The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After our summary of the day's stop stories, two Senators and two Congressmen, all key players in the health care debate, discuss the moment President Clinton calls a historic opportunity. We have extended excerpts from today's Whitewater hearings, and continuing her series on how toreduce teenage violence, Charlayne Hunter- Gault talks to the director of a violence prevention project in Washington, D.C. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: President Clinton and his Democratic allies in Congress today stepped up the pressure to get health reform passed. The President ordered members of his cabinet to counter what was called a disinformation campaign by critics of reform. He also began a series of nightly television commercials pushing his own plan. The million dollar ad blitz is being funded by the Democratic Party. In Congress, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt today announced that a health reform measure will be voted on August 19th. The latest push comes a day after the President said it was now up to the Republicans to find a workable compromise. Vice President Gore echoed that sentiment today at a rally on Capitol Hill.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Now bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that they are now on the run on the other side. Once the American people focus in on this issue, and once they realize that this is about middle income families, real people, who don't have health security now, then once that becomes the focus of the debate, then the Republicans have to kind of dodge and bob and weave and pretend that they have an answer. They have not put forward an answer. They put forward politics and rhetoric.

MR. MAC NEIL: Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole said Republicans will introduce their own health care bill perhaps as early as tomorrow. Other Republicans criticized the President and Democratic leaders for rushing the legislative process on such a sweeping issue.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Minority Whip: The only hope for the Democratic leadership is to ram through a vote before we go home, before the American people can reach their member and say, please, don't do it.

SEN. JUDD GREGG, [R] New Hampshire: And regrettable, this seems to have become a process where the administration's taken the position that winning is leadership rather than substance is the important part. What we're seeing here is that substance has become the weak sister to a political agenda, and on something as significant as changing the entire health care structure of this country, it would, I think, behoove all of us to turn back and take a hard look at what we're actually doing.

MR. MAC NEIL: We'll have our own debate on the subject right after the News Summary. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Congressional hearings on Whitewater continued today. The Senate Banking Committee heard from White House officials, including former White House Chief of Staff now Presidential Adviser Mack McLarty and the First Lady's Chief of Staff, Margaret Williams. Treasury Sec. Lloyd Bentsen had his turn before the House Banking Committee today. We'll have excerpts from today's hearings later in the program.

MR. MAC NEIL: A Federal Advisory Commission has recommended that the government establish a national registry. The computerized database would record names and Social Security numbers of all U.S. citizens and immigrants who may legally work in this country. It would curb the hiring of illegal aliens by allowing employers to check the immigration status of potential employees. The FBI is investigating a possible conspiracy among anti-abortion activists to commit violence at abortion clinics. The New York Times reported today that Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the investigation last Saturday after two people were shot and killed outside a clinic in Pensacola, Florida. An anti-abortion demonstrator was arrested and charged with the murders.

MR. LEHRER: Yugoslav officials today severed all political and economic ties with Bosnia's Serbs. Yesterday those Serbs rejected an internationally-brokered peace plan for the third time. Here in Washington, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said President Clinton might unilaterally lift its arms embargo against the Muslims if the Serbs did not hindering peace.

MR. MAC NEIL: Haiti was on the agenda this afternoon on Capitol Hill. The House Committee heard testimony from Defense Sec. Perry and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili. The Secretary was asked if the sanctions against the military dictators are working.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: I think the embargo to date has had very limited effect on the regime and the elite in Haiti, partly because it has not been fully effective because of the smugglings coming into the Dominican Republic, the back door. I think the financial sanctions which were just recently imposed and the limitation on air travel and the limitation on visa do have a real bite on the ruling regime, their families, and the elite in their families. Those are fairly recently imposed though, and, therefore, that led to my earlier comment that I think we need to give those some weeks to operate before we can fully measure whether they will have the desired effect. But they are -- they do have a bite, a real bite.

MR. MAC NEIL: Three journalists who work for the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour were expelled from Haiti today. It's the most extreme action taken yet against foreign journalists working there. The three are: Correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth, Cameraman John Noop and Sound Technician Jamie Kibben. They were first detained last Sunday, along with two Haitians working for them. The Haitians remained in detention, despite the journalists' effort to free them.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We will be all right, but we're very concerned about all of you, the international press who is left here, about the Haitian press, which is not sure just what the rules of the game are, and especially about our Haitian colleagues who have not yet been released, although there is some evidence that they may be released today. We think this is a message to the Haitians colleagues working with them, and it's a message to the international press, and we are very concerned about them and about the rest of you.

MR. MAC NEIL: The three were ordered out of the country for taping video at the Port-au-Prince Airport, which is restricted by the government. They are the first journalists expelled since June. This evening, Elizabeth Farnsworth and her crew crossed the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic en route to the capital, Santa Domingo. The management of the NewsHour fully endorses her protest on being expelled from Haiti and her concern for the Haitian interpreter and driver who were still being detained.

MR. LEHRER: Aid workers said today the death toll among Rwandan refugees in Zaire has fallen to 500 a day. Two weeks ago about two thousand were dying each day. They also said the cholera epidemic seems to be nearing an end but dysentery remains a major problem in the refugee camps. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a congressional debate about health care, another day of Whitewater, and another conversation about teen violence. FOCUS - COMPARING NOTES

MR. MAC NEIL: We lead with congressional reaction to President Clinton on health care. Last night at his press conference, the President hailed what he called an historic opportunity to bring health coverage to all Americans. Both chambers of the Congress are now set to begin debate on different versions of health reform. The President has consistently threatened to veto any bill that does not cover the entire population within a reasonable time. At yesterday's news conference, he was asked to defend his support of Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's bill. That bill guarantees coverage for 95 percent of Americans by the year 2000.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: What the Mitchell bill says is, is that if you make a dramatic amount of progress, i.e., if you move from where we are now at about 83 percent of coverage up to 95 percent in a few years, that is evidence that we can achieve full coverage in the near future without requiring insurance to be bought. That is what that bill says. If it is deficit neutral and if it is passed in the way that it is, I believe it will achieve full coverage, because what the bill also says is, if we don't make that amount of progress in a few years, there will be a requirement on the Congress to provide for full coverage, and if the Congress doesn't act, then automatically employers and employees will be required to purchase insurance. I believe that it does meet the objective that I set out in the State of the Union Address, and I would sign it.

REPORTER: Mr. President, doesn't it make -- the fact that you have now indicated support for a less ambitious Senate bill, won't that make it harder to persuade House people to go along with a stronger bill?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, what the Mitchell bill does is to put the employer requirement at the end of the process, rather than at the beginning, and Sen. Mitchell is convinced that that is the most ambitious bill he can pass but that it meets the requirement. And it says to the people who have not been supportive of our approach, look, we'll try it in a competitive way first, and if that doesn't work, then we'll have a requirement. I think the same debate is going on in the House. My own view is that the question now should shift to the members of the other party, to the congressional Republicans. At one time when we started this debate and I said I wanted universal coverage, many members in Congress stood up and clapped of both parties. At one time there were two dozen Republican Senators on a bill to give universal coverage to all Americans. They have all abandoned that bill. We have reached out to them, as was our responsibility, to try to work together in a bipartisan fashion. And every time we have done it, they have moved away. So the questions now should shift to them. Are we going to cover all Americans or not? Are we going to have a bill that provides health care security or not? If you don't like our approaches in the Senate and the House, what is your alternative? That's what I hope you'll see.

MR. MAC NEIL: We're now joined by four members of Congress for their reaction to the President's press conference and their analysis of the road ahead. On the Senate side are Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat from West Virginia, and Sen. Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon. From the House, we're joined by Congressman Pete Stark, Democrat from California, and Dick Armey, Republican from Texas. Sen. Packwood, how do you answer the President's question to Republicans: Are we going to have a bill that provides health care security or not?

SEN. PACKWOOD: Our answer in the hearings we had proved that if we adopt his form of coverage, employer mandate, Mr. and Ms. Employer, you must do it, it is going to cost jobs, it's going to reduce wages. I started out supporting that position, and when I heard the facts, I changed my mind.

MR. MAC NEIL: So what, what is the answer to the questions -- I'm not sure what your answer is to the President's question: Are we going to have it or not?

SEN. PACKWOOD: Well, we're not -- no, if he insists upon universal coverage, what he calls the hard trigger, 100 percent, or as close to it as you get, Hawaii has it, and they've only gotten to 94 percent, but if he insists upon that in a bill, then I think no bill will pass at all.

MR. MAC NEIL: Senator, we -- because Sen. Dole made the same statement last night on the NewsHour, we asked the Hawaiian authorities today. They're up to 97 percent, they say, and they've recently introduced a campaign which is bringing them close to 98 percent.

SEN. PACKWOOD: That's what the Hawaiian authorities say. There's a variety of reports running any place from 92 to 96 percent. But the interesting thing is you want to be careful on Hawaii. 74 percent only of Hawaii's coverage is employer coverage. The rest is Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, and Hawaii has a big veteran's retirement population, or what they call their state health insurance program. But 74 percent is employer coverage, and do you know that we have eight states in this country now that have over 70 percent employer coverage on a voluntary basis.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Rockefeller, how do you respond to Sen. Packwood, that we're not going to, or the country's not going to get there if it's what the President is pushing?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I think what Sen. Mitchell is pushing is in a sense more embraceable by the American people. And I think it will pass. The Hawaii experience actually is notable because of the fact they are, as you indicate, going to get to 98 percent, but the cost of health care in Hawaii, because they do have close to universal coverage, is 30 percent less than it is on the mainland, and everything else in Hawaii is a lot more expensive. So that's a real lesson.

SEN. PACKWOOD: And the cost we have in Oregon, which is the lowest cost health state in the union -- and we have 87 percent coverage in our state now, and we do it without mandatory coverage.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Armey, what's the position of House Republicans now? What bill will you be offering? There was a bill introduced by Congressman Michel months ago. Are you now going to adapt it to the Dole bill, or what will you be offering?

REP. ARMEY: Well, actually, as the Michel bill was first introduced in the summer of 1992, the fact is that Democrats refused to take it up at that time, as John Dingell pointed out, they did so because they wanted to screw the Republicans in election year. But we are sticking with that bill. We think it's a bill that responds to the need for affordability, affordability and insurability for the American people. We think it's a good bill, and finally we believe when the smoke clears and we get rid of all the ideological hide boundness that's going on in this town, we can get back to doing what the American people need us to do, which is respond to their real concerns about health care, and the Michel bill does that, and it has stayed intact with more co- sponsors than any other bill in Congress since before this congressional session started.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Stark, how that President Clinton has accepted the Mitchell bill as a way to universal coverage, are House Democrats going to modify the Gephardt bill to gain wider support?

REP. STARK: I think we'll proceed with our bill. I have to correct Dick. Bob Michel introduced that bill in 1964 in opposition to Medicare, which he called socialism, and he's making the same speeches now 30 years later and so I don't think anything has changed. We are going to continue with the bill that was reported out of Ways & Means Committee. It covers a few more people and is a little more stringent in its requirement than Sen. Mitchell's bill, but we always write different bills and we'll continue. We are pushing ahead with a bill which will guarantee coverage to every American and has a fair way to pay for it and has some cost containment in it.

MR. MAC NEIL: There's also a move in the House for a bill which the Speaker said will get a vote between the Gephardt position and the Republican position. Are you going to make any modifications to embrace some support from those people?

REP. STARK: We will embrace anybody that we think can bring us some votes but I think the modification is merely an attempt to form a coalition with the Republicans to do nothing or frustrate the President's challenge to universal coverage, and I don't think we're going to get suckered by that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Is that your aim, Mr. Armey, to frustrate the President and do nothing?

REP. ARMEY: No, obviously not. If the President had been bipartisan and had included the Republicans even going back to his secret 500-person task force, we might have been able to put together the bipartisan bill that I think is emerging at this time. And if, in fact, the bipartisan coalition that is headed Bill Bachus and Roland comes up with a good bill that responds to the American people, it'll probably get more Republican votes than it will Democrat votes.

MR. MAC NEIL: I'm going to ask all of you, starting with you, Sen. Packwood, you who -- as you said -- are a former supporter of universal coverage and employer mandates, what now will you consider a victory in this process this summer?

SEN. PACKWOOD: I would consider a victory if we got the Dole- Packwood bill. I can consider a number of the bills that they have in the House, but I cannot bring myself to force people out of business, to force employers to go out of business, and that's what a mandate will do if we compel it, and if that's in the bill, the bill will not pass. Let me give you another example if I can. We say there's 37 million people that don't have coverage. In the bill that Sen. Mitchell has introduced, we are going to subsidize almost a hundred million people. We are going to subsidize people up to 240 percent of the poverty level. For a family of four that's $35,500. That's more than the average wage -- I mean, average income in this country. My God, how far are we going to go in spending money?

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Sen. Rockefeller.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Let me try to make a point that you made earlier, Robin, when you talked about -- or somebody made -- in other words, Republicans are talking about delaying this, they don't want to get down to the vote.

MR. MAC NEIL: It was Congressman Armey who said that.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Yeah.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sorry, Congressman Stark who said that.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I think it's true, and, you know, a letter here from Arlen Specter to me in 1993 saying let's get to health care at the earliest possible time. Here's one from Al D'Amato 1993, March, "We don't need to wait weeks, we're ready to go. Let's not wait." Here's one from Bob Dole, Republican leader, "The task force has been meeting nearly every Thursday morning for the past three years. We don't need to wait any longer."

SEN. PACKWOOD: Now, look, let me ask this, if I can then: What's a respectable amount of time to spend on the floor of the Senate on a 1392 page bill that was introduced yesterday that has some things in it that have not appeared in any other bill? Is it asking too much to spend two weeks, three weeks, four weeks? We spent five months on Medicare.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Well, let me answer that question.

SEN. PACKWOOD: Yeah.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Back in 1965, Medicare was introduced into the Ways & Means Committee of the House, and it was basically five days later, the committee voted it out. This was Medicare, you understand. Then 10 days later, the House voted it out. Now that was Medicare and an enormous piece of legislation.

SEN. PACKWOOD: Yes. Now let's take an example as to what happened. Remember what the cost estimates were when we passed Medicare and it passed like that in the House? It didn't pass that fast in the Senate. But we vastly underestimated what it would cost. Let's not make that mistake on this bill.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Oh, I agree with you, Bob, but let's not also make the mistake of simply declining through delaying of taking up what might be what West Virginia desperately wants --

SEN. PACKWOOD: And I'll say again --

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: -- both those with insurance and those without insurance, and that is results.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let me go back to the House side now for a moment. Congressman Armey, I asked Sen. Packwood, what would be victory for you in this whole situation?

REP. ARMEY: Well, I think the Michel-Lott bill comes very close to it. It fixes portability. It fixes affordability, would resolve the dilemma of the two people that the President had in the White House last night very easily. It gets down costs with real torte reform. It doesn't break the budget, doesn't result in rationing, doesn't have government control of our health care system. And, you know, I might also point out on the question of time, we just spent three weeks on the California wilderness bill. Even half the people in California don't know what that bill is. Now we're talking about having within two weeks a vote on a bill that nobody to this point has even been able to read, because it hasn't been formally introduced where we can read it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman --

REP. ARMEY: And I would argue that we ought not to pass a bill with less time to read it than what it takes to fill out and file a simple insurance claim today. And that's where we're going.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Stark.

REP. STARK: What I think is that the President sets a standard for the debate, and that is that we have a responsibility in Congress to assure every American that they will have the right to health care coverage, a fair way to pay for it. They won't lose their health care because of the state of their health or the state of their economy. It's obvious that the Republicans are stalling, and trying to frustrate every effort to do what's right. They did it with Medicare. They did it with Social Security, and they're trying to do it now. I think the American public are wise to them. They could not -- they're shirking their responsibility to do what's right in this country. Yes, there will be some pain with small employers. They'll pay almost as much as they did when we raised the minimum wage in '91 and '92 by 90 cents an hour, and my suggestion is that the NFIB didn't want any health insurance for their employees, and they still don't. You're never going to get them to do the right thing.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let me go back to the Senate side now. Sen. Rockefeller, the Republican charge which is crucial to this, as I see it, is -- and we just heard it repeated -- that the employer mandate will cost jobs. Last night on this program Sen. Dole said 1.7 to 3 million jobs. What is the Democratic answer to that?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: The Democratic answer to that is the American answer, and that is that all the people that have looked at this and who have not had a political basis, either Republican or Democratic, have agreed basically that it's going to be kind of a net wash. There will be some jobs lost, and there will be some jobs gained, but that what we do know is that American small business are the businesses that most want to be able to afford health insurance because they're the ones who care the most about their employees because they're from their neighborhoods, their communities. So what we want to do is to make it possible for them to afford to buy health insurance. And if we do that, which we can do through the Mitchell bill, I think they will do it.

SEN. PACKWOOD: Let me give you an example. He talks about small business. Let's say you've got a machine shop, you've got 30 employees. You're working six and a half days a week, yourself, fourteen hours a day, you own the shop, you're paying your people maybe $20,000 a year on average. If this bill goes through and you have to buy family policies for those people, family policies that this bill directs cost about $6,000, give or take $500. Round it off at $6,000. The employer has to pay half of that, $3,000 for 20 employees. That's $60,000. He has to pay 50 percent of the policy.

REP. STARK: That's $1.50 an hour.

SEN. PACKWOOD: It's a lot of money.

REP. STARK: It's not such a big deal.

SEN. PACKWOOD: It's a lot of money.

REP. STARK: But his competitors have to pay the same thing, so the widget goes up 2 cents, a slice of pizza goes up 5 cents, and American people have health coverage that can't be taken away and guaranteed. You don't have to have rationing like you do in Oregon, to deny people coverage just because you run out of money. So you've done the right thing.

SEN. PACKWOOD: That's right.

REP. STARK: And you have to have the nerve to stare these people down and do the right thing.

SEN. PACKWOOD: You never worried about running out of money, Pete, I'll give you credit for that.

REP. STARK: I have never worried about delivering to the American people what they deserve.

MR. MAC NEIL: Yes. Congressman Armey.

REP. ARMEY: Yes.

MR. MAC NEIL: Did you -- I thought you wanted to come into --

REP. ARMEY: Well, I mean, Pete's got the same attitude that Sen. Rockefeller had when he said, "We're going to push through health care reform regardless of the views of the American people." Well, at least let the representatives of the American people have time to read the bill. I think that's only fair. Now, why should any member of Congress be asked to vote on a bill that they don't even have an opportunity to read.

REP. STARK: We're not --

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Rockefeller.

REP. STARK: -- of remedial education --

REP. ARMEY: No.

REP. STARK: -- for slow readers --

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Rockefeller.

REP. ARMEY: Well, we're concerned about slow writers. You know, the Republican bill has been written now since 1992, when it was written for the first time, incidentally, Pete. Our bill is still there, it's still written, it's still in the hopper, still got the 160 co-sponsors.

REP. STARK: It doesn't do anything.

REP. ARMEY: And you guys are still trying to figure out bill you might write.

MR. MAC NEIL: Gentlemen, excuse me. Sen. Rockefeller, on the other point that seems to me crucial to this right now, what is the real difference between your bill and the Republican proposals on who gets covered? Last night, Sen. Dole said they can cover 92 percent of Americans without taxes, without mandates to Sen. Mitchell's 95 percent, with taxes and with mandates. Now how important is that difference as you see it?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Well, first of all, it's much bigger than that difference, because, first of all, we don't have Sen. Dole's bill so we don't really know what is in it. But from everything I understand about it, nothing is paid for. So you're really talking about 85 percent of the people or 83 percent of the people being covered, not 91 to 92 percent. And that's a very important difference. Secondly, I really don't like the nature of this conversation that the four of us have been having, because it sort of realizes the worst fears of the American people, that we're sitting here trying to outdo each other politically and not tending to the business of passing health care, which is very serious business, and more serious --

MR. MAC NEIL: I'm just asking you to try and clarify the proposals.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Yeah. And I'm trying to say I think we're doing a very poor job of doing that. Mitchell's bill puts off any kind of employer requirement until after the next century. It carves out any employer that has 25 or fewer employees in this country and says you don't have to be subject to an employer mandate, and that's 98 percent of the businesses in West Virginia. It's a very different bill from the President's bill, and I think it's a much more embraceable bill.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Packwood, how big is the difference?

SEN. PACKWOOD: Well, the --

MR. MAC NEIL: On who's covered.

SEN. PACKWOOD: The 92 percent that Sen. Dole talks about is correct. When Sen. Rockefeller says it isn't paid for, there's about $100 billion in savings in the Dole-Packwood bill from Medicare and Medicaid, and many of the savings are in the other bills. Those, those moneys, a hundred billion dollars, are used for subsidies, not to the level of thirty-five thousand dollars, but are used for subsidies, and the studies are that we'll get to 90 to 92 percent coverage on a voluntary basis under the Dole-Packwood bill.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: And it's the same with the Mitchell bill. It's a voluntary basis, but if by the year 2000, we have not reached 95 percent coverage, then we have to get -- ratchet it up -- get more serious, make sure that the coverage is expanded. And I think that's what the American people want and deserve.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Stark, how do you come in on this, I mean, the difference between the Gephardt bill and the Republicans on who's covered and who isn't?

REP. STARK: Well, we cover everybody, Robin. A hundred and fifty million people would continue to receive coverage in their place of employment. It would be guaranteed. That's the addition for them. For those who are not in, we now require their employers to pay 80 percent. We subsidize some of the people who are very low income, and we have a federal program that guarantees. We do expand Medicare. We think it's been the most popular, efficient program in the United States. It saves money. People like it. Even my Republican colleagues on the program would not vote to end Medicare -- to expand that to those people that the private insurance companies choose not to insure or for some reason don't have insurance available to them, to provide safety net, to fulfill our guarantee to the American public by extending membership to them in a program that all our parents enjoy, and we think we've done a complete job. We get everybody in by 1999 now. It was '98. And it's guaranteed.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Armey, who is covered under the Mitchell bill?

REP. ARMEY: The Mitchell bill? I have never seen --

MR. MAC NEIL: The Michel, I'm sorry, the Michel bill, I beg your pardon.

REP. ARMEY: The Michel bill. Well, nobody -- first of all, of course, there's no defined benefits package, nor is it required or mandated that anybody provide insurance for another person, but the American working person is covered by a more affordable, more portable insurance policy through insurance reforms, tort law reforms, and risk pooling, and any number of innovations that are consistent with the desire to have freedom and self-control over the health care by the American people. The problem that I have with this whole process is all of a sudden after, you know, a year and nine months of dilly dallying with one plan or another, this flirtation, that flirtation, another promise, another bill that didn't show up and so on, they have got to do this, they argue, before the August recess convenes. Why not get the bills written? Let us have a time to read them, and we come back and vote after September. What is the big rush that it's got to be done now all of a sudden in the next two weeks when we can take some time to read these bills and have some understanding? I'll tell you the problem. When the American people understood the Clinton bill, they didn't like the Clinton bill. When they understood the Cooper bill, they didn't like the Cooper bill. When they understand the Mitchell bill, they won't like the Mitchell bill. They don't want the bills to be read and considered and examined and analyzed before vote is taken.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Stark.

REP. ARMEY: And I think that's a bad way to make legislation.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman Stark.

REP. STARK: The polls tell us that the American people are concerned about losing their health insurance. And we have an obligation, it seems to me, to provide every American health coverage in this country and find a fair way to pay for it. It's the right thing to do. We're the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't do it. As a matter of fact, we're probably the only nation in the world that doesn't do it, period.

MR. MAC NEIL: We need to -- I'm sorry to interrupt you, Congressman, but we need to --

REP. STARK: Quite all right, Robin. It's been fun.

MR. MAC NEIL: -- leave it there. I think we've had a taste of the debates ahead, and thank you all four. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, today's Whitewater hearings and a conversation about teen violence. FOCUS - Q&A

MR. LEHRER: Now this day of Whitewater. The House and Senate Banking Committees continued their separate looks at contacts among senior administration officials. Kwame Holman reports.

MR. HOLMAN: As the Senate Banking Committee began another day of hearings on the Washington aspects of Whitewater, Democrat John Kerry tried to put the committee's ongoing mission into some perspective.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, [D] Massachusetts: I think we're getting to the point where this hearing or these three days have narrowed the focus of this that may well even be getting to the point of beating to death the fairly narrow focus of what this is being reduced to, which is the question of Mr. Altman's testimony and Mr. Altman's recusal.

MR. HOLMAN: It was the issue of Roger Altman's recusal that the committee launched into this morning. Margaret Williams, chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton, was questioned about her presence at a February 2nd meeting at the White House in which Altman, then acting head of the Resolution Trust Corporation, reportedly talked of recusing himself from any involvement in the RTC's investigation of Madison Savings & Loan. Williams said she doesn't remember Altman's being pressured not to recuse himself.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE, [D] Michigan: Ms. Williams, did Mr. Nussbaum indicate his opinion that Mr. Altman ought not to recuse himself?

MARGARET WILLIAMS, Chief of Staff to the First Lady: I don't recall exactly what Mr. Nussbaum said, but I do recall that after I made my statement that Mr. Nussbaum had said whatever the decision Mr. Altman will have to make or something to that effect.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: The indications we have are that Mr. Nussbaum did express the view that Mr. Altman should not recuse himself and apparently had a very strong feeling about it. You're not aware of that?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: I do not challenge that in the recollection of others but if I am truthful to what I recall --

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Right.

MARGARET WILLIAMS: -- that is not what I was focused on. I do not recall.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: I understand, and I appreciate that, and I want you to be truthful, and I appreciate your saying that. Did Mr. Ickes express an opinion against recusal while you were there?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Umm, I don't recall what Mr. Ickes said.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Did anybody else who was in the meeting express an opinion against recusal while you were there?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: I don't recall.

MR. HOLMAN: Republican Phil Gramm quizzed Williams about a meeting that occurred the following day, February 3rd, in which Altman announced he was not going to recuse himself. Altman has maintained he called the President's deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes, to arrange that meeting but Williams says Altman called her.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM, [R] Texas: Now, he calls you up the day later, at least we think, and he says, I want you to set up a meeting, he's come over on the road to Damascus for some reason -- nobody told him not to do it -- but he changes his mind -- he goes back to the Treasury and so then he calls you up and says, I want to come over to the White House and tell people that I'm not going to take myself out of the Madison investigation. I want you to get people together, he tells you, because I want to come over there and tell them. He comes over to tell them. What we hear in other sworn testimony is you gathered these people together, he sticks his head in the door and says, I have decided not to take myself out of the Whitewater investigation. You say it was 10 minutes. I talk pretty slowly. Mr. Altman's from New York. He talks real fast. And there's a little problem there, but let me ask you a question.

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Certainly.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: I think as chief of staff for the First Lady, I don't think of you as being in the chain of command at the White House. Why would Roger Altman call the chief of staff of the First Lady and ask her to set up this meeting?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Well, first of all, let me try and explore with you a little bit your first premise, which is you don't think of me as being in the chain of command in the White House. If I am an assistant to the President, one of seventeen, when there are approximately, what, about a thousand employees in the Executive Branch, then clearly my position puts me if not in the chain of command certainly in an area where decisions that are being made might come to my attention.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: But why you?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Well --

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: On this issue, on the recusal issue, which you say you weren't even interested in, and I don't doubt that, why you? Why did he call you?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: You would have to ask Mr. Altman why he called me.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: Why do you think he called you?

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Umm, one, Mr. Altman and I talked frequently about health care, all the time in fact. In fact, one of the things that I -- in fact, one of the things that I did, umm, both as an assistant to the President and chief of staff to the First Lady is as I did a lot of meeting facilitation. I would try and get --

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: Well, but he says in his diary that he had talked to you about Whitewater and that he has in quotes that you had told him that "the First Lady was paralyzed by it."

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Sen. Gramm, I will say that I am known to be a person who puts people together to facilitate meetings. I would also say that I have instant access to Mr. Ickes, Mr. Stephanopoulos, and also people in the counsel's office, so I think it might have been as a matter of convenience, kind of one stop shopping, since this is what I had done, umm, during my, umm, work on health care. In the -- the second question was about the diaries.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: Well, I was simply in the second question pointing out that, that you had had previous contact with him, that he had referred to his diaries about Whitewater, and had -- as, as we had previously had the question asked -- had put in parentheses, as if it were a quote from you about the First Lady being paralyzed by the Whitewater thing, if that had anything to do with wanting to deliver what at least he perceived, obviously he perceived, the White House would view as great and glorious news that he was not taking himself out of this investigation.

MARGARET WILLIAMS: Well, first of all, you start, in my view, from the wrong premise. You start from the premise that I had conversations with Mr. Altman about Whitewater. Now, his diary may say that, but my testimony to you today is that I do not have recollections of those conversations. So I can't even start from that premise.

MR. HOLMAN: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes was at those two February meetings attended by Roger Altman and Margaret Williams, and like Williams, Ickes said he couldn't recall anybody trying to talk Altman out of recusing himself.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Now he's testified to us here that he had reached a decision to recuse himself before this meeting and, therefore, the presumption is that he came in and said that to all of you that were gathered at that meeting, that he had reached a judgment to recuse himself. Are you saying that he did not say that?

HAROLD ICKES, White House Deputy Chief of Staff: It is my best recollection as I sit here today, Senator, that I do not recall him saying that he had decided to recuse himself. I recall that he was considering recusing himself.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Now, I'm going to run out of time, but the interesting rest of this is the discussion that then follows, who said what and in what order and, and in what manner. So I'd like you before my time expires to say who was the first person that responded in as far as you can recall.

HAROLD ICKES: Well, Senator, this happened a long time ago. A lot of things have happened in-between that. I have a very busy schedule, as do you all. Much has emerged from what has been discussed in the press and otherwise.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: What did Mr. Nussbaum say?

HAROLD ICKES: I think, as I recall, Mr. Nussbaum as did I, as did others, asked what -- the basis for his thinking that he might want to recuse himself, and as I recall, Mr. Altman basically said that he felt that he had a very -- not that he felt, that he did, in fact, have a very long friendship with the Clintons, both President and Mrs. Clinton, and thought that that might be a basis for recusing himself, but it is my very distinct recollection, Senator, that he had not yet decided. It is also my very distinct recollection that all parties at that meeting said that it is up to him to decide whether or not he was going to recuse himself.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Did -- I'm going to yield right now with just this one question -- did anybody speak up and support his intention to recuse himself?

HAROLD ICKES: Senator, I don't recall --

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Well, there were three other people there. There were three people, as I understand it, Nussbaum, Williams, yourself, and Eggleston. You know, that's the universe of people. Did anybody -- you've said what you've said. I think you just said what Nussbaum said. Ms. Williams just testified that she thought it was not a good idea and so stated in the meeting. I can't out of that group find anybody who would have said, yes, we agree with your decision.

SEN. DONALD RIEGLE: Well, first of all, Senator, I don't think that there had been a decision to agree with, No. 1. No. 2 is it is my very distinct recollection that everyone said there were different views given but everybody -- everyone said at bottom, Roger, it's up to you to decide whether or not you're going to recuse yourself.

MR. HOLMAN: What this committee still is trying to figure out is why Roger Altman went to the first White House meeting planning to recuse himself but after the second meeting decided not to. SERIES - BREAKING THE CYCLE

MR. MAC NEIL: Now we return to our series of conversations on preventing teen violence. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has been reporting on programs that are working to break the cycle of violence among young people. Tonight she looks at a unique violence prevention program in Washington, D.C.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In the shadow of the nation's capital, the rate of violent deaths among teenagers has escalated dramatically, over three times greater in 1991 than four years earlier. It was during this time that Howard University here in Washington, D.C., established a violence prevention project, the first of its kind in the country. The goal is to teach coping skills to kids who grow up with violence in the home, violence in school, and in the streets. The project is the brain child of psychology professor Hope Hill. She and her colleagues rely on some traditional tools of psychology to get at the new realities of youth violence, how it is threatening entire communities, and how that is threatening to both mind and body. They get the children to draw pictures of their neighborhood, of something that makes them happy and also something that worries them. Dr. Hill explained.

HOPE HILL, Violence Prevention Project: We thought that one of the things that this would do is it would free kids up to really give us very spontaneous perceptions and expressions of what they experience in their communities. And here we see what we would really think of as a pretty age appropriate drawing for a nine- year-old. You have a bright sun, shiny, and blue clouds in the sky, and generally, it's a pretty happy picture. We asked that same child to draw a picture of something that causes you worry, or something that causes you concern. If you can look very carefully, you can see there are two people on the street, one in blue and one in red. And the one in blue has a very prominent gun, and he's saying, "You owe, you owe me money." The one in red is saying, "Not in the chest." Here's another drawing that was done by a fifth grader, and I thought what as interesting here is the meticulousness and the care and time and effort that was devoted to drawing this gun. This is another picture that was drawn by a fourth grade girl. It says, "Is when someone dies," and you notice the meticulousness that she has gone through in terms of writing in this burial place, "We love you," so you can see the body in the casket and flowers around it, and it's pretty poignant actually for a nine-year-old to, to really have this image and to be preoccupied with the aftermath of violence in this way.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Later, we talked to Dr. Hill about her solutions as well as her ideas about the causes of youth violence.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Hope Hill, thank you for joining us.

HOPE HILL, Violence Prevention Project: Thank you.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What is your sense of why it is that youth violence is on the rise?

HOPE HILL: Violence is learned. We can't escape the fact that in this society violence is both seductive, attractive, and exciting, and very early on, those are the messages that we communicate to our young people, that violence is a way of gaining power for many disenfranchised youth. Violence is a way of gaining respect and admiration and even affirmation. In addition to that, we know that there are some children who are more at risk for involvement in violence than others. And those are the children that have had early experiences of neglect and abuse. In other words, these are the young people who have had violence rendered on them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some logic would say, well, if a child has gone through that, he won't or she won't want, you know, to have that happen in his life later on. How does it happen that they become affected like that?

HOPE HILL: Early abuse, victimization, and neglect renders a child helpless in many respects to the extent that that young person as he or she grows up is seeking a source of affirming that they really have some worth and value. And often the way that that's played out is often paradoxical, is inevitably enacting some of the same violence and aggression that has been really projected on him or her at an early age. But there is something else that happens with children. There has been research over the last 10 years that has strongly suggested that witnessing violence either through domestic violence or through violence in the street places young people at further risk for both involvement in violence but also for very serious psychological problems that left untreated can lead to failure in school, difficulty in terms of interpersonal relationships, and can, in fact, end up making that young person more impulsive and more likely to use violence.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that like post-traumatic stress, the kind of thing that happens to children of war?

HOPE HILL: Exactly. Post traumatic stress disorder historically was observed primarily with veterans returning from wars. It has only been relatively recently that we have begun to see some of the same or similar signs of stress and anxiety in very young children.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that because violence is increasing?

HOPE HILL: I think that's because of a number of reasons. One, violence is clearly increasing among our adolescent population. The nature of violence in many of our communities is clearly intensifying, and children and adolescents are witnessing this level of intensity. I'm talking about children who don't take going to school for granted but have to be very concerned about what neighborhoods they walk through and even what they're wearing and how they're looking in order to avoid incurring any kind of interpersonal violence.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are the implications?

HOPE HILL: Well, the implications are both short-term and implications are long-term in terms of witnessing violence and growing up in communities where violence is a normal, everyday occurrence. One, there are immediate short-term implications in that many children who both have post traumatic stress disorder and also who have other anxiety-related disorders that are a result of witnessing cannot focus and exercise the kind of energy and attentiveness that school demands. So automatically, when they get to school, there is some impairment just by the virtue of having witnessed trauma and violence. But we also are beginning to believe that constant exposure to crime and violence in the community may, in fact, have long-term implications on how teenagers develop relationships, the extent to which young adults will be able to create bonded relationships among each other which, of course, is necessary to establish family and to keep it going. And this may be the reason why. As children grow up and violence is unpredictable, relationships become unpredictable. The level of trust and security and predictability that we all take for granted in terms of many of our relationships simply is not there.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If teenagers today are going to have even more severe problems forming relationships, what could that lead to in terms of the family? Are we talking about, you know, just an intensification of the breakdown or creating something totally different?

HOPE HILL: When we contemplate that there are young people, in fact, who may have witnessed three or four homicides in a period of six months, who may have attended four funerals a month, some of the children that we worked with have, in fact, witnessed their parents shot, witnessed best friends, witnessed teachers being victimized both in the classroom, at school, and also in the community, when we look at the cumulative impact of that over the developmental cycle, I really shudder to think what those relationships might be like in early adulthood, but there is something that we can do about it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are you trying to do? I mean, describe your program for me and how it addresses those problems.

HOPE HILL: The premise of our program is that children who witness violence in the community need to have normalizing experiences that help them to deal with that trauma. And what we've tried to do is to develop an intervention at Howard with essentially four parts to it. One portion of it affects children directly. We run an after-school program in an elementary school in Far Southeast Washington. Secondly, we provide consultations to the teachers of children in our project. What we try to do is to first help them to understand how violence affects development of young children. For instance, if you see a child who is unfocused, day dreaming, or who has, who suddenly has become aggressive with other children, there are a host of other things that might be happening, but we want teachers to be aware that one thing that can be happening is that this young person may have had a recent experience in violence. There's another part of the program in which we work with parents directly, because for the most part, the level of violence in many of our communities is new to parents. And unless parents are supported with particular social support so that they know that this is not something that they have to deal with alone, but also so that they know that working together they can do something to turn the situation around in the community, that in and of itself is very helpful to parents because often they feel very isolated.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How does the youth trauma service fit into that? What exactly is it and how does that fit into what you're trying to do?

HOPE HILL: What the trauma service does is to respond to children in trouble, to incidents of violence, shootings, non-fatal shootings, homicides, physical assaults that occur on the streets of Washington, because all too often, young children who view trauma are on automatic pilot. They see it one day. The next day they may see it on television. The next day they may see it at home, and the third day they may see more of it on the street. So the youth trauma service is an effort to respond to the crisis immediately, to provide crisis intervention, de-briefing, and support, and to make sure those children and families are linked up the next day with appropriate services that they may need to recover from that trauma but also to supply other psychological support.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How optimistic are you that the interventions that you're making can turn things around?

HOPE HILL: We really think our program is one small step in a continuum that has to be created all across communities in America, and that continuum must involve empowerment of families, supporting families that have been parenting under enormous stresses, going into the schools and creating the kind of partnerships between the schools and the business communities that will make schools not only relevant but communities in and of themselves that produce kids that are capable of dealing with the technological challenges in the year 2000.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Dr. Hope Hill, thank you.

HOPE HILL: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

MR. MAC NEIL: Howard University Violence Prevention Project has a budget of $200,000 and is funded by the Anne Cassie Foundation and the Government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Thursday was health care reform. President Clinton and members of his administration stepped up pressure for its congressional passage. They again called on Republicans to help reach a compromise. House Majority Leader Gephardt set August 19th as the first major vote on a health reform plan. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a NewsMaker interview with White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, plus Shields and Gigot. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.