The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Friday, we get inside and outside views of the Senate budget vote, Mark Shields joined tonight by Tony Snow speak from Washington, six editors and commentators view it from out in the country. Then come a Newsmaker interview with Kristine Gebbie, the new AIDS czar, and an essay about diamonds in Arkansas. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The Senate passed a budget plan early this morning. The vote was 50 to 49, with Vice President Gore casting the deciding vote. Six Democrats joined all Senate Republicans in voting no. The bill follows the principles in President Clinton's original proposal, cutting about $500 billion from the deficit over five years through spending cuts and tax increases. But it differs in several key respects from a version passed earlier by the House. The differences will now have to be worked out in conference committee. President Clinton speaking at the White House this morning praised the Senate action.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The most important thing is that now both Houses of Congress under very difficult circumstances with the same old rhetoric of the last 12 years flying at them had the courage to try to change this country for the better. What this means is incalculable. It means we can now move on to a conference committee with a clear signal to the financial markets that its interest rates should stay down and people should be able to continue to refinance their homes and finance their businesses at lower interest rates, and for the first time in a very long time an American President can go to a meeting of the G-7 nations in a position of economic strength.

MR. LEHRER: Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole said when taxpayers want to find out who was on their side. They'll take a look at this vote. He spoke on Capitol Hill this afternoon.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: The American people now know who's on their side and who's on the side of the biggest tax increase in the history of the world, not just the history of America. And it's clear that President Clinton and Vice President Gore have earned their places on Mt. Tax More. So we know that a lot of us have been predicting for a long time that this was going to be a defining vote. The President's been playing it that way as a defining vote, and the tax increases are going to be at the top of their agenda.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on the story right after the News Summary. The base closing commission voted to close more bases today. Among them were the naval station and shipyard at Charleston, South Carolina. The navy yards at Mare Island in California and Staten Island, New York, the naval station in Mobile, Alabama, and the air force base in Newark, Ohio. The commission will continue to meet and vote through the weekend. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton today appointed the nation's first AIDS czar. She is Kristine Gebbie, formerly the chief of Washington State's health department, and had been appointed by President Reagan to the National Commission on AIDS. She will coordinate the efforts of various government agencies on issues like AIDS treatment, education, and research. She said a federal strategy was needed to help local communities cope with the AIDS crisis. We'll have a Newsmaker interview with Kristine Gebbie later in the program. President Clinton's nominee to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities was questioned during Senate confirmation hearings today. Sheldon Hackney answered critics who've accused him of stifling debate during his tenure as president of the University of Pennsylvania. The critics claim he is a practitioner of so-called "political correctness," curbing free speech so as not to offend minority groups. At today's hearing, Hackney said his views had been misinterpreted in the media.

SHELDON HACKNEY, Chairman-designate, National Endowment for the Humanities: I have protected the rights of speakers with whom I do not agree on the left and do not agree on the right. I think that is the obligation of a university president. The chairman of the NEH I think has a similar obligation to make sure that the, the NEH is open to all voices that people from different points of view can apply for, grants, and if their grants are meritorious, i.e., if they're excellent, they should be able to get grants from the NEH. As I say, the NEH should not have a social agenda. It should be very concerned about stimulating the conversation and making sure the conversation takes place, but it is not a social laboratory.

MR. MacNeil: Hackney received a generally friendly reception from the Senate Labor & Human Resources Committee. He was endorsed by both the Democratic chairman, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and conservative Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah.

MR. LEHRER: Sudanese officials denied reports today their diplomats were involved in an alleged plot to bomb the United Nations. Media reports said two diplomats at Sudan's U.N. mission planned to give the plotters diplomatic license plates. The plates would have let them drive a car with explosives into the United Nations garage. Eight Muslim fundamentalists were arrested in New York yesterday for plotting a wave of bombings and assassinations in New York. Five of the suspects were Sudanese nationals. The Northeast African nation of Sudan is ruled by Muslim fundamentalists. In Washington, State Department Spokesman Mike McCurry was asked about possible links between Sudan and the alleged terrorists.

MIKE McCURRY, State Department: I want to stress that at this time we have no evidence that the government of Sudan has conducted or sponsored a specific terrorist attack, but I would say that the United States is very disturbed by the close relationship that Sudan has developed with Iran. We know that Iran is a leading sponsor of international terrorism, a number of terrorist groups including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, they all maintain offices in Khartoum, and in addition, there are reports that a small number of Iranian revolutionary guards are training Sudanese militia.

MR. LEHRER: The FBI has linked two mail bombings this week with a dozen similar attacks over the last 15 years. A professor at Yale University in Connecticut was critically wounded yesterday in one attack. Another professor at the University of California in San Francisco lost several fingers in a mail bombing Tuesday. One person was killed and twenty-one injured in other attacks between 1978 and 1987. All were aimed at people and academics in high technology fields. FBI agents would not comment on a motive.

MR. MacNeil: In South Africa, hundreds of white extremists stormed democracy negotiations today. The heavily armed protesters seized control of a building where black and white political leaders were meeting. Police did not intervene according to the government to avoid a blood bath. The extremists were demanding an autonomous white state. President F.W. DeKlerk promised quick arrests of those responsible. African National Congress Leader Nelson Mandela said he would step up pressure to get a date for elections ending white minority rule. A U.S. tanker was struck by shell fire today in Somalia. The ship was unloading fuel in the port of Mogadishu when a shell tore through the hull. No injuries were reported, but the ship was leaking fuel. The tanker is a support ship for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

MR. LEHRER: Military rulers in Nigeria vowed today to transfer power to a civilian president in August. Two days ago, the leaders annulled the results of a June 12th presidential vote. That action led Britain to declare sanctions and the United States to threaten a cut-off of aid to that African nation. It was unclear from today's announcement whether a new election would be held, or a president would be chosen by some other process. Canada's first woman prime minister was sworn in today. Forty-six year old Kim Campbell replaced Brian Mulroney who resigned after nine years in office. Campbell was elected leader of the ruling Progressive Conservative Party two weeks ago. She will face a general election this fall.

MR. MacNeil: Two crew members aboard the space shuttle Endeavor spent five hours walking in space today. The exercise was designed as a training session for an upcoming mission to repair the Hubbel Space Telescope. During their excursion today, the astronauts secured two antennas on a European science satellite. The satellite was retrieved yesterday by the shuttle's mechanical arm, but the antennas were not properly retracted.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton spoke for the first time today with the man who claims to be his half brother. White House Press Sec. Dee Dee Myers said they had a warm, 15-minute phone conversation and agreed to get together some time. Fifty-five year old Leon Ritsenthaler from Paradise, California, says he is the son of Mr. Clinton's father, W.J. Blythe, and his first wife. Blythe died before the future President was born and Mr. Clinton took the name of his stepfather.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to analysis of the Senate budget vote from inside and outside Washington, and the new AIDS czar, and Arkansas diamonds. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: The Senate's budget vote is our lead story tonight. It happened early this morning and sets the stage for a conference committee match with the House that could set new standards for high pressure pushing and shoving. We'll have full analysis after this set-up report by Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: This was the Senate floor not long before day break. Members had debated the Democrats' version of the President's budget for more than 18 hours.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: Mr. President, the choice cannot be more clear. Senators can vote for President Clinton's record breaking tax increase, or they can cast a vote for America's taxpayers and send a wake-up call to the White House and to the Congress. The President's tried to make this a defining moment of his presidency. He's right. It is and will be for years to come. He's already earned his place on Mount Tax More.

SEN. GEORGE MITCHELL, Majority Leader: For 12 years we've laughed as the national debt has gone up. We've had jokes, not deeds. We've had talks, not actions. It's now time for action. This chamber has been filled to overflowing with speeches about the need to reduce the deficit, and there's only one way to reduce the deficit, and that's to vote for this package. There is no other alternative. No other serious or credible alternative has been presented in either chamber. If you mean to reduce the deficit, you must vote for this package.

MR. HOLMAN: The Democratic leadership had spent the night dealing with more than 20 minor amendments to the plan. But when they finally were able to bring it a vote at 3 AM, it was the defection of six Democrats that caused a tie. One of them was Dennis DeConcini of Arizona.

SEN. DENNIS DeCONCINI, [D] Arizona: I am prepared to vote for some taxes if, indeed, they are dedicated to deficit reduction, however, I can't support a proposal asking middle income, older Americans to sacrifice even more because of cuts in Medicare taxes as well as the additional tax on Social Security benefits.

MR. HOLMAN: Joining DeConcini in voting against their fellow Democrats were Bryan of Nevada, Johnson of Louisiana, Lautenberg of New Jersey, Nunn of Georgia, and Shelby of Alabama. The defections meant Vice President Gore, as the presiding officer of the Senate, had to cast the winning vote to pass the Democrats' budget.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: The Senate being equally divided, the Vice President votes in the affirmative and the BILL HR 2264 is passed.

MR. HOLMAN: But the vote may not have been as close as the numbers showed. Reportedly, several Democrats who voted "no" said they would have switched their votes to save the budget package. After the pre-dawn session, Republicans responded to their defeat.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE: We stuck together. Not a single Republican voted for the bill. I think we heard the message loud and clear, cut spending first.

MR. HOLMAN: But at the White House a few hours later, President Clinton suggested that Senators really had little choice.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think what happened was there was an institutional feeling there yesterday which crystallized in the late afternoon that the worst thing they could do is not to go forward and that the worst thing they could do is not to break the gridlock, not to find a way to continue to push for real economic reform.

MR. HOLMAN: In contrast to their "wait and see" approach to the Senate budget fight, White House officials say they are preparing an aggressive strategy for the House-Senate conference where the final budget compromise will be worked out. The biggest hurdle will be the energy tax. The administration might try to revise the BTU tax which was passed in the House but killed by the Senate. Nonetheless, the person who will appoint the House members of the conference, House Speaker Tom Foley, was upbeat.

REP. TOM FOLEY, Speaker of the House: This bill has always presented a challenge, but I'm confident that the conferees are going to be up to the task of finding the compromises that will bring the bill to passage in both the House and Senate. I'm not going to try to do it today.

MR. LEHRER: Now some inside Washington analysis of the budget vote and the process. It comes from our regular syndicated columnist Mark Shields joined tonight by Tony Snow, a former Bush speechwriter, now a columnist for the Detroit News. Mark, how important was that vote this morning?

MR. SHIELDS: Absolutely indispensable, Jim. This is the single - -

MR. LEHRER: To whom? To whom?

MR. SHIELDS: To Bill Clinton. It's a single elimination tournament. This isn't a long season. This isn't you win some, you lose some. If they had lost last night, it's over. I mean, the economic recovery plan, it's survived to live another day. I mean, it's the Perils of Pauline, but it's now by both Houses and it will go to the conference of the two, two branches.

MR. LEHRER: Would you call it that important, Tony?

MR. SNOW: Oh, absolutely. This was a do or die vote for the Clinton presidency. If he doesn't get it through, I mean, I'm a member of the press. You know, every newspaper in America would have reported Bill Clinton is dead, he can't even get his own economic package through a Democratic Senate. But what's going to be interesting now is that the Senate and House bills are dramatically different. And the things you need to keep the House together may tear the Senate apart.

MR. LEHRER: We'll get to that in a minute, but what's your explanation as to why these six Democrats did not stick with the President?

MR. SNOW: Well, frankly, a lot of them are moderate Democrats who want their seats. I mean, that's one of the things. The other is I think some of them were probably holding themselves open for bid. That sounds a little cynical, but politicians have been known to hold their votes up for a while to try to get something out of the President, and some of them probably didn't get what they wanted.

MR. LEHRER: Well, now there were three of them, Bryan of Nevada, Lautenberg of New Jersey, and DeConcini of Arizona are up for re- election in 1994, right?

MR. SHIELDS: No? They are. They sure are, and each of them, they're special cases.

MR. LEHRER: Well, if it's such a courageous vote, why is it not good politics?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, now, is it good politics? Let me just say the last time we had a President rally his party to vote for tax increases was President Bush in 1990. And he put it right on the line to the Republicans. And I went back today just to check the record, what happened then. And in the House of Representatives there are 173 Republicans. George Bush got 47 of them, and 126 voted against him. So I think the question really, not to suggest that your question is inappropriate, Jim, but I'm going to do that.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Go ahead.

MR. SHIELDS: Let me just say I think what's impressive is the fact that George Mitchell, Bill Clinton, there wasn't any air cover for this bill. I mean, the bill was changing too fast, so there wasn't really a public case that was made for it. It was a personal appeal by the President. It was a personal appeal by George Mitchell and Pat Moynihan and a lot of other Democratic leaders. The fact that they got 50 Democratic Senators to stand up, or 49, and to vote for it is truly impressive. It is a painful vote. I mean, we've been through 12 years.

MR. SNOW: I don't know if it's that impressive. Frankly, the pitch they made was if you don't vote for this, your President dies. And there were a number of Democrats who had said, look, I know it's bad politics for me, but if you have to have the vote, I'll go with you. This is a Bill Clinton survival package. It's no longer an economic stimulus package. It's no longer a deficit reduction package. It's a Bill Clinton survival package.

MR. LEHRER: So why then, if that was the pitch, why would Sam Nunn, for instance, who is not in jeopardy, not up for re-election, and not in any kind of electoral jeopard, not go with President Clinton?

MR. SNOW: Because Sam Nunn has dramatic differences with the President not merely on the budget but also on defense policy. There are a number of Democrats who have already declared their independence from the President. Richard Shelby is the most obvious. Sam Nunn is trying to carve out his own base of power in the Senate and also to try to argue to Bill Clinton, look, you cannot move the party to the left, you have to move back to the center not merely to win this bill but to govern the country for four more years after 1996.

MR. LEHRER: What's your analysis of the Nunn vote?

MR. SHIELDS: Sam Nunn issued a five-page statement commending the President and then saying he was going to vote against it, and it was a long statement, and it was, it was full of interesting words. I honestly don't know. I mean, I think, I think Sam Nunn doesn't see Bill Clinton as a new Democrat. I mean, Sam Nunn was key to Bill Clinton's nomination in 1992. They both came out of the Democratic Leadership Council, and as Bill Clinton was experienced --

MR. LEHRER: Which is a moderate --

MR. SHIELDS: Moderate --

MR. LEHRER: -- Democratic organization.

MR. SHIELDS: -- organized by Sam Nunn and Chuck Robb and a whole bunch of moderate Democrats after Fritz Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan 49 to 1 in 1984, with a stated purpose of bringing the party back to the middle. Bill Clinton had been chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. Sam Nunn, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Defense for the Democrats, endorsed Bill Clinton -- Sam Nunn is not in the habit of endorsing presidential candidates -- in 1992, at a time when Bill Clinton needed that endorsement. There were doubts about -- certain reservations.

MR. LEHRER: In the primary.

MR. SHIELDS: In the primary.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

MR. SHIELDS: Before. You know, going into Georgia, he had both Zell Miller and Sam Nunn.

MR. LEHRER: Who's the governor.

MR. SHIELDS: The governor of Georgia, so it was very helpful. I don't know, other than that Sam Nunn certainly broke with the President on gays in the military. I mean, broke with him not simply on policy, but with highly publicized and very well covered hearings, including a front page picture on virtually every paper in the country inspecting submarines in the proximity of people sleeping together.

MR. SNOW: Well, there may be something personal too. Sam Nunn was being considered for Secretary of Defense and was scrubbed from the list.

MR. LEHRER: Secretary of State.

MR. SNOW: Secretary of State.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SNOW: So there may be a personal element, but the fact is that Sam Nunn has very clear political designs in the sense not that he wants to run for President, but that he thinks the Democratic Party needs to move back to the center, and he has an obligation to the party and the country to stand up to the President even in a moment like this.

MR. SHIELDS: There's one other factor you've overlooked, and that may be he disagreed with it.

MR. LEHRER: Oh, Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: I mean, he just thought it was a lousy bill.

MR. LEHRER: He thought it was a lousy bill, a bad bill. Oh, my goodness gracious. Let's go, let's go to the conference committee problem now. Tony, is this -- everybody seemed to say, okay, well, the House did this, the Senate did this, now the real hard work is going to be done by these people behindclosed doors. I mean, is that the way to --

MR. SNOW: I have a feeling that Americans are about to discover for the first time what a conference committee is all about, which is horse trading. The President has made a political mistake in a sense by saying, wait until the conference committee, for the BTU tax wait until the conference report, for the superconducting supercollider, wait until the conference report. This gives the indication, this tips off Americans to the fact the conferences are these huge political bazaars where people trade favors, they throw everything together at the last minute, the Senate and House will vote on bills that they will never see. They will get summaries of the bills. They will do what they call fast track it, which is to say vote on it now, and then let's go home for vacation, and Americans will wake up --

MR. LEHRER: You can't amend a conference committee report?

MR. SNOW: No, you can't amend and you can't filibuster in the Senate, so it just zips right through. Then you find out later that you voted for honeybee subsidies and the strategic helium reserve and stuff like that.

MR. SHIELDS: I, Tony's described what a conference report can be. I think this one in this conference is going to be different. It's going to be different, because we're talking about very narrow differences. I mean, the Democrats carried the Senate bill by the Vice President's vote. They had only six votes to play with in the House. So there isn't really a lot of room for negotiation. I mean, it isn't, is Michael going to go in and do massive trading? Yes, there's a difference in the energy tax, about $49 billion in the difference in what's going to be raised in the Senate bill, less than what was in the House bill, but I think -- and all the committees --

MR. LEHRER: Well, let's make sure people understand the difference there.

MR. SHIELDS: Sure.

MR. LEHRER: There's the BTU tax that was in the House. That was what the President wanted.

MR. SHIELDS: The BTU raised 74 --

MR. LEHRER: It's got a 4.3 cents a gallon tax.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: On transportation.

MR. SHIELDS: On transportation, Jim. And the House bill was, which was a tough bill to vote for, I think Tony said something where I think the White House may be making a mistake, and that is to say well, we'll get the BTU tax back in. The BTU tax was never understood [a] by most people covering it, including this one, and [b] by most people voting on it. They voted for it, because the President asked for it.

MR. LEHRER: Most people don't know what a BTU is.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. It's a British thermal unit, come on. It's an MG or something. So then, then they vote for the damn thing and the President says, I'm going to be with you all the way, and it gets knocked out in the Senate. So I don't think it's going to be easy to bring it back in.

MR. SNOW: Well, let me say, I think the conference committee actually is going to be very difficult, because you have a lot of dissension in the House about social spending, and at the same time, if there's any change in the tax mix in the Senate, people are complaining, Sen. David Boren today expressed concern that not enough moderates are being included in the conference. Let's face it, Democrats can put together a conference that will pass a bill. They can do that. But the question --

MR. LEHRER: You mean just sheer numbers. They have the power to do it.

MR. SNOW: The sheer numbers. And they're going to do it by themselves, but the other thing is they still have to assemblea package that both the House and Senate will vote on, and Senate and House Democrats are feuding as much as House, I mean, Senate Democrats and Republicans.

MR. SHIELDS: Yeah. It's a tough, tough item.

MR. LEHRER: Are the Republicans just out of this now?

MR. SNOW: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, except on the committees, each of the other committees. The chairman of the conference or the chairman of the House Budget Committee, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, but most of the action obviously is in the tax writing committees. That's Ways & Means and the House with Dan Rostenkowski, and Finance Committee in the Senate with Pat Moynihan. But all, you see, it touches agriculture. It touches federal employee retirement. So all of these committees, it touches public works, all of these committees have to have their own conferences.

MR. SNOW: Right.

MR. SHIELDS: That'll be a lot more bipartisan.

MR. SNOW: Well, it'll be bipartisan, but the Republicans are more than happy to let Democrats take full credit for this. Not a single Republican in either House voted for either budget.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. SNOW: This is, Republicans are saying to Bill Clinton, okay, you want to do this, it's yours. They've been cut out of the negotiations anyway. Sam Nunn mentioned that in his statement today. This is the Democrats to win or lose with.

MR. LEHRER: All right. And we have to leave it there. Mark, Tony, thank you both very much. FOCUS - EDITORS' VIEWS - SENATE BUDGET BATTLE

MR. MacNeil: Now for a view of how the budget process is conceived outside of Washington, we're joined by six regional writers and newspaper editors: Ed Baumeister of the Trenton, New Jersey Times; Lee Cullum with the Dallas Morning News; Erwin Knoll of the Progressive Magazine published in Madison, Wisconsin; Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution; Gerry Warren of the San Diego Union-Tribune; and joining us this evening Barbara Mantz Drake of the Peoria Journal Star. Ed Baumeister, what do you think of the plans that Clinton with so much effort got through the Senate and the House, the budget plan packages?

MR. BAUMEISTER: Well, it does have the appearance of motion, that something is happening. But from what I hear from readers, they don't quite get what's going on anymore. For them, it's like watching rugby or Australian rules football. I think in the Senate, the BTU tax confused not only Mark and the rest of us but confused people, one of our readers called and said, what are you talking about, a $500 billion reduction over five years, are you trying to pull something on us? That's only $100 billion a year. The budget is $300 billion. It's still a mess. So I don't think at the end of the day --

MR. MacNeil: The deficit.

MR. BAUMEISTER: The deficit is that. I don't think at the end of the day this comes out as a very large piece of punctuation.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think of the bill that came out of the Senate, Lee Cullum, compared with the House one?

MS. CULLUM: Well, Robin, I was very glad to see the BTU tax go by the boards in the Senate. It is confusing, and it was riddled with so many exemptions at the end that I don't see how it could possibly function effectively. I think the 4.3 cent tax on gasoline and diesel is much better. I was dismayed to see the Senate raise the capital gains tax. I thought we were trying to lower the capital gains tax. And, indeed, the House bill does do that for investors in small business. And I hope that will stick in the conference committee. I was sorry to see the Senate bill set aside the earned income tax credit for families without children and for single workers. I hope that is reversed in the conference committee. It seems to me the House was on firmer ground there. But I do hope the BTU tax has been seen for the last time.

MR. MacNeil: Cynthia Tucker, did you hate the BTU tax or understand it?

MS. TUCKER: I certainly didn't understand it. I would like to find somebody who does. I would be surprised if Bill Clinton understood it, especially in its final form. But I had high hopes for the BTU tax in the beginning. I think it was better than the gasoline tax, because it would probably encourage industry to be more fuel efficient, and I think that's a good thing. But Lee is right. It was so riddled with exemptions by the end that it's -- nobody would stand it anyway. It would be a nightmare to administer. There are things about the Senate version I do like, however. The Senate version pushes a little harder to nick Medicare, and I think that's absolutely important. And I hope that's one thing that Bill Clinton insists on.

MR. MacNeil: How do you see it, Gerry Warren?

MR. WARREN: Well, I think the Senate bill is better, but I don't like either bill. Our paper believes that there should be real spending cuts and real spending cuts now, not delayed until after the next election. This is a huge tax bill, whether it's the BTU tax or the, the gasoline tax. And there is no assurance that this Congress or the next Congress will cut spending to fulfill their part of the deal.

MR. MacNeil: So it sounds as though you preferred the Republican alternative that was offered at the last minute in the Senate.

MR. WARREN: Well, actually we would have supported the Sen. Boren alternative, and we do like the Republican alternative better than what passed the Senate.

MR. MacNeil: Erwin Knoll, how does it look to you in Madison?

MR. KNOLL: Well, I'm, I'm always a bit puzzled by the intensity of these discussions that you have in, in Washington and elsewhere, because I don't know many people here who regard the Senate action as the defining moment of the Clinton presidency so far or into the indefinite future. I don't know many people who know the difference between the Senate bill and the House bill, few perhaps who know about the BTU tax, but the, the arcane details of this legislation have not been followed with strong interest by most of the people I know. I think people have become cynical. They know that whether the House version or the Senate version prevails or even whether the Republican or the Democratic version prevails, their lives are not going to be much different, are certainly not going to be much better. They'll continue to pay taxes. Most people are reasonably patient about that. They'll see their federal programs whittled away in this drive toward, toward deficit reduction, and they're sort of patiently and perhaps a bit cynically resigned to that without regarding what's happening in Washington right now as either a great breakthrough or as a terrible catastrophe.

MR. MacNeil: Barbara Drake in Peoria, do you think people there are cynical about this process and don't really care very much which way or the other it goes?

MS. DRAKE: I think people in Peoria care very much that something is done to reduce the deficit. I think the cynicism comes in over the question of whether they believe Congress and the President are serious about that and whether they think that the bill that just passed the Senate will do what it's supposed to do, or whether we'll find out four or five years down the road that the deficit has, in fact, increased as it did after the last budget agreement.

MR. MacNeil: What's your own feeling about that? Do you think - - do you have confidence that this is a step towards reducing the deficit?

MS. DRAKE: I have, I believe it's a step. I don't think it's too much more than that. We endorsed it on our newspaper's editorial page because we believed it was better than the alternative, which seemed to be doing nothing. We have taken a strong anti-deficit stance for a number of years, and we believe that both spending cuts and tax increases are necessary to get the deficit under control.

MR. MacNeil: Gerry Warren, do you, let's just go back around on this, do you think this is at least a step towards deficit reduction, or are you not sure?

MR. WARREN: Well, it's a step toward it, yes, because the President says he is committed to deficit reduction, and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. The thing that really is important here is to understand that the Democratic majority in each House of the Congress has been in denial for all of these 12 years that they're blaming for the deficit they have been a part of the problem, and they're still a part of the problem. Now they must take responsibility for their own actions and must deliver on spending cuts to reduce the deficit. I'm not sure they're up to it.

MR. MacNeil: Cynthia, do you see this as a positive step towards deficit reduction?

MS. TUCKER: I think it is a positive step, though a very tiny one. I am as I guess, if not cynical, a little surprised that this process has generated so much intensity, so much heat, and very, very little action. In fact, even if this tax package passes more or less intact, the national debt will still increase by 1 trillion over the next five years or so, because entitlement programs will continue to go up. Let me stay a word about what Gerry Warren just said though about the Democrats being in denial. I think many people are in denial. I think the Republicans and Congress are in denial. They pledges that they would produce a plan, but their plan was not a plan at all. They refused to name specific spending cuts, and I still think much more in spending cuts is going to have to come our way if we're going to achieve real deficit reduction.

MR. MacNeil: How about that, Gerry, it's the Republicans, Cynthia says, who are in denial.

MR. WARREN: Well, I agree more in spending cuts have to happen. I'm not sure the Republican alternative was timed well, and I'm not sure it was thought out very well, but the burden is on the Democratic majority to deliver on spending cuts over the life of this Congress and the next, and I again am not sure they're up to it.

MR. MacNeil: Lee Cullum, did you, how did you view the Republican alternative that was put on the floor at the last moment?

MS. CULLUM: Robin, I think it came too late. I would like to have seen a fleshed out Republican alternative. I believe in an opposition party. I'm not one of those who thinks that the Republicans ought to lie down and die in order to avoid gridlock, but I would have liked to have seen something that was far more fully developed than they offered. And incidentally, I have very little hope for this vote that was taken last night. I think it was nice going through the motions, but I thought Warren Rudman and Paul Tsongas were very persuasive on this program two nights ago when they said that a great deal more is going to be needed, and Cynthia Tucker is right. Entitlements are where the action is going to have to happen.

MR. MacNeil: Ed Baumeister, did you see this as at least something that can be said well, at least finally something is going to happen about the deficit?

MR. BAUMEISTER: It's like when your mother said clean up your room and you took, you know, the socks and put them away. It's only a down payment. The Congress still, the government still has the same problem it had over the last 12 years. It spends more than it takes in. This is an installment on it, but I don't think people feel from this the sort of whoosh of relief that, that we thought would he would feel when we voted for change. Every candidate wanted to change this, and the change we have is, is incremental at best.

MR. MacNeil: Barbara Drake in Peoria, whom do you think, between the parties, is getting the better side of this battle, budget battle politically? Do you think, I mean, obviously the Republicans think -- we've heard them say so explicitly -- that they're on to a very good thing and will be able to hold the Democrats to it at the next election and the election after that. Who do you think is getting the better of this politically?

MS. DRAKE: I think the better side is going to Ross Perot, because he can sit there in the middle and on the sidelines, and attack both Republicans and Democrats and act as if deficit reduction is, indeed, just that simple. I think what we've seen indicates how difficult it is and how even those who really are sincere about dealing with the problem have a difficult time dealing with it. I was also impressed by hearing Rudman and Tsongas the other night and by something that I believe Rudman said which was that if you think increasing taxes is cause for great alarm, wait until we start hitting at the entitlements.

MR. MacNeil: Erwin Knoll, you represent a pretty liberal magazine, the Progressive, do you see either a political party having a big political advantage coming out of the stands they've taken, the Democrats being willing to raise taxes, the Republicans solidly against it?

MR. KNOLL: I don't think so, although it certainly does look as if Bob Dole is having the time of his life. Every time I see him on television he looks like a man thoroughly enjoying himself, but, but Robin, I'd like to inject an alternative note here in talking about deficit reduction. I would just like to wander aloud whether this unanimous consensus on deficit reduction, something that Bill Clinton and Bob Dole and Ross Perot all pay extraordinary attention to, is really right for America at this time? Just this week, we had another report on the state of the economy which said that the first quarter of 1993 performed poorly, much more poorly than previous indicators had told us. We know that unemployment persists at 7 percent, and to put the focus now on deficit reduction may mean that this economy continues to stagnate and that unemployment persists and that we'll regret all this fuss and bother about the budget at a time when perhaps we should have been stimulating the economy by spending more, not less.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think, Gerry Warren, of Erwin's idea?

MR. WARREN: Well, I, I disagree with it. I think the economy is showing us once again that it's cyclical. There are major restructuring efforts going on in the economy right now. This recession is different, but it is still a cyclical recession. I'm not sure that excess spending, stimulus spending, which in itself is inflationary, would be the right thing to do at this time. I, I believe deficit reduction is the way to go. I just think Mr. Clinton is taxing too much to do it.

MR. MacNeil: Justwhile I'm with you, Gerry Warren, what do you think of the, of the Republican position that they are on the side of God politically on this, on this issue? Are they really storing up goodies for themselves by the position Bob Dole and the other Senators are taking?

MR. WARREN: They're playing high stakes poker here. They believe they are. They firmly believe this will come back and, and haunt the Democrats in the '94 off-year elections for House and Senate. And they may be right. It depends a lot on what happens to the economy. If these taxes bite and there is an inflationary rebound and the Fed has to act with higher rates, the Democrats could be in trouble in '94. But I'd be a lot happier with the Republicans if they, if they stopped relying on Ross Perot so much and, and began to be specific about what they would do with this economy.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Cynthia, how do you see the, how the parties are doing, who's going to benefit politically from the stands they've been taking on this?

MS. TUCKER: Well, the process doesn't make any of them look good, Robin. I can't imagine that any of them will benefit from this process, and I can't imagine that the nation will benefit either, unless they get down to serious business on deficit reduction. I think it all depends on one very simple issue, how the economy is doing in 1994 and how the economy is doing in 1996. If the economy plunges into another deep recession in 1996, then the Republicans will be in very good shape. If the economy is doing fairly well, if the recovery seems to be going along nicely, then I think the Democrats will say that the Republicans had nothing to do with this, they stood in the way, they're, they're still the masters of gridlock, and Bill Clinton will be in pretty good shape in '96.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Cynthia and Barbara Drake, Erwin Knoll, Gerald Warren, Lee Cullum, Ed Baumeister, thank you all for joining us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the new AIDS czar and a Bob McCord essay. NEWSMAKER - AIDS

MR. LEHRER: Now an interview with the country's first AIDS czar. Kwame Holman will conduct. Kwame.

MR. HOLMAN: Today's appointment of Kristine Gebbie to be AIDS policy coordinator fulfilled a Clinton campaign promise. Last year, Mr. Clinton said he would name an executive branch official to oversee AIDS policy and research. Gebbie is a former nurse who served as Washington State health secretary in 1987. President Reagan appointed her to the National AIDS Commission. Thank you for joining us, Ms. Gebbie.

MS. GEBBIE: Happy to be here.

MR. HOLMAN: What right now is the state, the shape of the AIDS epidemic in this country, rates of infection, trends, et cetera?

MS. GEBBIE: The number of cases continues to grow. The rate of infection continues to grow fastest in some of our most vulnerable communities, women, adolescents, communities of color. The estimates are right about where they've all been. It's a long day. The numbers are falling out of my head at this point, but it's an epidemic worth staying very, very concerned about.

MR. HOLMAN: What will your job be?

MS. GEBBIE: To try and make sense out of the federal investment in the epidemic, i.e., to pull together across departments the way we are focusing our energies and focusing our expenditures, and make it easier for folks on the street, in the community at the bedside to do what they need to do working with people. Right now, the federal programs have been seen as sometimes more of an impediment than of a help.

MR. HOLMAN: Can you give us an overview of what those programs are? And I understand many departments have AIDS-related programs.

MS. GEBBIE: Absolutely. The largest single group of them, of course, are in HHS, where we have the large number of prevention programs lodged in the Centers for Disease Control, we have the Ryan White program in the agency called HERZA, we have the immense research efforts of the NIH and the drug approval efforts at the Food & Drug Administration, and then the role that HICFA plays in financing care through Medicaid and Medicare, the Social Security Administration. It goes on and on there. But in addition, there's the Department of Education with the role it could play in helping us make sure all of our young people reach adulthood knowing what they should do to protect themselves from this disease. We have the drug policy coordinator and what we're doing with the drug programs, the Housing & Urban Development Department because of what they have to do in finding homes for so many of the people affected by this epidemic who are without proper housing. The Department of Defense is involved. They've got a major research effort that should be coordinated with us. We have lots of people.

MR. HOLMAN: I guess that's one of the reasons why AIDS activists wanted now President Clinton to appoint a coordinator in the White House, responsible to the White House. What were the problems with coordinating all those, and how do you plan to solve those problems?

MS. GEBBIE: Well, the problem with coordinating without a coordinator is that you assume people can read each other's mind. Everybody involved is very busy. They're doing a lot of things. They've got programs to run, and they don't always take the time or have the time to step back and look across several programs and think about how are these coming together, or to listen to people out in the community saying, did you notice that if you did this one the way you want to do it, and that one the way you want to do it, they'd go farther apart instead of closer together? So the coordinator needs to stand back a little bit, to do that careful listening, and then to try and bring people together so that they point in the same direction or so their efforts really enhance each other.

MR. HOLMAN: Will you have the, the authority, the clout, if you will? I heard you say in an interview earlier today you'd be going around to meet the movers and shakers in town and in the bureaucracy. Will you have the authority to do that coordinating when it's been reported that some people who are candidates for this job once they found out how it was being structured said they didn't want to take the job?

MS. GEBBIE: You never know till you do something exactly how it will work out, but I certainly believe I've been given that charge by the President. I heard from members of the cabinet that they're ready to go to work on this, that they want to be a part of a coordinated effort, some very positive feedback from a number of the groups that were present this morning at the ceremony, and I feel like we can accomplish it.

MR. HOLMAN: President Clinton during the campaign and since has endorsed all of the recommendations of the National Commission on AIDS, including some of the most controversial ones. Let me ask you about one or two of those. The needle exchange program for, for injectable drug users which apparently has been successful where it's been used in this country and in other countries, do you endorse that, and how would you implement it?

MS. GEBBIE: I come from a state that has several active needle exchange programs that people feel very positive about. I think needle exchange programs need to be part of a comprehensive community effort. They need to be tied in with other referral programs. I certainly do not think having people just running around the streets throwing out needles is what we're talking about, but a program where exchange is coupled with counseling, with referral into treatment, with an aggressive prevention program that makes sense. It's got to be planned at the community level and organized to meet the needs of that community. If we can provide federal back-up that makes it work better for people, then we should be doing that.

MR. HOLMAN: The, the CDC has been, Centers for Disease Control have been criticized for not being explicit enough in their AIDS education information, public information. Do you endorse more explicit public information, including perhaps condoms in schools, et cetera, et cetera?

MS. GEBBIE: I think our information needs to be very explicit and it has to be targeted to the audience. So the word that's explicit and useful for telling you or me what we're talking about may not be the same for an adolescent, for an inner-city kid, for a farm worker out in the country, and those messages have to be tailored with each audience in mind. And I think we need to become increasingly explicit with them.

MR. HOLMAN: As you said, the minority communities, particularly, have the faster growing rates of infection, and I think I hear you saying that targeting to minority communities is something you'll be doing.

MS. GEBBIE: Yes.

MR. HOLMAN: Has, have people trying to fight this epidemic been able to reach people in general? We hear reports of, for example, professional athletes who continue they say to involve themselves in, in casual sex, if you will. There are reports that younger gay men now are, are not taking the care that older gay men, thinking that AIDS is a problem for -- is the message not getting through?

MS. GEBBIE: Parts of the message are getting through. Surveys show that a lot of people in this country can pass what I would jokingly call the AIDS 101 test, i.e., they know the basic facts. What they haven't done is connect those facts with their life and connected what they know about their life with the behavior choices that go on so that an athlete who could check off all the things about yes, yes, yes, I know this about AIDS, then says, but I'm not vulnerable, I'm a big, strong he-man, and I can go out and do whatever I want. It's breaking that barrier we each erect to understanding our own vulnerabilities. That's a part of the education we have not done terribly well. We're talking about helping people sustain behavior change over a life time, behavior change around sex, around what they do for pleasure, about addicting substances, and it's very difficult. That's an area where we need a lot more research and a lot more community support to figure out how to make it happen.

MR. HOLMAN: In the couple of minutes we have left, I wanted to ask you about the research, and it seems coming out of the Berlin Conference, there was a great deal of pessimism about the failures of the AZT drug and treatment and so forth. Do you see any reason to be optimistic? And I understand that there is now being looked at, trying to look at the immune system and, and bolstering it to try to fight this disease.

MS. GEBBIE: Yeah. I'm optimistic we will learn more and more and more. We can continue to do some things to make life easier for someone after he or she is infected and to reduce the effects of the disease. I am concerned that we are too optimistic sometimes and think that a quick fix is going to be just around the next corner, each time we fail to find it. And I think we have to keep looking also at the prevention research that accepts the fact that for at least the foreseeable number of years we're still going to have this disease with us and have a lot to do in the community.

MR. HOLMAN: I read something a little while ago about people who apparently are immune to the virus. They at least have been exposed to it. That's known. And they have not contracted it, apparently, their T-cells, I believe they're called. Do -- there's been some discussion of whether research dollars from the federal government ought to be shifted to those kinds of, those areas of research rather than the treatment drugs like AZT that seem not to have been so promising.

MS. GEBBIE: Well, I don't think there's any one avenue for research. I think that we've got to look at a mixed bag of information and directing the research dollar, and that will be one of the areas that I get involved with is how we set that research agenda, what kind of consultations we need to do, and what kind of estimations we need to do of the potential fruitfulness of any one line of research. I think we've gotten a long way by letting people go. We certainly don't want to cut off their creativity, but to focus our dollars as best we can.

MR. HOLMAN: The, another area I wanted to ask you about was the immigration ban that as codified by Congress and the President apparently wanted to lift the ban on travel and immigration by HIV infected people. Do you, do you plan to try to make a change there? Would you like to see a change there? Can you see a time when there would be a change?

MS. GEBBIE: I certainly hope there will be a time when there's a change. Travel doesn't cause AIDS to spread. It's the behavior people do whether they're traveling or staying at home that causes the spread of the disease, and the travel ban doesn't make sense to me. I hope there will be a change to examine that again in a way in which we can move towards changing the policy.

MR. HOLMAN: Ms. Gebbie, thank you very much for joining us.

MS. GEBBIE: You're welcome. ESSAY - PAY DIRT?

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, Arkansas essayist Robert McCord has some thoughts about America's only diamond mine.

[SONG]

ROBERT McCORD: It was appropriate that Lorelei Lee, the heroine of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," was known as a little girl from Little Rock. This placed here 130 miles from North America's only diamond mine. And as everybody knows, Lorelei, as played by Marilyn Monroe in the movie version, loved diamonds. They are discovered almost every day in southern Arkansas in a state park known as the Crater of Diamonds. Tourists rent shovels and screens that dig in the strange black dirt, and they get to keep what they find, from tiny chips to a 16 karat diamond picked up off the ground by a vacationing Texas janitor. The first documented discovery was in 1906 by John Wesley Huddleston, an illiterate farmer whose eyes were said to be so good that he could shoot wasp with his pistol. He spotted two shiny rocks while plowing a turnip patch and sent them to Little Rock to be evaluated. It turned out they were perfect white diamonds. After that, the nearby village of Murphysboro became a boon town but not for long. Miners couldn't raise money because the word went out that it was all a hoax. Mysterious fires destroyed their equipment. The rumor was that the international diamond cartel was practicingsabotage. More likely, what was happening was a slump in the diamond market. But in any event, commercial mining ended in 1925. The owners posted a guard on the property and the crater was virtually forgotten. In the 1950s, it became a roadside attraction for rock hounds, and finally in 1972, the state legislature appropriated $750,000 and bought the crater for a new state park. The federal government chipped in, acting under a law that says it can help states acquire property but only for recreational purposes. That stipulation didn't seem important until the 1980s when suddenly there were all these requests for mining rights. South Arkansas is a poor area. Its politicians regard the diamonds as just another natural resource which can mean jobs and economic development. No one knows how rich the mine is, but when a consortium of U.S. and foreign companies volunteered to find out at no cost to the state, both Arkansas and the federal government accepted. Environmentalists were furious. It's like shooting the last whooping crane, they said, and sued in federal court, but they lost. Testing began, and the results were announced in December. The crater of diamonds sits atop one of the world's largest formations of diamond-bearing rock, a site that probably could be mined profitably for 30 years. They think there might be 16 million karats below ground. The consortium immediately requested permission for further testing to determine quantity and value of the diamonds. The state said yes again, and the federal government probably will too. If these new tests prove favorable, the big question is: Will state and federal governments allow commercial mining? Environmentalists hope that the Department of Interior, now headed by a real conservationist, Bruce Babbitt, will say no. From the start, Arkansas public officials have promised that even if they agreed to commercial mining, the park will be kept open, that miners will have to co-exist with the tourists. That might meet the federal requirement for the use of outdoor recreational land. But the environmentalists say, no. They say that commercial mining and public parks can never be compatible, a not unusual confrontation of course, but one that is certainly on a more elegant plane. We're not talking about exotic things like snail darters or the ozone layer. This is about severance tax, royalties, payrolls, and diamonds, which as Lorelei Lee told the world are every girl's best friends. I'm Robert McCord. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, President Clinton predicted an even better deficit reduction budget plan to emerge from a House-Senate conference committee than the Senate version that passed early this morning. He announced the appointment of Washington State Health Commissioner Kristine Gebbie to be his AIDS czar. In a NewsHour interview a few minutes ago, she said that she will have the authority needed to coordinate different federal programs designed to fight AIDS. And the base closings commission voted to shut more military facilities, including the naval air station at Alameda, California. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. Have a nice weekend. We'll see you again on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.