The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we focus on the rising controversy and comment about the roles played by Hillary Clinton. Next, the head of Fannie Mae describes the plan to finance millions of new low cost homes. Finally, Business Correspondent Paul Solman reports on the jobs summit in Detroit. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton attended a town meeting today in Nashua, New Hampshire. He took questions from residents on issues ranging from health care to jobs, foreign aid, and deficit reduction. There were no questions about the Whitewater affair, but there was this comment from one woman.

WOMAN: Whitewater is for canoeing and rafting. [applause] Shame on those who would detract and distract from the important work you're doing with universal health coverage and jobs.

MR. LEHRER: Last night, the President took on his Republican Whitewater critics who said they were committed to the politics of personal destruction and avoiding serious debate on major policy issues. He spoke at a Democratic fund-raiser in Boston.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We need to think about new and different things in totally different ways than we have in the past. No one, even our party, let's be honest about it, we don't have all the answers. Why then are we confronted in this administration with an opposition party that just stands up and says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no? [pounding podium with fist] When I was a Democratic governor and they had the White House, I constantly sought them out, engaged them in debate, offered to work with them on issues from education to welfare reform to crime, to you name it. I never did them the way they are doing us in Washington, D.C. today. It is wrong, and it is not good for the United States of America.

MR. LEHRER: Today the Republicans responded. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole and House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich presented reporters with a list of issues on which Republicans had cooperated with the President, then Dole had this to say.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: Well, we don't know whether President -- when he starts pounding that podium - - how many times was it -- nine -- eleven -- well, that maybe good exercise, but it's not what's happened around here, and we, we would like to see the President focus on the issues. That's what we're trying to do. We're sorry that he's been distracted, but we can't -- we didn't do any of that -- so we're sorry about it, but we hope we can get back on track.

MR. LEHRER: A leading House Democrat called today for congressional hearings on Whitewater. Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said hearings were the way to overcome what he said was "a perception out there that the White House is still holding back information." Robin.

MR. MacNeil: This is primary election day in Illinois. Most of the attention was focused on the Chicago race of Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski who is up against the toughest challenge of his 36 years in Congress. The chairman of the Ways & Means Committee has been the subject of a grand jury investigation into allegations of payroll padding and embezzlement from the House post office. Rostenkowski has denied the charges. In economic news, the Commerce Department reported prices at the wholesale level jumped 1/2 percent last month. The rise was mainly due to sharper higher energy costs during the winter freeze. Excluding the volatile food and energy sectors, wholesale prices were almost unchanged. The Federal Reserve reported industrial production advanced .4 percent in February. A separate report showed the overall trade deficit shot up by more than $40 billion to $109 billion last year. Weaker overseas demand for U.S. products was partly responsible.

MR. LEHRER: Israeli Prime Minister Rabin said today his government wanted to resume peace negotiations with the PLO. Rabin spoke in Washington at a meeting of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

YITZHAK RABIN, Prime Minister, Israel: There can be no departure from the course of negotiations with the Palestinians. It's time to get back to the negotiating table. I believe that we are near the conclusion of the Gaza-Jericho stage in the negotiations for peace. We already see their finish line. A little more effort, and we will begin to lay the actual foundations of peace for our children, us and the Palestinians, we have no other power.

MR. LEHRER: The Israeli government stepped up its crackdown against Jewish extremists today. Police arrested the founder of the settlement movement on a two-year-old charge. There were also more Arab-Israeli clashes in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. One Palestinian died in the violence. Troops were on high alert following a threat of suicide attacks by the Islamic group Hamas.

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton today extended the U.S. ban on underground nuclear tests by one year to September 1995. Spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said the decision was due in part to the restraint of other nuclear powers in not resuming testing despite a Chinese nuclear test last October. The State Department today said North Korea did not fully cooperate with U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities. It said restrictions were placed on the inspectors at one or two of the sites they visited. North Korea halted all expectations a year ago, prompting concern it was hiding a nuclear weapons program. The inspectors left the country today. The U.S. will await their report before resuming high level talks with North Korea on nuclear and other issues.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. military officials in Kenya recovered the bodies of seven crewmen from yesterday's crash of a U.S. gunship. They were still searching for one missing crewman. A plane went down off the Kenyan coast last night on its way to a patrol in Somalia. President Clinton flew to Fort Drum in New York late today to welcome home some of the troops returning from Somalia. More than 28,000 U.S. troops led a multinational force in Somalia. They went in in December 1992 to provide security for aid shipments to starving Somalis.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the day's top stories. Now it's on to the roles of Hillary Clinton, low cost homes, and the worldwide search for jobs. FOCUS - ROLE PLAYING?

MR. LEHRER: The wife of the President of the United States is our lead story tonight. In the last several days she has come into the high beams of an intense and critical spotlight over Whitewater, over her rights and responsibilities as First Lady, over the politics of the spotlight, itself. A full and frank discussion follows this set-up by Kwame Holman.

SPOKESMAN: The President of the United States, President Clinton. [applause]

MR. HOLMAN: After blasting his Republican critics last night, the President was in New Hampshire this morning sticking up for Mrs. Clinton and their health care goals.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: My wife was out in Colorado yesterday and had huge crowds of students at Boulder with a big sign saying, "Give 'Em Health, Hillary." They -- [applause] -- make no mistake about it -- some of the people who are giving me hell in Washington are doing it so I can't give you health. But I'm going to try to give you health and take whatever it is they want to give me in return for making sure you get what it is you're entitled to.

MR. HOLMAN: The continuing Whitewater onslaught in Washington had not deterred Mrs. Clinton from making her rounds, lobbying Congress to move ahead on health legislation. But she had been keeping a deliberately low profile, avoiding reporters' questions about the legal and financial complications of the Arkansas land deal. But with last week's arrival of new White House Counselor Lloyd Cutler came new accessibility of the First Lady. She gave interviews to two national news magazines, Time and Newsweek. The First Lady continued to deny any wrongdoing but said it was a mistake for the Clintons to have invested in the Whitewater Development and that mistakes were made by the White House in handling news media scrutiny of the issue. Then in a two-day, two- state campaign-style swing for the President's health plan, the First Lady ratcheted up the White House offensive. In Denver, she fielded press questions for the first time in months.

REPORTER: Do you still believe that, as you've said before, that your husband lost $69,000 in that investment?

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I've always said, you know, we lost money. Goodness knows what you all would be saying if we had made any money. I'm glad we did lose money. And we're just going to do whatever is appropriate to do, and that's what we've always done over the last 15 years or so as we have dealt with this.

REPORTER: Mrs.Clinton, did you mishandled this?

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I have tried very hard to be as understanding as I can about the concerns and questions of the press. And I've admitted that I've made mistakes in how I have perceived this and handled it. You know, you live and learn, and you go on. And that's what I'm doing. And, you know, when this is all over, it's going to be the same story we've been telling for two years. We made a bad investment, we lost money, and there's really not much more to add to it.

MR. LEHRER: We will add now to that a discussion. It will be among Sheila Tate, former press secretary for First Lady Nancy Reagan, now president of a Washington public relations firm; Linda Chavez, head of the Civil Rights Commission in the Reagan administration, now at the Manhattan Institute; former Democratic Party officials, Lynn Cutler and Ann Lewis, both now political consultants. Sheila Tate, is Hillary Clinton simply the victim of partisan political attacks?

MS. TATE: No, I don't think so at all. I think Hillary Clinton made a decision early in her husband's presidency to assume a policy making role. And I think that what she is experiencing right now is consequences of that decision. She has to answer questions just like anyone else in a similar position.

MR. LEHRER: Ann Lewis.

MS. LEWIS: I'd say two things. One, there is some partisan debate. There is -- some of the attacks around Hillary Clinton around the health plan clearly by people on the other side, and she's very identified with that. There is a comment I can think of by Jack Kemp that appeared last January, this past January, in which he said, "Health care is 14 percent of the Gross National Product of the American economy, and Bill Clinton has entrusted it to his wife!" And so the fact that a wife would be in there doing policy was itself a criticism. So there clearly is an edge. There's a partisan debate. But I think there is a second piece to that. Hillary Clinton made -- actually Hillary Clinton made a decision that a lot of other American women have made, about trying to juggle a working family, to move beyond a traditional role. I think she is now paying a heavy price. She has really been targeted for attack by people who are uncomfortable by the change that represents. And women have been playing different roles in a lot of areas.

MR. LEHRER: Targeted for attack in an unfair way, or is she just taking the heat that she -- that anybody would take who's in a policy position, which is what Sheila Tate is saying?

MS. LEWIS: No. I think some of the comments we have seen -- there was a column by Abe Rosenthal, the former editor of the New York Times, in last Friday's New York Times that really went beyond policy. I mean, it was a sort of a personal outrage that this woman was taking on this role. I look back at some of the -- actually, most interesting, some of the sharpest have been by people, usually men, who define themselves as political insiders. And I think they're reacting not just to Hillary Clinton, to what she stands for, which is the way in which women's political behavior has changed the system.

MR. LEHRER: Linda Chavez, you agree that what's involved here is the way women have -- women's role in politics has changed and how she, Hillary Clinton, is the focal point of that, and a lightning rod for that?

MS. CHAVEZ: Well, I think there is some problem in terms of the role that Hillary Clinton is trying to play. And I think it's been there from the beginning. Frankly, she is in a policy making position without having gone through the kind of scrutiny that people like myself, like Sheila Tate, like others around this table go through when we go and put ourselves in policy making positions, because she was not nominated by the President. There are laws that prevent him, because she's a member of his family, from putting her in that position, but the fact is she has to be accountable if she's going to be in a policy making position for the consequences of her actions and she has to be accountable for the same kinds of ethical scrutiny that other people in public life today have to put up with.

MR. LEHRER: And is it your feeling that she's acting like she does not have to do that?

MS. CHAVEZ: Well, it's very clear that she's acting like she doesn't have to do that. I mean, from the very beginning, when she set up her task force, even though it was an advisory committee and should function like all other advisory committees to the federal government, she did not have to abide by the same rules. She did not have to have the same kind of financial disclosure. Again, those of us who've had to go into high government office have had the kinds of financial disclosure papers that we've had to fill out that might, in fact, have brought some of this to light and might have subjected her to scrutiny.

MR. LEHRER: Ann Cutler, do you think that's the heart of the problem here, that Hillary Clinton saw herself in a special position as being First Lady and as a consequence, has not put herself out there as other people have to when they're in policy positions?

MS. CUTLER: I mean, you just saw her before a camera and a microphone. And she gave interviews over the weekend. In fact, her schedule has never diminished, even through the worst of this. She continued to have appointments in the White House and to go to the Hill to work on the health care legislation, and there is nothing very shy or retiring about this woman. One has to look back on her entire life to understand that this policy role is nothing new for Hillary Rodham Clinton. She chaired the Children's Defense Fund, which is one of the most important advocacy groups for children in our country over the years, the national chair. She chaired the Commission on Education of the States, which she was asked to do by several governors of both parties. She has always played that kind of a role. And everybody knew during the course of the election that this was the kind of a role that she would play. This was no secret to the American people and was never a negative certainly with women of America who have taken a great deal of pride in her ability to handle all of these different facets of, of this role of First Lady.

MR. LEHRER: What's happened? Up until the last few weeks, the opinion polls at least showed her to be extremely popular. There were certainly -- I'm sure there was some grumbling, but if you just look at the numbers -- I happened to look at 'em today just to make sure that my memory was correct -- it's only been -- the problem has only arisen since the Whitewater thing arose. So what's your analysis of that?

MS. CUTLER: Well, that the political strategists on the other side understood very well that in order to defeat health care reform, they had to discredit her in every way, shape, or form that they possibly could. Absolutely, I believe it.

MS. TATE: That's very offensive to me. I think if you would stop for one minute and look at this not as a gender issue -- and the best way to do that is assume that we have a woman president and her husband begins a process whereby he takes over a significant part of the policy making apparatus in the White House. It's only a matter of time before these same issues would come up. It's not based on the fact that she's female.

MR. LEHRER: Ann Lewis.

MS. LEWIS: I would find that an attractive prospect. I hope we get a chance to have that discussion soon. But let us be clear. Accountability is very important, I agree with Linda. Everyone involved in policy has to be accountable. And I think around the issues of health care policy, Hillary Clinton has been very accountable. We know what the task force came out with. She went up to the Hill and presented legislation. She has been available for meetings and discussions. She has answered questions, and she has finally said, as we note, the White House doesn't write legislation, the Congress does, we will be happy to work with you. So yes, there should be accountability. On the policy issue, she's fully accountable.

MR. LEHRER: But what on the Whitewater issue? She has really -- Lynn Cutler said she did the interviews, but until she did these interviews with Time and Newsweek, she hadn't said a word and taken the position, frankly, that she wasn't going to say anything. Now, that's where it steps over the line, does it not? Tell me where you would step with that.

MS. LEWIS: Well, I think what happened -- and you're right to do the timing, because until then, the idea that we had a First Lady who was playing this different role was really very exciting, and the polls were high. A lot of people, and especially women, let's be clear, were really rooting and are still I think rooting for Hillary's success. But with Whitewater something changed. It's as if the questions about Whitewater gave permission for all of these other questions that have been bottled up to come tumbling down. So she has been the target of really almost unremitting attacks for the last six weeks. We should not be surprised if in the process it knocks a couple of points off in the polls.

MS. CHAVEZ: Yes. She has been the target, the focus of a lot of attention, but it is because of her very role in the Whitewater affair. I, frankly, am appalled every time I hear people defend the first couple by saying that there is no allegation of serious wrongdoing. There are, in fact, some very serious allegations of wrongdoing that involve Hillary Clinton, herself. This is a real estate deal that took place in the late 70's, early 80's, in which she was married to the governor. A partner, Jim MacDougal, comes to the first couple of Arkansas and says to them, I'm going to give you a chance to make a lot of money. We don't know whether any of their own money was put up. A $200,000 piece of property was purchased. They become half owners in it. Now, if, again, if she had had to go through the normal kind of process where one looks into financial statements, we might have found out how much money of theirs was put in. The most that anyone has even alleged that they put in was $9,000 for half interest in a piece of property worth $200,000.

MS. LEWIS: Well, Jim, I have to answer that for just a moment.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MS. LEWIS: I can't let that one go, if I could. It was a $200,000 purchase. It was done with two bank loans, one for $180,000 that all four, two MacDougals and two Clintons, signed for jointly, and one for $20,000 that both Bill Clinton and Jim MacDougal signed for. In 1978, before Bill Clinton was governor, the Clintons and MacDougals went into partnership. In the 80's, Mr. MacDougal, who they went into partnership with in '78, gets into the savings & loan business and gets involved in a wide range of economic deals. But to try to link that to the Clintons that early or to say that it was involved with the governor is simply not true.

MS. CHAVEZ: Let me tell you why that's important. It's important because you have two people who have portrayed the 1980's as the decade of greed. They have said that it is wrong for people to have tried to make money by these kinds of deals. They have been very sanctimonious in terms of their attitude towards that kind of wheeling and dealing that went on. For them now to, to not want to have the same kind of scrutiny I think is hypocritical, and I think that's why you're getting --

MS. CUTLER: They're not talking about the scrutiny.

MS. LEWIS: They're not. A special counsel is not --

MR. LEHRER: Let me -- I think we'll have to await the resolution of that particular thing, but the one thing we do not have to wait on, Sheila Tate, is this question of accountability. Is -- if -- in this case Whitewater, and Linda refers to them, Linda Chavez refers to them as the "first couple." Is it the President who's accountable on Whitewater? That has been -- that was the attitude of the White House until recently in the last -- in fact, until the Hillary Clinton interviews, that the President was the one who was making the things available, the White House was doing all of this, the personal lawyers were doing this. Is it your position that Hillary Clinton as an individual separate and apart from the President also has a special obligation?

MS. TATE: Well, I think ultimately in the political sense this is the President's problem, and how they choose to deal with it is their decision. It's complicated by the role that Hillary Clinton has, has cut for herself in the White House in that she is to maintain credibility, she has to function as a separate professional woman.

MR. LEHRER: Lynn Cutler, what about that? I mean, forget the partisan part here. I mean, she made -- everybody -- she's been very open about it, and I mean, the whole world is seeing that she has carved out a new role as First Lady. She is more in policy. Does that mean she has a separate accountability to the American people that goes beyond that of saying I'm the President's wife, the President speaks for me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

MS. CUTLER: Let me just go back, if I may, for a moment to the statement Sheila has now made twice, which is that the First Lady carved this out for herself. The President asked the First Lady to take on the lead role on the health reform issue. This is a couple that makes a lot of decisions together, and they always have through their whole married life. And there is a clear track record on that. They share a set of commitments and passions about issues and things that need to be fixed in this country. I think that's a very important point to make, because it is not that she's gone in Lucrezia Borgia waiting in the wings till he was elected President to come near --

MR. LEHRER: But you do concede that however it happened, it happened, and she --

MS. CUTLER: She has an unusual role.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MS. CUTLER: And I think as such -- and I said this last week -- I think has an obligation to find the right venue and to talk to the American people about who she is.

MR. LEHRER: Well, you said that at the Democratic meeting --

MS. CUTLER: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: -- out in Cleveland, that you thought that Hillary Clinton was accountable as an individual to the American people for her actions. And you still believe that.

MS. CUTLER: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: But you think she has met that obligation now?

MS. CUTLER: I think that they have begun to meet that obligation with the interviews over the weekend, with the interviews in Denver, and I suspect that there were other kinds of opportunities today in St. Louis. I'm not the least bit worried about this First Lady being available and accessible and accountable to the American people. There is nothing in her entire history that would mandate against that.

MR. LEHRER: Linda Chavez, is this something that is going to go on and on and on, or is this, is this something that you see when you look -- do you see as a partisan or a non-partisan, do you see a light at the end of this tunnel, or are we always going to be talking about this, because of this new role?

MS. CHAVEZ: I hope I'm going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, because I think it would be good to get off of the Whitewater raft, as it were, and to get back on to issues. As a matter of fact, I'm perfectly happy to take a look, a good, hard look at that Hillary Clinton health care plan. We ought to be debating what's in it. In fact, the Congress has mostly shelved it and is moving on, because they consider it largely irrelevant. But the problem is that it will not get behind the Clintons until there is an open forum for discussion. I beg to differ with my friend, Lynn, on whether or not giving interviews to Time and Newsweek is sufficient. In fact, Time Magazine in its coverage complained of the limited access, of the tone of the First Lady, when they did the interview with her.

MR. LEHRER: Her restrictions on questions that can be asked?

MS. CHAVEZ: Right. And she has not, in fact, subjected herself to that kind of inquiry. In fact, I think when you have Lee Hamilton saying that there ought to be a congressional inquiry, he's right. Let's get it out. Let's get it in the open. Let's discuss it. Let's see what's there. And if there's nothing there, let's put it behind us.

MR. LEHRER: Ann Lewis, what do you think that Hillary Clinton could do or should do -- put in any terms you would like -- to get this thing behind her, or is it possible?

MS. LEWIS: Well, some of it is possible. It's clearly going to be possible to get Whitewater behind us, because I think the more the facts come out on Whitewater, the more people say, well, what was all that big deal about it? That is happening. It's happening in two ways. One, again, so we're clear, Bill and Hillary Clinton have made every paper available, have presented everything to the special counsel. I think it was their hope initially when people were demanding a special counsel, that that was an appropriate way to do this, that maybe that could be the venue. It has now become clear because charges still come from the other side, that they want more, they want hearings. Chances are it's going to be driven, but this is no longer about reality. This is about perception. The issue of accountability and public trust are as important as any set of facts. I think they're going to move forward to meet that. And that's what she's in the process of doing right now.

MR. LEHRER: Sheila Tate, over the weekend, Bill Safire on the, on "Meet the Press" Sunday said, well, what Hillary Clinton should do is hold a massive news conference, the press will make such fools of themselves that she'll come out a winner and put this thing behind her. Is there something -- is there a magic bullet like that out there?

MS. TATE: As a press secretary to a former First Lady it gave me knots in my stomach, I'll tell you. I don't know. I don't know what -- youcan't do it with this limited hangout role that's going on now. You can't do a little interview here and a little interview here and set ground rules. All that does is antagonize the press, and it's going to be death by a thousand cuts. I mean, you might as well get out there and get it over with in some way. Either sit down with eight or ten White House reporters who know the issues, who can ask you all the important questions.

MR. LEHRER: That's what Geraldine Ferraro did. That's the example that a lot of people -- you're shaking head, Lynn Cutler, don't do that?

MS. LEWIS: I think what is appropriate for a woman running for vice president -- and if you want to think for a moment of the dynamics of that meeting -- is not appropriate for the First Lady.

MR. LEHRER: Just to refresh people's memories, she sat down with the press and said, I will stay here until there are no more questions, and I think it lasted for two and a half hours.

MS. TATE: The important thing to remember is Hillary Clinton was not elected anything. And that's what's causing this confusion. I mean, she's been given a role, if we take Lynn's point of view. I don't think they had to twist her arm to take it, but the point is she's been given a role to which she must be accountable.

MR. LEHRER: I'm accountable --

MS. TATE: And she can't have it both ways.

MR. LEHRER: I'm accountable to the clock, and that means I have to now say thank you, all four, very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, affordable housing and the job summit. NEWSMAKER - FANNIE MAE

MR. MacNeil: Now, a good news story. It has to do with Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association. Charlayne Hunter- Gault has more. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Today Fannie Mae announced a major new commitment to finance low and moderate income housing. By the year 2000 the mortgage bank will loan $1 trillion to nearly 10 million families. The company also pledged to combat racial discrimination in mortgage lending by targeting an additional $30 million in charitable contributions for special housing for minority families, $25 million to help new and existing community-based lending institutions, and a pledge to reduce closing costs by at least $1,000. Created by and answerable to Congress, Fannie Mae is a stockholder-owned company that made more than $2 billion in profits last year. Late this afternoon I talked with its chairman, James Johnson. Mr. Johnson, thank you for joining us.

MR. JOHNSON: I'm delighted to be with you. Thank you for having me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In your announcement today, you called this the single most important announcement in the history of Fannie Mae. Why?

MR. JOHNSON: I said it was so important because we're going to do more the next seven years than we've ever been able to do before. In the seven years we just finished, we did billions and billions of outreach to low and moderate income families, and we did a lot more effective work with minorities. But we believe in the next seven years we can do twice as much as we did in the last seven years. As a matter of fact, we think we can do as much as targeting lending in the next seven years as all the lending we did combined in the 1970's and the 1980's.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why is that? Because your profits last year, I noted, were $217 billion. Is that the reason, you have more -- your assets that is?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, we have a very -- we are the largest investor in mortgages in the United States. And we believe that over these years we've built up a lot of know-how about how to effectively extend the benefits of our franchise. So what we're going to do is fight racial discrimination. We're going to reach out to millions of families who have never had an opportunity for homeownership. We're going to try to reduce the barriers that keep them today from getting mortgages and try to make sure that we can strengthen our communities and our neighborhoods to having more and more homeowners all around the country, particularly minorities and those of low and moderate income.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why this focus now? How serious is the problem?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, there's a very serious problem in our country of racial discrimination in the mortgage finance system. Minorities in America -- only about 40 to 45 percent of minority families own their own homes, while among whites in our society about 70 percent own their own homes. So we know that there are millions of families out there who are economically well qualified to pay a mortgage and to be homeowners but who have never had the benefit of the system. We think the time is right because housing affordability is very good today. Interest rates are low, home prices in many areas are stable, in some cases even gone down a little bit, and around the country real incomes are going up. So we now have the most favorable home purchase environment we've had in twenty-five years. So we see this as an ideal time to take the knowledge that we've built up and to extend now the benefits of our franchise to millions of additional families.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What is the specific know-how that gets at the thing that you suggested has prevented all these families and individuals from owning homes, getting mortgages, i.e., discrimination? I mean, what is the headline on that or the bottom line on that? What is the know-how?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, the first headline is that we're going to engage every rental family in America in a conversation about owning a home. We think through television advertising and newspaper and radio advertising and mail and other outreach we can present the idea of homeownership to every renting family, so we can say to them, talk with us about the prospect of owning your own home. That know-how in terms of how to reach those people we've been building in the last couple of years through a pilot advertising program. The other part of the know-how that is critically important comes from the 17 million families we've financed into homes in America over the last 30 years. We have millions and millions of mortgages. We developed out of that process underwriting standards which we believe are very good predictors in many cases of whether or not people will be a good risk for homeownership.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And how -- who will be eligible?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, the people who will be eligible will be people who in the area where they live can afford to make the mortgage payments, who can afford to make a lower down payment than has typically been required in the past, and who will respond to the outreach that we have to ask them to consider owning a home. So there will be millions of Americans who will be eligible for this outreach program.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about families or individuals with bad credit ratings or with no credit at all?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, that'll be a problem. We don't think that everyone in America is economically qualified to own a home, and it doesn't do anybody any good to put people in homes that they can't afford. So the goal that we have is to carefully look at what really matters in making the decision as to whether ornot someone can afford a home. Typically, we look at three things: whether they have the income available, whether they show a willingness to pay, and whether the structure that they're investing in has the kind of value that's necessary to sustain the mortgage. There have been a lot of other things that have been looked at in the past. What we're trying to do is to strip it down to the bare minimum so that we get into a situation where people who come across that threshold of being able to afford homeownership get there, and that the artificial barriers are torn down in the process.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Like race?

MR. JOHNSON: Like race, for example, a very important barrier to many Americans.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Now, you're going to target $30 million for specific housing for minority families. Can you briefly explain how that's going to work, and also, does that include the immigrants? Because you have an immigrant, new American thrust in it as well.

MR. JOHNSON: Well, what we are trying to do is to get everybody in the system to work with us cooperatively to reach out more effectively to minorities and new immigrants in our country. The way we're going to do that is to get more and more minority and women owned mortgage banking firms who will sell their loans directly to Fannie Mae. We're going to try to train more and more minority individuals out of college, out of junior college so that they can enter the mortgage finance system. We're going to try to invest in minority-based institutions who know their own communities better than anybody else, and we're going to try to take all of that together with the increased enforcement now that is part of the Clinton administration initiative so that there will be an invitation by every -- for everybody in the mortgage finance system to work more effectively to fight discrimination. We say it's our No. 1 priority at Fannie Mae, to fight discrimination in the mortgage finance system. And we're going to invite everybody else who's in the system to join us in accepting fighting racial discrimination as their No. 1 priority.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some of your critics said that this isn't going to make a lot of difference because mortgage lending is still going to be restrictive and very discriminatory. How do you answer them, and briefly, do you think that this is going to have a larger social impact?

MR. JOHNSON: I think homeownership is one of the most critical things to the future of our country. And I think the more homeowners we have the more stable our neighborhoods will be and the more secure our families will be. Critics may say that this isn't enough. Henry Cisneros, who's certainly not a critic, but who's the Secretary of Housing & Urban Development, was with us this morning at Fannie Mae when we made the announcement. He's head of the federal government effort to fight discrimination in mortgage finance. We've all got an enormous amount of work to do. These are not easy solutions. They're not easy economic problems. We will have to work for years to achieve our goal. But the important thing about what Fannie Mae did today is we said that this is our goal for this decade, and we're going to devote the full resources of our huge institution to working on making things better for average families in America.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Mr. Johnson, thank you for being with us and best wishes.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you very much. You're very kind. Thank you. UPDATE - GLOBAL JOB HUNT

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, talking about jobs. The talk went on for two days in Detroit among ministers of the world's leading industrial nations. Our Business Correspondent, Paul Solman, was there and filed this report.

MR. SOLMAN: Detroit was chosen as the site of the jobs conference to suggest the theme of hope, presumably, that countries suffering from high unemployment can return to their former glory. When the conference began yesterday, the host state's governor was talking up the local job recovery.

GOV. JOHN ENGLER, [R] Michigan: Michigan probably represents in many ways the most profoundly changed state. We've seen our growth rate more than double that of other industrial states. We've added nearly 400,000 jobs in the last three years. So there's good news here.

MR. SOLMAN: The President, meanwhile, tried to reassure everyone that technological productivity will eventually create more jobs than it destroys.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We have got to make our people believe that productivity can be a source of gain, not pain.

MR. SOLMAN: Since the ministerial meetings were off limits to the media, reporters had to ask questions in the hallways. What, for example, was the French delegation pushing?

FRENCH DELEGATION SPOKESMAN: We don't deliver message to give lessons. This is most important. We're just here to like -- other countries -- to hear and exchange experience.

MR. SOLMAN: And surprises, we asked the U.S. Labor Secretary.

ROBERT REICH, Secretary of Labor: What the meaning of flexibility was, labor markets. Some people say it's the freedom to fire, the freedom to lower wages. Some people say it's really more to do with the empowerment of workers to find new jobs to get the skills they need, to have choices, using the same words in very different ways.

MR. SOLMAN: The U.S. delegation buoyed by America's recent upbeat employment numbers gave the conference a big endorsement.

LLOYD BENTSEN, Secretary of the Treasury: It was really a very amazing meeting.

RON BROWN: It was exhilarating because it was really a session about the future.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: One of the most important turning points in the post war dialogue between the industrialized -- between the United States and the other industrialized nations.

MR. SOLMAN: Today, at the end of the conference, Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen summed up.

SEC. BENTSEN: When we discussed the world employment problem, it was clear that no one is satisfied with the rate of job creation in our economies. It's a common problem, creating good jobs with wage growth and bringing down stubbornly high unemployment. And we agreed that there is no single solution, no one idea or one action that will work for every country.

MR. MacNeil: And Paul Solman joins us from a studio in Detroit. Paul, we heard the Vice President say just now one of the most important turning points in post war dialogue, post Second World War dialogue between the US and other industrialized nations. Do you feel that, having been there?

MR. SOLMAN: I haven't been involved in the dialogue since the post war era, Robin. I don't call historical turning points. I think that's a little scary in the stock market, certainly when you talk about grand sweep of history, although it's sweet that the Vice President gets so excited about these things. But, look, this was the first time that labor ministers and finance ministers were all together around the table at one of these G-7 meetings. And that, apparently, is fairly significantly. Robert Reich, the labor minister of the United States, if you will, labor secretary, was very excited that he was sitting next to the chancellor of the exchequer, that is the finance minister of England, and was able to whisper to him, talk about taxes, he said, while things were going on, tax policies.

MR. MacNeil: You mean they normally don't talk to each other?

MR. SOLMAN: I guess, you know, labor ministers are kind of second class citizens at the cabinet level, you know, soft to the unions historically, not in all countries, but I guess Reich and Bentsen talk to each other a lot, but no, Reich said with a smile that he said this -- I may not get such an opportunity anytime in the near future, meaning to talk to the chancellor of the exchequer. There was a sense of excitement that the labor ministers had been raised to a new level here. So maybe there's some historical significance.

MR. MacNeil: It's intriguing to me. This is the first time I can recall that there is a grand international conference with these ministers, all very eminent people, discussing not high theory but things that matter to every voter in every one of their countries, jobs, no jobs.

MR. SOLMAN: Yeah. Well, I mean, these are people who come from democracies, and they know what the voters are worried about, and that's what voters seem to be worried about in all these countries, no jobs, jobs, no jobs. If there was a theme or message in this meeting, I think, and I checked this out with a number of the ministers, so I'm not just making this up. There was the theme of reassurance. You know, that's how Clinton began his speech yesterday at the Fox theater. That's how Bentsen closed today. Listen, people we -- people of our countries, we know there's a problem about unemployment. You heard Bentsen categorically there just a moment ago -- we know there's a problem. We're trying to do something about it. We're meeting at the highest level to talk about it. And that, in itself, I guess is supposed to be I think everybody thinks, is supposed to be reassuring.

MR. MacNeil: The figure that I read today is that there are 30 million unemployed in the countries represented at the conference, 30 million, and a lot of them are what's called structurally unemployed. Do these people -- these people really have an answer to this? Do they really know how to get out of it, or was it a conference of people saying, hey, we really don't know what to do?

MR. SOLMAN: No, no. It was not a conference. Remember, reassurance is the point. You don't say I don't know what to do. Bentsen said there is no one answer. We heard him at the end. That's clearly true. There were a lot of pieces of answers around the table, interesting ideas. You know, you've heard of many of them before, the German apprenticeship program. The French have an idea about annualization, which suggests that hey, we don't work 40 hours every week during the course of the year. Work changes, and it's faster in some areas and slower in others. The Japanese put those people into retraining programs when there's a slack period. Maybe we should consider annualizing work so that we, we can more nearly reflect how work changes over the year, and yet, people wouldn't lose their jobs when work is slack, and, therefore, we unemployed and, therefore, be dispirited, and, therefore, become structurally unemployed, but is there one idea at the end that everybody went, okay, I think we got it now? Well, no, of course not.

MR. MacNeil: In the briefings, the ministers sounded a bit cagey about what they had actually learned. What did you learn?

MR. SOLMAN: Well, I learned that everybody agrees that it's structural employment as opposed to cyclical, i.e., there's something in the structure of industrial economies in the 1990's that seems to be causing this, mainly technological progress as far as people can figure out. It's not cyclical, i.e., so that you get into a recession and people lose their jobs, but then in recovery, people gain them again. That would be cyclical, and pretty much there's agreement that that isn't the case. There also seems to be, I guess, agreement that we know what we're supposed to be doing, creating these high wage jobs, investing in human capital, getting people educated, retrained, retrained, and so forth. But the Robert Reich conference I was thinking it was at one point because this is what he's been writing about for years -- but do we actually know how to get the money into programs like this so that they are effective, to get people retrained? I don't think you'd find a lot of people saying we know how to do that yet, we, the industrialized nations.

MR. MacNeil: A columnist in the Washington Post, Robert Samuel, wrote the other day, "This conference is useless and a big waste of time," he said, "because there is no global crisis, there's only a European crisis." And it's true that rates of unemployment in the European countries and Canada are much higher than they are in the U.S. and Japan.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, I don't think there's anybody at the conference who would have agreed with Robert Samuelson on that point. Bentsen at the end, again, in our clip made it clear that he certainly was speaking for everybody in saying that was not the case, so, no, I think Europe -- there was a general agreement, I think, that Europe's got a problem, that it's safety net is a little too cushy. If you hire me in France, Robin, I was thinking about this before, and you pay me a hundred francs, you also have to pay 80 francs for the social costs, workers unemployment insurance, workman's comp or whatever it is in Europe, whereas now, in fact, working for the NewsHour as I do, I get -- 30 percent of my salary is added on for those kinds of benefits. Europe is trying to decouple the, the cost of putting somebody to work from the cost of supporting the safety net. And that's -- that's clearly an issue, but was there a sense that nobody else had a problem? No, I don't think so.

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton, as you said, went out of his way to reassure people that increases in productivity and technological developments are going to in the long run to create -- not to be afraid of it, because in the long run they're going to create more jobs than they cost. How do you feel about that?

MR. SOLMAN: Look, it creates more jobs for some people, and it costs the people who lose their jobs. You know, I'm sitting in a studio which years ago would have had -- I don't know -- five, six, seven people working on this particular interconnect. Now, it's two. Well, if people who lost their jobs, I don't know how reassuring it is for them to hear that the world is getting wealthier. They just don't happen to be sharing in that wealth. And when you talk about those 30 million people in the industrialized countries who are unemployed, that's what they're worried about, that they are cut out of this growth process and then it's -- so then it's just a question of where you sit in all this.

MR. MacNeil: Was it fun? Do you want to go back next year?

MR. SOLMAN: Are they going to have another one of these next year? No, I don't know if it was really fun. It's interesting to talk to ministers, but, of course, they're diplomats, and so how much do they tell you? I found the most intriguingthing, actually, was reading the papers that they were distributing so you could see what their thought out ideas were as opposed to sort of chasing the pack and find out, you know, what did you learn, what did you learn, when, you know, to be honest, how much could they have learned something like this?

MR. MacNeil: Paul Solman, thanks for joining us. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Tuesday, President Clinton accused Republicans of standing in the way of debate on major issues and practicing the politics of personal destruction. Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole responded. He said members of his party had cooperated with the President on numerous issues and were not responsible for the distractions caused by the Whitewater affair. Good night, Robin.

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