The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After our summary of the news this Monday, we turn to national welfare reform. The state of Wisconsin offers a model and four experts offer divergent points of view. Then the political struggle over economic reform in the Russian republic. Finally, a documentary look at the opening of the once closed Soviet city of Gorky. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: President Bush today criticized labor unions and the money they raised for political contributions. In a Rose Garden ceremony, he signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to inform non-union workers that they have the right to withhold union dues which go towards political activities they don't support. In some union shops, non-union employees pay dues to cover the cost of negotiating contracts or filing worker grievances. Most union political contributions go to Democratic candidates. Mr. Bush said the order was in line with a 1988 Supreme Court decision and it protects the rights of non-union workers.

PRES. BUSH: Full implementation of this principle will guarantee that no American will have his job or livelihood threatened for refusing to contribute to political activities against his will. The executive order that I signed today will make it easier for employees of federal contractors to understand and then exercise their political rights.

MR. MacNeil: AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland called a press conference to react to the President's announcement. He paraphrased the late New York City mayor, Fiorella LaGuardia.

LANE KIRKLAND, President, AFL-CIO: It's politics. Do you get it? Can you believe it? It's politics. By this obsequious pandering to the ultra right special interests of his party, the President has given hypocrisy a bad name.

MR. MacNeil: Kirkland also said his union's 14 million members are recession weary and want a new administration at the White House. He joined with 20 AFL-CIO vice presidents in endorsing Democratic contender Bill Clinton. The union's executive committee is expected to make it official when it meets in May. Negotiators for Caterpillar and the United Auto Workers resumed talks today with a federal mediator in Illinois. Nearly 13,000 workers have been on strike since November. Even as today's meeting took place, the company proceeded with plans to replace strikers who ignored an ultimatum to return to work. Caterpillar began advertising for non-union workers last week and hopes to have some of them on the job by May 1st. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: New York's Chemical Bank lowered its prime lending rate today by 1/4 of a point to 6 1/4 percent. It was the first major bank to do so and others were expected to follow. The prime rate is used to set a wide range of business loans and mortgages. Downtown Chicago was under water today after a retaining wall broke, sending river water into a system of underground tunnels. It flooded office building basements and the local power company had to shut off electricity to a 12-block section of the Chicago loop area. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated and trading on the Chicago Board of Trade and Mercantile Exchange was suspended.

MR. MacNeil: Former President Ronald Reagan was attacked while giving a speech today. Mr. Reagan was addressing a broadcasting group in Las Vegas, when a man rushed the stage, smashing a crystal statue given to Mr. Reagan. Pieces of glass hit the former President but he wasn't injured. The man was quickly grabbed and hustled away by Secret Service agents. Witnesses said he was protesting nuclear testing. Mr. Reagan returned to finish his speech.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Organization of American States today considered taking action against the government of Peru. On April 5th, the democratically-elected President, Alberto Fujimori, backed up by the military, dissolved Peru's congress, suspended the constitution, and took virtual dictatorial control. His actions have received widespread support in his country, which has been plagued by government corruption, poverty, drug trafficking, and a leftist insurgency. But it has been condemned by other countries like the United States, which suspended economic assistance. At today's OAS meeting, Sec. of State Baker led the U.S. delegation.

JAMES BAKER, Secretary of State: The actions taken since April the 5th will deprive Peru of the support that it desperately needs and deserves if it is going to successfully meet the terrible crises that it confronts. All of us recognize that democracy can be inefficient. All of us recognize that democracy can be slow and all of us recognize that democracy can be frustrated. But, Mr. President, there is no alternative. You cannot destroy democracy in order to save it.

MS. WOODRUFF: In Peru today, a huge car bomb exploded outside a police station near the capital of Lima. Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News narrates our report.

MR. VAUGHAN: The car blew up before dawn, taking policemen and pedestrians by surprise. Four people were killed and at least fourteen injured. An apartment block next to the police station was badly damaged. Police suspect that the Maoist Shining Path rebels are to blame. The blast damaged dozens of homes and cars, as well as a nearby school. The bomb contained about 175 pounds of dynamite. It was the third major attack in Lima by Shining Path since President Alberto Fujimori set up his new military-backed government just over a week ago.

MR. MacNeil: The director of the CIA said today the agency plans to sharply increase its economic intelligence efforts. In remarks prepared for a speech in Detroit, Robert Gates said his agency would place top priority on protecting U.S. companies on spying by foreign governments. Gates said that would include surveillance of overseas developments in computers, semiconductors, and communications, but he ruled out any industrial espionage on behalf of U.S. firms against their foreign competitors.

MS. WOODRUFF: The entire cabinet of Russian President Boris Yeltsin submitted its resignation today. They did so as part of the ongoing tug of war with the Russian parliament. Hard line lawmakers have moved to weaken Yeltsin's radical economic reforms and his powers. Yeltsin has not accepted the cabinet resignations. His deputy prime minister said they would be withdrawn if the lawmakers would drop their opposition to the government's reform package. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: Last week's Conservative Party victory in Britain today resulted in the resignation of the opposition Labor Party leader. Neil Kinnock announced that he was stepping down for the good of the party. Kinnock became party leader in 1983. Since then, it has lost two consecutive general elections at the hands of the Conservatives. Also in London, Prince Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth, has filed for divorce. She and her husband, Mark Phillips, were married 18 years ago, but have been living apart for more than 2 years. The couple has two children. Today's announcement by Buckingham Palace came less than a month after it confirmed that Anne's younger brother, Prince Andrew, and his wife, Sara Ferguson, were separating.

MS. WOODRUFF: In Johannesburg, Africa National Congress leader Nelson Mandela announced that he and his wife, Winnie, have agreed to separate. The announcement came one day after new allegations that Mrs. Mandela lied about her involvement in a kidnapping case. She was convicted of the charges last year, but has insisted she is innocent. The case involved the abduction of four young men, one of whom was later found dead. We have more from Jeremy Thompson of Independent Television News.

MR. THOMPSON: Nelson Mandela cut a tragic figure as he announced the end of his 34-year marriage, while still proclaiming his devotion to Winnie.

NELSON MANDELA, ANC: I part from my wife with no recriminations. I embraced her with all the love and affection I have left for her inside and outside prison.

MR. THOMPSON: It was a sad end to the fairy tale love story that began when the young ANC activist married his beautiful royal bride in 1958. But the pressures had turned Winnie Mandela from a loyal wife into a liability, beset by scandals about her personal life. Today her former chauffeur told ITN he'd liked about her criminal activities to protect the ANC.

JOHN MORGAN, Driver: It's because I was afraid that if I spoke the truth, I was going to be killed.

MR. THOMPSON: Killed by whom?

JOHN MORGAN: By Winnie's comrades.

MR. THOMPSON: Despite the allegations, Nelson Mandela was today a man broken-hearted and close to tears.

NELSON MANDELA: I hope you'll appreciate the pain I have gone through.

MS. WOODRUFF: Nelson Mandela insisted that the decision to separate from his wife was unrelated to the new allegations against her.

MR. MacNeil: A rare earthquake shook parts of Northern Europe early today. It was centered in Holland and felt in parts of Belgium and Germany. Falling bricks and concrete injured more than two dozen people in one German town. Police said at least one person died of a heart attack. The quake measured at least 5.5 on the Richter Scale. Experts said it was the strongest to hit the region in two centuries. In Italy, army engineers used explosives in an effort to divert a lava flow from Mount Etna. The lava is threatening a town of 7,000 people at the base of the Sicilian mountain. The blasts had little effect and other workers spent the day reinforcing earthen barricades designed to protect the town of Zefferana.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, welfare reform in America, economic reform in Russia, and the opening of a forbidden city. FOCUS - UNFAIR CHANGE?

MR. MacNeil: Welfare reform is our first topic tonight. The recession has caused welfare rolls to soar, while tax coffers are shrinking. In the past six months, some states like Ohio and Michigan, have cut back or simply cut out their General Assistance programs. Others, like Wisconsin, have long tried to limit costs by encouraging welfare recipients to change their behavior. On Friday, President Bush endorsed Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson's latest idea. It would cap payments to welfare recipients who have more than two children. In a moment, we'll debate whether this or other welfare reforms can actually get people off the dole and into the work place. First a look at the situation in Wisconsin. Correspondent Dave Iverson of public station WHA in Madison, Wisconsin, updates a story we first broadcast a year ago.

MR. IVERSON: For Frances Scherling, lunchtime conversation at Beloit Memorial High School consists of familiar teen-age fair. She worries about her grades --

FRANCES SCHERLING: [talking to other students in lunch room] Can't believe how bad I did on that math test. Do you think he's going to let us take it over?

MR. IVERSON: -- and struggles to figure out her social studies assignment.

FRANCES SCHERLING: [lunch discussion at high school] The Truman-MacArthur feud, I could not find anything about them. I found Truman's name everywhere, but MacArthur, his name isn't even in the glossary in my book.

MR. IVERSON: But when Frances Scherling leaves school, her day is no longer that of a typical teen-ager. After school, Frances Scherling high school student becomes Frances Scherling, mother of two. To manage both roles, Frances takes advantage of the Wisconsin welfare reform project known as Learn Fare. So long as she stays in school, the state pays her day care bills.

FRANCES SCHERLING, Welfare Mother: I love going to school. A lot of people think that's weird, but I do love actually going to school. I love the atmosphere. I love being able to learn new things and if welfare, being on welfare gets me to the diploma, then I'll go on welfare.

MR. IVERSON: Like other Wisconsin welfare reform efforts, the philosophy behind Learn Fare includes both incentives and penalties, incentives like day care benefits, penalties like docking a family's welfare check if their kids don't attend school. It's an approach that's garnered Wisconsin's Republican Governor, Tommy Thompson, national attention.

GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON, Wisconsin: For every one of my welfare reform programs that I put into law or was able to get waivers from the federal government, there have been the critics and the nay sayers, but they want to keep the status quo. I don't want to keep the status quo. The status quo doesn't work. Give us in Wisconsin, the flexibility, the opportunity to change it, and we'll show the way for the country to follow.

MR. IVERSON: Gov. Thompson wants to change the welfare status quo again. Under his current proposal, a teen mother on welfare would receive extra money each month if she marries the child's father. And there's also an incentive for fathers who would become eligible for special job training and parenting classes. But the plan also contains penalties. For example, single or married parents on welfare would no longer receive additional benefits each time they had an additional child.

ELOISE ANDERSON, Dept. of Health and Social Services: How we view this is a proposal to strengthen the family and like in anything there are carrots and there are sticks, because we believe that man sort of responds to both.

MR. IVERSON: Incentives and penalties, carrots and sticks. For someone like Frances Scherling, the proposal means a decision to marry would bring in $77 more each month. A decision to have an extra child, on the other hand, brings in no additional benefits at all. To put his plan into action, the Republican Governor must win the blessing of the Democratically-controlled state legislature.

BARBARA NOTESTEIN, State Representative: The state wants to run a program in Wisconsin that amounts to state-sponsored shotgun weddings.

MR. IVERSON: Barbara Notestein is the assistant Democratic leader in the state assembly.

MS. NOTESTEIN: This program provides an incentive for young teen- agers to get married if they have a baby and I think that what we're talking about is asking young people who are not ready to take on those kinds of responsibilities to form a family and behave as mature adults. 75 percent of teen-age marriages end in failure. They end in either separation or divorce.

MR. IVERSON: Frances Scherling agrees.

MS. SCHERLING: If you're going to get married, your marriage should be based on love, not, you know, having to support a kid. Most marriages fall apart because they don't care for each other.

MR. IVERSON: But Gov. Thompson sees the plan as part of an overall effort to strengthen families.

GOV. THOMPSON: I want to change it. I want to be able to give that family unit the incentives, and that's what this program is, the incentives, education, skills, parenting courses, jobs, get 'em off the dole, get 'em off into, into the real world where people work, the husband works, the mother works, the child is taken care of through day care, give 'em the opportunity.

MR. IVERSON: But will a plan based on incentives and penalties work with a specific population, teen-agers, the group that doesn't always care about planning or think about the consequences?

FRANCES SCHERLING: I was 15 when I first started interacting with guys and I first went to my real public school, and my real mom, she never told me anything about anything. I knew nothing about birth control or anything, and when I did have, all of a sudden have this freedom of not being -- you know, of being allowed to do what I wanted to do because I was in a foster home that I guess I went overboard and I didn't want people to think I was stupid, you know, I didn't know anything, so I just kind of played along with it, and I got pregnant.

JANET BALESTRERI, Teacher: I made some phone calls up to Black Hawk Technical College and what they're suggesting is that as soon as you get the financial aid forms, as soon as you hear back --

MR. IVERSON: Frances is far from alone. This class at Beloit High School is for several of some 30 teen moms who attend the school. Teacher Janet Balestreri says the students she works with don't spend a lot of time planning out the future.

JANET BALESTRERI, Teacher: The teen parent population that I work with, they don't sit down and think about each dollar and how they're going to use it. I know when other people look at them and they know that they're teen parents, they look at them as adults and who, people who think rationally and logically and have a wealth of experience behind them. I guess I see them in a little bit different light. They are still children trying to be adults.

MR. IVERSON: If some teens and teachers question the effectiveness of the carrot, what about the stick, the idea that welfare parents should not be rewarded for having more children? It's a notion that has popular appeal.

ELOISE ANDERSON, Dept. of Health and Social Services: When any of us who work have another child our employer doesn't increase our money so why would we have an expectation and allow these people have an expectation of government and the people that we don't allow people to have in the work place?

MR. IVERSON: Now armed with an official Presidential seal of approval, Gov. Thompson hopes to bypass his Democratically- controlled state legislature and put his plan into effect next year. And while the politics of the plan will no doubt continue to be debated, its impact on how teen-agers think and behave is an open question. Frances Scherling is on track for high school graduation this spring. But she is now also pregnant with her third child.

MR. MacNeil: In addition to Wisconsin, other states are considering a cap on benefits for additional children. They are: New Jersey, California, Virginia, and Maine. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Robin, there are nearly 14 million people on welfare in this country. Most of them are women and children. The last major federal effort to deal with welfare came in 1988 when Congress passed the Family Support Act to try to move more people off the welfare rolls, in large part through government-funded job training. But it has been widely recognized since then that the Act didn't achieve all it was supposed to. Four people join us now, each with an intense interest in the subject of welfare. They are Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, Gail Wilensky, deputy assistant to President Bush for policy development; her responsibilities include welfare reform; Charles Murray, author of "Losing Ground," and several other books on welfare policy; he is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Theresa Funiciello, who is co-director of Social Agenda, a non-profit advocacy group for the poor based in New York. Ms. Funiciello was, herself, a welfare recipient in the 1970s. She's currently writing a book on welfare policy. Sen. Moynihan, will the Wisconsin program, which President Bush has endorsed, work? Will it actually discourage young women from having more children, encourage them to get off the welfare roles?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Well, we're going to find out, aren't we? The whole point about these waivers, as Gail will tell you, is that there's very tight evaluation built into them and in about 15 years, you would probably have some estimate. Can I just make the point that what's going on in Wisconsin, in New Jersey, and California, is that the, that 1988 legislation, the Family Support Act, is now beginning to take hold. We said that, you know, the basic proposition about welfare if we've got to get you off welfare, but not throw you out the window, get you, help you into a new life. And we said, innovate, experiment, find new things, don't be afraid of it, and -- but find out what happened. Nothing's going to be learned very quickly. And just to give you one sense in this whole discussion now about what we're talking about, almost one child in three born this year will be on welfare before they're eighteen at our present rate. This is not --

MS. WOODRUFF: One in three children born in this country?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: One in three. And for minority children, four in five.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying that the Wisconsin program is a natural outgrowth of the 1988 Act, that it's just a natural consequence of telling people do what you can, telling the states, the governments and so forth, do what you can?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: The 1988 legislation was based on efforts states had started on their own in the '80s. It was very much kind of federalism in place. Now, look, I'm not all for the Wisconsin proposal. I don't think this withholding a child's benefit because of an adult's behavior is a good social policy. I mean, you don't punish a child because of the way a grown-up behaves. What does an 18-month-old baby know about what mother did or didn't do? On the other hand, the idea of trying to get a purchase on this thing is something we have to do and we haven't done.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you think it's fine for the federal government to give -- for President Bush to give welfare a waiver and let them go ahead with this business of saying you get -- if you have one more -- if you have one child, you get it, you have a second child you only get a little bit more money, and any more children after that, you get no more money?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Me, I would not have had that. I don't think you injure the child in some way, sanction the child, in order to change the behavior of the adult. But we're going to get from a Democratic administration in New Jersey a not very different proposal. It'll be in town very shortly and I expect that the President will approve that.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Wilensky, Sen. Moynihan is saying, let it work, but don't injure the child. Why is it necessary to injure -- if as he's suggesting that's what's going to happen -- any additional children that are born?

MS. WILENSKY: Let me back up. There was a statement made earlier that President Bush had advocated the policies that were being adopted by Wisconsin. What the President advocated very clearly was letting states experiment and innovate, trying to break the welfare dependency, made it very clear that he was not advocating the specific features of this, but recognizing that we think that not all the wisdom lies in Washington. With regard to the issue about Wisconsin --

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying even though he's granting Wisconsin the permission to do this, he doesn't endorse it?

MS. WILENSKY: He has all of the specifics and, in fact, that was made clear on Friday. It will become clear as the President's basic posture, which is in welfare and frequently in other programs, from the Medicaid programs, for example. It's been longstanding administration policy to encourage innovation of the states, states being the laboratory for the country. It's important to understand that each and every waiver that is approved if it meets the general guidelines, budget neutrality, not costing the government more in total than would have been spent and has evaluation components, we will try very hard to approve those waivers even if there are specific policies the Bush administration may, in fact, not advocate.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just, again, to clarify -- a waiver is permitting a state to do things differently from the way the federal government has said before they had to be done.

MS. WILENSKY: That is correct.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's what we're waiving.

MS. WILENSKY: It is waiving either regulations or part of the law regarding welfare.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you think the Wisconsin plan will be effective? Do you think women, mothers, will have fewer children with this because they'll get less money for it?

MS. WILENSKY: I think you have to look at the package. What they are doing in Wisconsin is try to encourage the father to be involved, liberalize the benefits, the gains that you get from earning, make sure that these teen-age mothers have parenting classes, have job training. Together, that may, in fact, change what is going on. What we know now is that if a woman is unmarried, is a teen, has a baby, there's an incredible likelihood the baby will grow up in poverty and that that woman will have a very long term on welfare, on average eight years. We've got to find ways to try to break that cycle. This will test it to see whether it does.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ms. Funiciello, is this Wisconsin plan a way to break this cycle and get these women off welfare?

MS. FUNICIELLO: Well, frankly, there's nothing new under the sun. In many respects, you can look back a hundred years ago and we were chopping up families and sending the children off to orphanages and we were sending the mothers off to one kind of work program and the fathers or men generally off to work farms. We have another kind of system to try to modify people's behavior, but only a certain kind of people's behavior are we interested in modifying. For instance, a woman who is a young widow who has small children will get Social Security benefits and her children will get Social Security. The amounts of money that will go to those people will be significantly more than the amount of money that goes to any welfare family under any circumstances. And we're not saying to that mother, if your child doesn'tgo, we're going to take away your Social Security. Additionally, we are not saying to poor or any other class of families, if your child doesn't go to school, we're going to take away your tax exemption for that individual. For some reason we have this really peculiar attitude about poor people, which is that they behave in a way that is significantly different from other people, especially poor women. And this particular year what I think has happened is that welfare recipients have become the Willie Hortons of this Presidential campaign and it's okay for both the Democrats and the Republicans. So in a sense, you have President Bush and potentially Clinton, who has also endorsed this program, duking it out over who's going to cause the most damage to the most number of poor women and children.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying you don't think it's going to -- is that what you're saying, you don't think it's going to work?

MS. FUNICIELLO: I think it's obvious that it's not going to work. Nothing of the kind has ever worked. None of these programs have worked to the extent that there have already been studies of the Learn Fare program. What they've shown is that it had absolutely no effect on the attendance records of children in schools and there's not much difference between the behavior of poor children who have welfare and poor children who don't have welfare.

MS. WOODRUFF: Charles Murray, what about her point that what Wisconsin is doing and any other state that tries this, New Jersey or whatever, is discriminating against poor women by putting a cap on the welfare benefit, and saying, if you have fewer children -- if you don't have any more children, you don't get any more women?

MR. MURRAY: I think the response to that is similar to the one that was made by the woman in the clip, which is to say that people don't get a raise in a job when they have another child. But I guess I have to agree with Ms. Funiciello in one point, which is that we don't come to these things de novo. I mean, we've tried a lot of the different components and we have a pretty good idea of the envelope within which the effects will fall with the training programs and the rest, ranging from no effect to fairly minor effects. What the Wisconsin plan does in two ways though seems to me a little disturbing. First, I think the business about capping the payments after the first child is interesting but not very important, because you've already got more than 40 percent of all welfare mothers only have one child to begin with. You've got another thirty odd percent who have no more than two. So you probably aren't going to pick up much effect there anyway.

MS. WOODRUFF: So it's a small percentage you say who'd be affected anyway?

MR. MURRAY: Yes. But there is a very important change that they're making which I think has a potential for backfiring. And that is in an effort to get couples to marry we have once again made the same mistake we've made in a lot of welfare reform acts, whereby we've looked at the people who are exhibiting something that we consider to be a problem -- in this case not getting married -- we've worried about how we jigger the incentives so that we encourage them to get married. And in the meantime, we ignore those folks who are married now, low income, and not on welfare. And in many ways, what the changes in this plan do is make it much more attractive for those folks to get onto welfare than it has been in the past. And I'm not sure we want to do that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Gail Wilensky, is that an argument -- is that saying perhaps that the administration is making a mistake by letting this Wisconsin experiment go forward?

MS. WILENSKY: Again, what we've had a lot of experience and frustration in is not being able to get long-term welfare-dependent people off of welfare. This is a controlled experiment, twenty-one hundred individuals, to see whether we can break the cycle for young, unmarried teen mothers. It may work. It may not. It will go along with the demonstrations that Sen. Moynihan indicated is a very important part, the Family Support Act. Let's not condemn it for not working before it's had a chance.

MS. WOODRUFF: But what about Ms. Funiciello's point, that we don't penalize women in other circumstances? Why are we penalizing, in effect, poor women?

MS. WILENSKY: We're trying to encourage Wisconsin. That's the right way. Wisconsin is trying to encourage individual, family, parental responsibility. Thinking about how you're going to support these children, making work pay off more, bringing the father in, making sure the father is eligible for some additional benefits and support activities if they're not paying child support, trying to change the incentives that seem to not be working for these individuals. Will it work? Maybe not. Let's not condemn it before we try it.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ms. Funiciello, yes.

MS. FUNICIELLO: Let's talk about the fathers for a second. You've talked a lot about teen mothers. For one, the rate and numbers of teen-agers having babies has gone down since I was a teen-ager. I assume, if you know the data, you know that.

MS. WOODRUFF: We've got -- two of our guests are shaking their heads no to that.

MS. FUNICIELLO: The data is clear.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well --

MS. FUNICIELLO: It's certainly in the 1991 Greenbook.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- we're not going to resolve that.

MS. FUNICIELLO: In any event, secondly, we have to look at the men who are impregnating teen-agers. Approximately 70 percent of the teen-agers who are impregnated are impregnated not by teen-age males but by adult males. Why, if you want to do something, aren't we doing something about statutory rape laws and such other issues?

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, anybody want to respond to that? And then I want to get back to Sen. Moynihan's job training?

MR. MURRAY: I just want to very quickly say that I think the Bush administration did the right thing in authorizing the Wisconsin plan. I'm making predictions. I'm saying five years down the pike, ten years down the pike, when we look at the outcomes, there's not going to be much difference. But we do need experimentation. And so to that extent, I say, fine.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sen. Moynihan, you want to put, what, another $4 1/2 billion into job training? How do you know that'll make a difference? The criticism I've read of your proposal is that there's no -- or very little proof that that's going to work.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Well, I don't know. I did know this was coming. Thirty years ago, I said this program was coming. I said that press conference was coming. And we knew enough to foresee this.

MS. WOODRUFF: You mean, the Wisconsin plan was coming?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: That the crisis of welfare, that a third of your children, four-fifths of your black children would be on welfare before they're age eighteen, which is to say you're a pauper, not a pretty word, not a pretty condition. Now, getting us out of a situation that took us a generation to develop is not going to be quick or easy. We're trying to say measure, we're trying to say think. We're trying to say keep this in mind. Whilst we went through a long period of silence -- I think both Gail and Charles would agree -- there was a long period of denial, you know what happened to those poor mothers? The welfare benefits were cut, in effect, by 42 percent since 1970, given the silence on the subject, right, 42 percent, we can agree on that?

MR. MURRAY: No, but go ahead.

MS. FUNICIELLO: Yes, we can.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: AFDC payments.

MR. MURRAY: The AFDC payment all by itself.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Now, that this is up, now that the President has to watch it, has to -- he said, he patted that thing on the head. Now he's going to watch it grow. I don't mind that. I like that. I think it's good for all of us, because this has been silent, we've been silent about this too long. And the result has been cruelty to children at an extraordinary level.

MR. MURRAY: But I would be interested, Senator, in this proposition, that the focus on all the reform at this point has been, what do we do with women who are already in the situation where they have children? And it seems to me, as you look at the social tragedy which is transpiring in the inner-city, the problem is not the second baby, the problem is the first baby.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: You aren't going to mention birth control?

MS. WOODRUFF: So what are you suggesting?

MR. MURRAY: I'm saying that we have to -- I think we have to focus on the fact that having communities where you have very few fathers, which is, in effect, the situation we're facing now, you can't run communities that way. And so without having a solution neatly packaged, ready, in hand, I'm saying we're looking at the wrong problem.

MS. WOODRUFF: So how do you produce the fathers? What are you suggesting?

MR. MURRAY: If you're asking me what I am suggesting, I say we have to fundamentally shift the national attitude toward what it means to have a baby that you are not emotionally or financially prepared to take care of. I'm saying that we have to shift from saying, this is an ill-advised thing for a young woman to do to saying it's profoundly wrong. And once you do that, then a whole new set of possibilities open up.

MS. WOODRUFF: And you'd do away with the whole system, as it's now conceived, and --

MR. MURRAY: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: And then ultimately do what? I mean, get to the bottom line. I mean, what are we saying?

MR. MURRAY: The bottom line would be that there would be no advantage whatsoever that attaches to having a baby, that you would be eligible as a woman for any other benefits that are out there for other people at large. And I'm also saying that the government can spend vast sums of moneys on orphanages and adoption, but that we must stop subsidizing the behavior that's having such tragic consequences.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ms. Funiciello.

MS. FUNICIELLO: Charles, you should have a shot at having a baby without having any money. And then you'd understand how easy it is. Every mother is a working mother. I don't care what you say. It is hard work. It is important work. It's certainly every bit as important as being a Congress person. And there's no reason why society should not take some responsibility for each other as a whole. You don't talk about the tax exemptions and what's derived out of that for every child that every taxpayer has. You haven't addressed the issue of whether Social Security payments ought to be reduced if Social Security mothers are not behaving as you would like them to behave. You haven't addressed the issue of what, in fact, to do about fathers. And, furthermore, there are many other countries in this world which do far better in terms of giving income to single parent families so that they can thrive and survive in a reasonable manner and the mother makes the decision when to enter the paying labor force, as opposed to the unpaying labor force. And that has to be done by the mother, not by the state. The state can't make that decision for millions of people and make it sensibly.

MS. WOODRUFF: Gail Wilensky.

MS. WILENSKY: Well, let me respond to what Charles Murray just said. There's no question in my mind --

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, what about Ms. Funiciello's points which we've just heard?

MS. WILENSKY: The notion that all we have to do is to try to have income supports for individuals, irrespective of their behavior, no, I don't think that, in fact, is consistent with how we believe in this country, and the attitudes we have. We think that people ought to work. We think they ought to be individually responsible and responsible for their behavior. That's the reason, in fact, I think there is a lot of public support for the basic trust of what Wisconsin and New Jersey and these other states are trying to do, to re-orient some of these thinking, but to make sure, in fact, that individuals and families adopt a sense of parental responsibility. The issue about, can we try to orient what is acceptable, the community responsibility, that's an important one, and it's going to be hard to solve these problems without that also being a part of it.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ms. Funiciello, you want to come back on that?

MS. FUNICIELLO: I think -- it wasn't that long ago, in fact, when George Bush supported the Family Assistance Plan which was authored, in effect, by Sen. Moynihan. The Family Assistance Plan was a guaranteed income, irrespective of all those things you're talking about now. This is the same George Bush who is now President, talking about cutting people off if they behave in ways that he thinks are inappropriate. Secondly, I think we're also not dealing with the other parts of this little hidden equation. And I'd like to see the so-called "right to lifers" out there barricading the White House over the fact that abortions are likely to be increased, because you only have but so many choices. At a certain point, you're going to either get increased abortions, or you're going to have children who are not able to be fed properly, housed properly, sheltered. We're going to have increased homelessness, or we're going to rip them out of the wombs by forcing them into orphanages and foster care and things that cost a great deal more than AFDC.

MS. WOODRUFF: Doesn't she have a point about the abortion rate?

MS. WILENSKY: Again, you have to look at what Wisconsin is doing as a whole. They're making work pay off. They're bringing the father into the equation. They're not touching Medicaid. They're not touching food stamps. They're not touching the public housing. What we are doing for children and two children now, by encouraging or not trying to stop the long-term dependency, is a great harm to children. Whether this will work, I don't know. But that is a problem.

MS. FUNICIELLO: But the work doesn't pay off. Single mothers are the least -- the most poorly paid people when they are in the wage labor force and a far greater proportion of them are in the wage labor force than of any other mothers. The fact is that we have neither income supports for those women in the wage labor force that are satisfactory, nor, do we have income supports for those women who choose to raise their children. Now, tell me -- answer this question, please -- why is it that a black woman working as a nanny for an upper class white family is called a worker, but when she chooses to raise her own children at home, she's considered a parasite on society? I don't get it.

MS. WOODRUFF: Charles Murray.

MR. MURRAY: I am not calling her a parasite on society and I don't think Sen. Moynihan or anyone else is.

MS. FUNICIELLO: I don't think Sen. Moynihan is either.

MR. MURRAY: I think that we have to get beyond the invective and talk about a kind of problem about which, as Sen. Moynihan suggests, there has been a kind of conspiracy to silence. I think I see it somewhat differently from Sen. Moynihan. But I think we have to stop looking at this as being a purely pragmatic issue of how do we rearrange incentives in minor ways. And we have -- and we also have to stop kidding ourselves, saying that there is a way we change the system without any suffering. Right now, in inner- cities throughout the United States there is an enormous amount of suffering on the part of children going on. And we have to balance whatever alternative we make and the suffering it may cause with what we've got in our hands.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying we may have to experience additional suffering -- those children may have to suffer more?

MR. MURRAY: No, I'm saying --

SEN. MOYNIHAN: They suffer now.

MR. MURRAY: Yes, I'm saying -- I'm saying --

MS. WOODRUFF: Who's going to do the additional suffering?

MR. MURRAY: -- if you have a policy which has -- let's not even say what the policy is -- but a policy which would end up producing 200,000 children a year fewer who are born into this kind of situation, what is that worth in terms of human suffering, to have that many fewer children? What is the comparison to make between 1992 and 1963 in terms of the number of children being born into the situations that create the chaos?

MS. WOODRUFF: But in the meantime, aren't you going to have a situation over some period of time where some children would receive less benefits, a lot less benefits? Isn't that what --

MR. MURRAY: I could concoct a plan for you which they were going to grandfather the whole thing so that nobody will suffer that kind of situation, but I don't think that's -- I don't think that's the point. I think people have to be willing to say here is a terrible here. Here are alternatives, each of which has disadvantages, but we're going to face up to the nature of the problem we have right now.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sen. Moynihan.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: All I ask is that you know these children are alive and they're hurting, they're hurting terribly, and after a long silence, I think we're opening up and if George Bush is reluctant, which will see, I'm going to expect an annual accounting from him for Wisconsin, New Jersey, so we know what's happening to these children. For a long while we denied they were even there.

MS. WOODRUFF: But are you saying that it's okay to wait now for - - you keep bringing up the number ten years and five years -- that what we're doing now is enough -- let the states experiment, we'll see in five years or ten years that that's working -- is that what you're --

SEN. MOYNIHAN: I would fund our jobs program, which Wisconsin roared ahead on, so that nobody is turned away and everybody is brought in. The present law says the adult has to take job training or education or loses the adult benefit. I'd like to concentrate on the adult but I also think I would agree with Charles Murray, we don't know a lot about how they change people's behavior on something so fundamental.

MS. FUNICIELLO: We do know that the workprograms have not gotten women out of poverty. They may have knocked some off of welfare.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Fair point. Fair point.

MS. FUNICIELLO: And I think, secondly, we talk about this welfare as though AFDC were a major part of the federal budget. You know that it's only about 1 percent of the federal budget. Let's -- you know -- get to some facts. It's only 1/100 of a percent of the GNP. It's 10 days of the Gulf War. Why are we doing this to poor women and children, irrespective of how you feel about their behavior?

MR. MURRAY: If there's one thing that we ought to stop saying, I think, Ms. Funiciello, in all honesty it is, but the people who are critical of the present system want to save money by cutting the budget. I don't see anybody at this table, and I don't see anybody that I talked to is critical of --

MS. FUNICIELLO: Ms. Wilensky said that.

MR. MURRAY: -- the situation. He says, oh, we're going to be able to cut taxes and get rid of these problems if we get of the welfare sheets and that's not what we're saying.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's not what you're saying?

MS. WILENSKY: I did not say that at all. In fact, in the early part, if it will do anything, it will cost some additional dollars but over the period of the demonstration it won't cost more than what otherwise had been spent. That's the only guideline in terms of budget. This is not being looked at as a saver. It's important that the public understand that. That was not part of what we're doing.

MS. FUNICIELLO: You suggested over time that it would save money, not initially.

MS. WILENSKY: We hope over time it will move people off of welfare.

MS. FUNICIELLO: But you don't care about whether they're moved out of poverty. That's my issue.

MS. WILENSKY: We hope that they will be part of the labor force; they'll be part --

MS. FUNICIELLO: They are a part of the labor force.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you're saying it's not important to the Bush administration that money might be saved from these kinds of experiments with welfare?

MS. WILENSKY: What we are looking for is that they not cost more money than the federal government would otherwise spend. That is the --

MS. WOODRUFF: Which has gone down in the last 20 years as a percentage --

MS. WILENSKY: No, no. And it's not even that's gone down -- what the Senator was saying is that in real terms, in inflation-adjusted term, it has gone down. In absolute dollars, we are definitely spending more.

MS. WOODRUFF: Yes.

MR. MURRAY: The total package of benefits has gone up too.

MS. WILENSKY: And the total package of benefits, when you include Medicaid, when you include food stamps, when you include public housing, has enormously increased. And, of course, the earned income tax credit which was adopted in 1990 was a substantial way to increase income for the working poor. So that this has not been an area in which there have been reductions in any sense of the word.

MS. WOODRUFF: Even in the inflation-adjusted sense --

MS. WILENSKY: In the inflation-adjusted sense.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- which Sen. Moynihan suggested?

MS. WILENSKY: Not when you look at the whole package of benefits. There's been, in fact, substantial increases.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Ms. Funiciello, do you want to make a quick reaction?

MS. FUNICIELLO: We're already seeing -- from the first round of work -- forced work programs women coming back into the system because they lost health care benefits, they can't afford to go to the doctor. By your argument, I mean, if you have Medicaid, you could stay in the hospital for a year and be rich. That's absurd. The fact is that we are not getting all of these benefits. Poor women are not getting out of poverty. All you're doing is shuffling them around and taking some credit for it.

MS. WOODRUFF: It's a debate that is going to go on, but I want to thank all of you for being with us. Mr. Murray, Ms. Funiciello, Sen. Moynihan, Ms. Wilensky, thank you all. FOCUS - RUSSIAN GRIDLOCK

MR. MacNeil: The problems in Russia are next tonight. The cabinet of President Boris Yeltsin is threatening to quit in protest against attempts by the Russian parliament to undercut free market economic reforms. We begin with a report from Moscow from Ian Williams of Independent Television News.

MR. WILLIAMS: As deputies arrived this morning, the future of the Russian government and its economic reforms looked shakier than ever. Vocal Yeltsin supporters lined the Kremlin entrance. For the first time at this congress their side was in retreat. After a week of cleverly keeping critics at bay, Yeltsin's success dramatically unraveled at the weekend as a series of hostile resolutions hit at his powers and the reforms and this morning only a climb down by delegates could have prevented the government's resignation. To the dismay of many of his own supporters, President Yeltsin failed to attend. And the powerful congress chairman and Yeltsin critic Ruslin Hasbulatov dismissed calls for reconsideration of Saturday's resolutions. To the architect of economic reform, that was the last straw. Yegor Gaidar walked out of the congress, attacked what he called the virtual renunciation of radical reform, and said the entire government was sending its resignation to President Yeltsin.

YEGOR GAIDAR, Deputy Prime Minister: [Speaking through Interpreter] As a result of decisions taken by congress, there will be a catastrophic fall in living standards, hunger and social chaos.

MR. WILLIAMS: An opinion echoed by senior Yeltsin advisers.

GALINA STAROVOITOVA, Yeltsin Aide: I'm afraid the consequences will be terrible. First of all, we have to create new government in a short term and of course it will not be so liberal government like government of Mr. Gaidar.

MR. WILLIAMS: Few expect President Yeltsin to simply accept defeat. He hasn't been seen in the congress today, having been locked in lengthy discussions with his ministers. The stakes are high, not least the continuing good will and hard cash of the West, which are conditional on the reforms continuing. That was underlined today by the senior British economic adviser to Mr. Yeltsin's government.

RICHARD LEYARD, Economic Adviser to Russian Government: It is essential that this government should survive because it's the only government that could carry out the economic reforms, that there's no other group that has a coherent economic program. The reforms are necessary, both because they're the right thing to do for Russia anyway, and because they're a condition for the 24 billion dollars of aid that's been promised by the West.

MR. WILLIAMS: Because the one thousand strong Russian Congress of People's Deputies was elected two years ago, most are former Communists and cautious about reform. Many oppose accepting any handouts from the West. Others think the West is now hostage to Russia, whatever happens to the government here.

ANDREI FYODOROV, Spokesman to Russian Vice President: I don't think that the West will cut off this aid plan because the question is not only reform plan here, but the question is the stabilization and stability within the whole world, and in certain way the West should pay a certain price for the reforms here.

MR. WILLIAMS: Some are urging Yeltsin to go over the head of the deputies of the country in a referendum and the signs are he could win as opinion polls suggest the Russian people are far more pro- reform than the congress.

ALEXEI LEVINSON, Russian Public Opinion Center: The idea to reform the country is much more foreign for them than for the ordinary people because there are vested interests and one can see that in the speeches of some of the deputies.

MR. WILLIAMS: Tonight, deputies were waiting on Yeltsin's response.

IONA ANDRONOV, People's Deputy: He is not only president; he is a prime minister. So it's his business right now to come to the parliament and to make an announcement.

MR. WILLIAMS: As the deputies left to applause from hard liners and the strains of the old Soviet national anthem, Yeltsin announced he's asked ministers to stay in their jobs, pending his next move, which he's promised by the end of the congress. Supporters hope he'll take the fight back to the deputies tomorrow morning. ESSAY - SONGS OF MY PEOPLE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight essayist Clarence Page has some thoughts on the exhibit called "Songs of My People."

MR. PAGE: America's perennial dilemma, the persistence of racial hatred, mistrust and resentment, can't be blamed on any single cause but you may be looking at one of the most important ones. It's television. Television seldom portrays black life as it's lived by most black Americans. Television usually portrays black life in variations of two cultural stereotypes. We're either Bill Cosby, a nice, successful, and reassuring vision of African- Americans swiftly enter the American mainstream, or we're a Willie Horton, evil, demanding or threatening, a nightmare from the nation's underclass. Even when some of us present a more favorable image to the world as reporters, anchors or even as essayists, we can give the false impression that African Americans are entering the mainstream at a faster pace than most of us really are. Few Americans see this paradox more graphically than black photographers do, constantly assigned to cover and transmit a world that looks quite different from the one they go home to at night. To give another view, 50 of them, all award winners, met here at Washington's Corcoran Gallery a couple of years ago to embark on a nationwide expedition to photograph the black America they seldom saw on the evening news. They call the results "Songs of My People." The images are so vivid they almost fly off the wall like a homing pigeon breaking free of a boy's hands on a Harlem rooftop. A moment of joy for blue's man John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddly. A moment of bodily congratulations for Jesse Jackson, Jr., a moment of solitude for Quincy Jones, Thurgood Marshall, novelist Dorothy West, and Atala Shabaz, the daughter of Malcolm X; Mohammed Ali wanes gently into the nobility of old age and a robust Michael Morgan raises his baton as assistant conductor of the Chicago Symphony. The famous are captured in candid moments, but "Songs of My People" is truly extraordinary for its portrayal of the ordinary. As a black cowboy closes in on a calf, his cool experienced eyes ignore the galloping fury beneath his feet. As two girls share a school yard laugh, they defy the solemn formality of their uniforms. Yet, the photographers did not sugar coat the bitter realities of black life. Sometimes their exhibit sings a song as heart breaking as the two-year-old boy who helps his homeless grandmother beg on a street just two blocks from the White House. Sometimes the song is brutal, like the sun beating down on a chain gang inmate's back, or vain, like the high sign of a street gang member. Sometimes it's as lonely as a life served behind bars, or as painful as the anguish on a drug-addicted mother's lips as she gives birth perhaps to a drug-addicted baby. But here for a change the bad news of African American life is allowed to be seen on a level playing field with the good in a way you seldom see it on the evening news. The last of a dwindling group, black farmers, is caught drawing a certain nobility out of the soil while the sun sets on its way of life. Their struggle contrasts strikingly with the new beginning celebrated by college graduates whose hopeful eyes say their struggle is complete, for now. Many will end up here, one presumes, in suburbia, where a new generation of black professionals carves out its piece of the middle class dream, or perhaps here. Our minds cluttered with stereotypes might presume these three black women to be nurses, but they're not. All three are doctors, taking a break between surgery in a Baltimore hospital. It's a trick of the jaundiced-eye, a subtle message. This is a story of people who share a history of victimization they slowly but steadily are rising above with the tough love of a marine corps drill instructor, the poise of a Colin Powell as he dances with his boss's wife, or the tenacity of a Beatrice Ferguson, age 97, tackling the mysteries of the hoola hoop. It's the world in which most black Americans live but most white Americans seldom see. In spite of the racial progress we Americans have made, this exhibit reminds us that we still live remarkably separate lives. Yet, if we look at each other through a different lens, we don't have to let the few things about us that are different get in the way of the many things we share in common. I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Monday, President Bush signed an executive order to inform non-union workers that they need not contribute to union political activities and New York's Chemical Bank lowered its prime lending rate by 1/4 point to 6 1/4 percent. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour tonight. Because of our welfare discussion, which ran long, we were unable to bring you the report on the reopening of the forbidden city of Gorky, as promised. We will reschedule it as soon as possible. And we'll be back tomorrow night with a look at what the government is doing about the growing problem of AIDS among teen-agers. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.