenings and how much our churches could offer to our communities for drug free activities, you know, I would like to see every church take a leadership role in Just Say No marches, the Red Ribbon campaign and providing drug free activities for youngsters, high school and junior high kids, and they're just not doing that. And I think they're not doing it because perhaps they're afraid that maybe the property will be damaged. I haven't figured out exactly why, but I think that members of churches, members of a congregation who are concerned about the youth of their community should knock on that minister's door, knock on that board's door and say, listen, what are we doing for the youth of our community, and I think we could make a big difference. I think it's the missing piece.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Shirley Coletti, thank you.

MS. COLETTI: Thank you. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, Moslem rebels in Trinidad released the government officials they had been holding hostage and surrendered, and Pres. Bush called on the Democrats to come up with a budget deficit plan. Democratic leaders responded by saying they would do so when the President and the Republicans did the same. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight and we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.