The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, phase one of the Social Security battle-- the Senate weighs in; ethics and politics and Republican leader Tom DeLay; a report from California on why so many Latinos don't finish high school; and a grievously wounded soldier's story.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: The Senate Finance Committee today began sifting through options to overhaul the nation's Social Security program. Republican Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa warned, doing nothing would mean steep benefit cuts. And he challenged critics of the president's plan to allow recipients to invest benefits in private accounts, saying: "Those of you that are bad-mouthing every other suggestion out there, suggest your own plan." Ranking Democrat Max Baucus of Montana said: "We do not have to privatize Social Security to change it." We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Senate leaders wrestled today over a compromise on judicial nominations. Majority Leader Bill Frist insisted any deal must guarantee votes on all of the president's nominees. In response, Minority Leader Harry Reid said he's afraid Republicans don't want a compromise. He spoke on the Senate floor, and he said the fight over judges is taking its toll.

SEN. HARRY REID: I know, reading these polls, the president's numbers are tumbling downward. I know that the Senate Republicans, because of what's gone on and a lot of different reasons, the numbers are falling. But, Mr. President, the general view of the Congress is not that good. And I think it would be a really good picture for the American people if Sen. Frist and I could walk out before the American people and say, we have been able to work out our differences.

GWEN IFILL: It was widely reported Reid offered to confirm two of the president's nominees. In return, he asked Republicans to forget about changing the rules to stop filibusters against judicial nominees. The Senate's majority whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Republicans will not give up that option. But he said a deal is still possible.

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL: I want to compliment the Democratic leader. He has certainly been willing to discuss the issue. I think we both think, I believe that where the Senate is today is unacceptable. There is a lot of finger pointing going on, on both sides; Democrats pointing fingers at Republicans for what was going on during the Clinton years and Republicans pointing fingers at Democrats for what was done in the last Congress. There is a way to cure that, a way to fix it.

GWEN IFILL: Both sides said today they will continue negotiating. Iraq moved a step closer to naming a government today. The incoming prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, submitted a list of names for cabinet jobs. Lawmakers said Shiites would get a majority of the 32 posts. The rest would go to Kurds, Sunnis, and Christians. There would be no positions for followers of outgoing Prime Minister Allawi, or former Baath Party members. The national assembly could vote on the list tomorrow. The U.S. Military announced today U.S. and Iraqi forces seized 130 suspects in raids this week. Most were suspected in recent attacks in Baghdad. The military also said another American soldier was killed in Iraq on Saturday. In Washington, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs acknowledged a spike in violence. But Air Force Gen. Richard Myers insisted the U.S. is not "losing the war." He spoke at a Pentagon briefing with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: I think we are definitely winning. I think we have been winning for some time. And if you look at the attacks, the number of attacks that we track, I think this is a poor measure of whether we are winning or losing, by the way, so you pick out the attacks; half of them have no effect. So when we say 60 a day, 30 have no impact on anything, meaning no building or person was damaged or injured.

GWEN IFILL: General Myers also confirmed U.S. forces almost caught Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in February. He's the most wanted terrorist in Iraq. News accounts said a covert military unit was ready to seize him near Ramadi, but he spotted them and got away. The troops did capture two of Zarqawi's associates. CIA weapons hunters voiced doubt today that Iraq hid weapons of mass destruction in Syria before the war. The lead investigator, Charles Duelfer, included that finding as he closed out his report. He said his group did not reach firm conclusions because poor security in Iraq interfered with the work. As a result, he did not rule out unofficial shipments of "limited materials" to Syria. But he said it's unlikely any official transfer took place. Duelfer had already concluded there's no evidence Iraq had any banned weapons before the war. Syria ended its military presence in Lebanon today after 29 years. The last of its troops and intelligence officers departed, under pressure from the United Nations and the United States. We have a report narrated by Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Syrian troops marked their departure from Lebanon to the strains of a Scottish jig. After 29 years, they're finally going. The Syrian and Lebanese chiefs of staff laid wreaths for Syrian soldiers who were killed, mainly during Lebanon's civil war. They arrived in 1976. After the civil war, they helped stabilize Lebanon, but amongst Lebanese, gratitude was long since replaced by resentment.

FARES SOUEID: Today is a day of independence and sovereignty, and a day of freedom in Lebanon. Now what we need, it's running elections and free elections.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Many Lebanese blame Syria for the car bomb which killed the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, in February. Their demonstrations forced an end to the Syrian occupation. But it's not enough for everyone. The families of nearly 200 Lebanese believed to be languishing in Syrian jails protested in Beirut today. (Crowd yelling) And several were injured in clashes with the security forces. Today, intelligence operatives crossed the border alongside soldiers. Although Syria will undoubtedly retain a network of Lebanese informers, the Syrian foreign minister formally announced that they have obeyed the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a complete troop pullout. On the Syrian side of the border, people turned out to welcome home the troops. The former head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, Gen. Rustum Jhazalih, was greeted with flowers.

GWEN IFILL: The commander of Lebanon's army promised continued cooperation with Syria. The death toll in the Japanese train crash rose to 81 today. At least 456 people were injured when the train derailed yesterday in Western Japan. Today, rescuers pulled two more survivors from the wreckage, but police said they did not expect to find others. Investigators focused on the actions of the train's 23-year- old driver and how fast he was going. A jury in Virginia convicted an Islamic scholar today of urging others to wage war on the U.S. Ali Al-Timimi is a native of the United States. He was charged with encouraging Muslim followers to join the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. He could get life in prison without parole. In economic news, consumer confidence fell in April for the third month in a row. The Conference Board, a business research group, reported that today. But the Commerce Department reported new home sales jumped more than 12 percent in March, to an all-time high. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 91 points to close at 10,151. The NASDAQ fell 23 points to close at 1,927. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Social Security's problems, Tom DeLay's ethics, Latino dropouts, and the wounds of war.

FOCUS - SOLVING THE PROBLEM

GWEN IFILL: First tonight, turning up the heat on the fight over fixing Social Security. Margaret Warner has that.

SPOKESPERSON: The president of the United States.

MARGARET WARNER: Today, as President Bush neared the end of his 60- day campaign for private Social Security accounts, he was touting its merits in Galveston, Texas.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Younger Americans ought to be allowed to take some of their payroll taxes, some of their own money, and invest it in a savings account, a personal savings account, an account they call their own. I like the idea of people owning something. We want people owning something in America. If you own something you have a vital stake in the future of your country. If you own your assets, you can pass it on to whomever you choose. We want more people owning assets.

MARGARET WARNER: Back in Washington, the Democrats countered with a boisterous outdoor rally to rail, once more, against the president's idea of private accounts.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Let me tell you what. If he's going out to push for privatization, let's help him pack. (Applause) They know that privatization means deep cuts in benefits! They know privatization means a deeper debt for America and they know that privatization doesn't make Social Security stronger! We know that today! We gather this afternoon in a declaration of unity.

REP. NANCY PELOSI: We will not allow this proud achievement of the new deal to turn into a raw deal for the American people. (Cheers and applause) We say to the president, we will not allow a guaranteed benefit to become a guaranteed gamble for the American people. (Applause)

MARGARET WARNER: The Democrats ended with the signing of a giant declaration of unity against individual accounts.

SINGING: Stand my ground...

MARGARET WARNER: And a little dancing.

SINGING: And I won't back down...

MARGARET WARNER: Neither the president nor the Democrats has introduced a formal plan. But this morning, Chairman Chuck Grassley convened the first Senate Finance Committee hearing to explore some specific plan offered by outside experts to guarantee Social Security's solvency.

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: If we're going to accept the responsibility we should to address Social Security reform this year, we should do more than just kick the can down the road a while.

MARGARET WARNER: But the president's personal accounts idea got kicked around plenty by committee Democrats.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Where's the president's plan? There is no plan from the president. There's an idea. There's an idea about private accounts, which does nothing for solvency, and solvency is the fundamental problem of Social Security.

MARGARET WARNER: The experts who testified offered various ideas on how to guarantee Social Security's solvency, with and without individual accounts. Peter Ferrara, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation, backed the president's idea.

PETER FERRARA: My goal is to make Social Security reform a major net gain for workers, not a loss. Personal accounts give us the opportunity to do that. In fact, if we do personal account reform right, we can achieve all the major social goals of Social Security better than the current system does today.

MARGARET WARNER: Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution favored a mix of tax increases and benefit cuts to restore long-term solvency, and flatly opposed individual accounts.

PETER ORSZAG: The accounts do nothing to reduce the long-term insolvency of Social Security. Arguing that they do is like arguing that snake oil will help to cure strep throat, because if you take snake oil along with an antibiotic, your strep throat goes away. The snake oil is not anything to get rid of the strep throat; the accounts are not doing anything to get rid of your $11 trillion deficit.

MARGARET WARNER: Business executive Robert Pozen called for progressive indexing, a formula for making Social Security benefits for the wealthy grow more slowly than those for the poor.

ROBERT POZEN: Progressive indexing is pretty simple: We divide the world into low wage, defined as $25,000 and lower in average career earnings; high wage defined as $113,000 and higher; and middle wage. And we preserve the current benefits and the future benefits for all low-wage workers, all workers who are in retirement, and all workers who have not yet retired but will retire before 2012. We then take the high-wage workers, we grow their benefits by price indexing rather than wage indexing their initial benefits, and then we have a proportional formula for people in between.

MARGARET WARNER: Back in Galveston, the president urged Congress to act this year.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I am confident we'll get something done in Washington, DC. I'm confident because eventually the voice of the people will reach and penetrate the halls of the House and the Senate, and they're going say, "we have a serious problem. Why aren't you doing something about it?"

MARGARET WARNER: But so far, the public doesn't seem to be buying the president's core proposal. A Washington Post/ABC News poll out today showed that support for individual accounts has actually declined during the president's campaign for the idea, from 56 percent in mid-March to 45 percent in late April.

MARGARET WARNER: So where is this Social Security issue headed? Is the president's proposal for individual accounts still alive on Capitol Hill? For that we turn to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Finance Committee: The chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana. Senators, welcome. Sen. Grassley, you titled today's hearing "proposals to achieve solvency with and without personal accounts." Is that a sign that you are ready to let go this idea of individual accounts?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: No, it's a sign that I consider these separate issues that need to be intellectually honest explored together or separately. And I want to make sure that when I say that everything is on the table, everything is on the table, because I have to see myself as an honest broker. Whether I'm dealing just with Republicans or whether I'm dealing with Republicans and Democrats, it seems to me a chairman has got to be open and build a bill up from the bottom rather than having something out there that people can tear down.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Baucus, you were at that rally today. You all put on quite a show with your dancing at the end. Do you... did that reflect the fact that you think the idea of the private or personal accounts is dying a quiet death on Capitol Hill?

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: I do, frankly. And we do. I think the American public does. The polls you cited show it. Any close analytic look at the actual effect of the private accounts indicates why, because the private accounts, despite what some say they are, leave virtually nothing left to the private account holder, because almost all that has to go back in the form of reductions in Social Security benefits, on top of the other benefits in the president's plan. And I very much respect Chairman Grassley's holding the hearing which includes private accounts. But I'm just, to be honest, I'm kind of waiting for the day where I think the chairman, who is a very good friend of mine, realizes that, gee, maybe discretion is the better part of valor and we can go ahead, and then address what the president said, address the long-term financial problems facing Social Security there. There are really two separate issues here, and they are totally distinct and separate from each other.

MARGARET WARNER: So Sen. Grassley, are you on the verge of proposing-- and you would have to propose this to the president, too, I guess-- that you just separate the issues: Deal with the solvency issue on the one hand, and deal with the private accounts separately?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: It would be foolish for me do that for this reason. Let's just suppose that I report a bill out of my committee that just dealt with the solvency. You know how the rules of the Senate are. Anything can come up almost any time on almost any bill. And I will have colleagues that will bring the issue up of personal accounts. And I happen to be one that believes in them, so I'm not going to discourage that. The Senate will speak for itself. At that point, the president will realize one way or the other that we've got the votes to move forward or we don't have the votes to move forward. And I would rather let the process answer that question, and my, as chairman of the committee, answer that question.

MARGARETWARNER: Sen. Baucus, you said publicly, though, that you and your fellow Democrats aren't even ready to talk about the solvency issue, to try to come up with a bipartisan bill that Sen. Grassley said he wants out of the committee until the private accounts are taken formally off the table. Is that right? And if so, why?

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: Yes, that's exactly right, Margaret. And the reason is very simple and I think it's compelling. The administration has said publicly that they want to indulge in a bait and switch strategy. That is, they want to bait us, the Democrats and others, into sitting down and negotiating out the solvency issues and taking private off the table. That's the bait. The switch is, at a later date, because the president and the Republicans have majority votes, especially in the House, the switch will be putting private accounts back on the table and we're just back in the soup again. And that's not going to reach result. The real key here is really very simple. There has to be an honest, good faith effort by the Congress and by the president in a good faith nonpartisan way to try to resolve Social Security. That's what happened back in 1983.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay, but let me ask, though, to be clear, Sen. Baucus, are you saying that before you'll go forward, the president has to agree that private accounts are off the table because you're afraid you will be sandbagged otherwise?

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: That's exactly right.

MARGARET WARNER: In conference if not on the floor.

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: That's exactly right.

MARGARET WARNER: Is he right to fear that, Sen. Grassley?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: Well, first of all, I don't do bait and switch things. I'm Sen. Grassley. I'm negotiating this process. I've got to get it through the United States Senate. The president is not at the table. I'm not a messenger for the president, and I would ask Sen. Baucus to believe in the process in the United States Senate the same way I do. The Senate will speak and a majority will speak for us. And if a majority says no private accounts, there won't be. And if they say there will be, then the Democrats ought to accept that judgment of the Senate.

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: I might say on that point, though, I have full confidence and trust and faith in Sen. Grassley. There is no way in the world that he would engage or indulge in that kind of a nefarious deceptive strategy. He wouldn't do that. That's just not him. He doesn't have a deceptive bone in his body, which I think is great. That's why Iowans like him so much. The problem is there are some members of the House and in the Senate who are of a little bit different character. It is they, especially in the rules of the Senate, anything can come up, and the rules in the conference, with anything can come up, that I'm most fearful of, and that's where the switch is going to occur.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Grassley, even if, let's say just for the purpose of argument, that private accounts were set aside somehow, for the long-term solvency, you all face some painful choices. You've heard some of them today. I mean, it's raising taxes; it's cutting or adjusting benefits. Do you sense in the Senate, or even in your committee, a real appetite for tackling that now?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: You know, none of the 535 members of Congress, including all 100 senators really want to deal with Social Security. We have an opportunity to deal with it. We should deal with it. We all know we need to deal with it. We know... all understand what the problem is, and that's a mathematical definition of the problem, and there's a mathematical solution to the problem, and I just think even though we don't want to deal with it, we ought to accept this opportunity. And I want to reach that point where we do deal with it, and that's my job.

MARGARET WARNER: But Sen. Baucus, I'll ask you the same question. I guess what I should have said more clearly was, it seems to me there are a lot of Republicans who just won't talk about tax increases, and there are a lot of Democrats who just won't talk about benefit cuts or adjustments. Do you think Democrats are really ready if private accounts were out of the way, and if so, how will they take on the painful choices?

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: Two points there. First, that's exactly how it happened in 1983. In a bipartisan way, the White House called Senate Democrats and said hey, we the White House are willing to have tax increases if you Democrats are willing to have benefit cuts. They put a deal together and it worked. But kind of the deeper point here is in addition to an honest to goodness, good faith bipartisan effort from everybody here, there are lots of ways to solve this problem. I mean, you talk about benefit cuts. You talk about potential tax increases -- that is, you do. There are a lot of ways to get at this, and I think that if there is a good faith effort to get the long-term solvency, a lot of additional ways, honest to goodness ways, will emerge until we can solve it once private accounts are just not there. That is such a bad idea. It reduces benefits further, it's a privatization tax. We just shouldn't have that.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you about the couple of brief final questions. The first has to do with party unity, and I'll start with you, Sen. Grassley. How unified are even Republicans on the private accounts? I noticed at today's hearing, for instance, Sen. Snowe seemed somewhat reluctant at the idea of tampering with the guaranteed Social Security benefit. Do you have unity on private accounts among Republicans?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: If had to quantify it right now, out of eleven of my colleagues on the United States Senate, I would say that I have two that want what you call add-ons as opposed to carve-outs. And maybe Sen. Snowe would be in that category, but I'm not including her in it right now. Sen. Snowe, that wants absolutely no carve-out, and then maybe another five or six who would want personal accounts similar to what the president wants.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, and Sen. Baucus, you all made this great show of unity. You signed this thing. But do you have unity or are there Democrats in the Senate who would be open to making a deal in return for guaranteeing long-term solvency, would be ready to accept some personal accounts?

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: No, there's total unity. I've never seen anything like it, I mean, it's astounding. In the last, say, five or six, seven years, there is just such unity that there should not be personal private accounts. And I guess the reason is simple. It's such a bad idea. Once one analyzes them and takes out a pencil and paper and tries to calculate what they really are, it's just a bad idea. However, we do want to address the long-term financial difficulties facing the system.

MARGARET WARNER: And how much of the Democrats' unity and determination against private accounts affected by what the polls are showing about the public's view of them?

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: I think that the polls are reinforcing a view that's already held. We are not opposed to these private accounts... remember, when we talk about private accounts, we're talking about carve-outs, taking away from Social Security, not add-ons. But there's such unanimity because it's such a bad idea. Then we see the polls reflecting that, especially when the president's all over the country. You know, that just confirms our analysis of the deficiencies of private accounts.

MARGARET WARNER: And Sen. Grassley, how much harder does it make it for you, the fact that, despite the president's two-month campaign, public support is dwindling for private accounts?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: Well, listen, we've got two problems with deal with: Personal accounts and the solvency issue. And quite frankly, the president has been very, very successful in bringing this up on the radar screen in the public's minds of something that president... or that the Congress ought to be dealing with, and we ought to praise the president for that leadership, because it's not an easy subject to deal with.

MARGARET WARNER: But you are not ready to predict this is a go?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: What I'm ready to predict is what I can control, and I'm going to try to make an issue out of personal accounts in every way I can.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay, we'll have to leave it there. Chairman Grassley, Sen. Baucus, thank you both.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Tom DeLay under fire, Latino dropouts, and an American hero.

FOCUS - UNDER FIRE

GWEN IFILL: Kwame Holman has the Tom DeLay story.

KWAME HOLMAN: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was in the audience this afternoon when the president opened his Social Security forum in Galveston, and he gave DeLay a nod.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I appreciate the leadership of Congressman Tom DeLay on working on important issues that matter to the country. (Applause)

KWAME HOLMAN: The president has reaffirmed his support for Tom DeLay in recent weeks, as several newspapers investigate possible ethics violations by the House majority leader. The reporting has shown that DeLay, his staff, and family may have taken extended overseas trips at the expense of lobbyists. DeLay himself has denied knowing lobbyists paid for his trips, and some of his conservative supporters have been out trying to turn the focus onto Democrats.

REP DAVID DREIER: It's amazing that it's the Democratic leadership that has really decided to demonize Tom DeLay. He's been a great sport in this town for a while.

REP. BLOY BLUNT: I think in this case, the other team thought, well, we can't figure out how to get them out on policy. We need to figure out how to get them out on something that doesn't relate to policy at all.

SEN. TRENT LOTT: This is a manufactured controversy. It's a continuation of the politics of personal destruction we've seen in Washington for years.

KWAME HOLMAN: And DeLay himself joked about it at a National Rifle Association dinner in Houston.

REP. TOM DeLAY: When a man is in trouble or in a good fight, you want to have your friends around, preferably armed. So I feel really good.

KWAME HOLMAN: But in last Sunday's Washington Post: More questions, and a few answers about DeLay's travels. The Post said it confirmed DeLay's airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 was charged to the credit card of Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist now under a federal tax investigation. An attorney for Tom DeLay said he believed the lobbyists would be reimbursed by the organization that sponsored the trip. But House ethics rules prohibit payment by a lobbyist: "even where the lobbyist will later be reimbursed for those expenses by a non-lobbyist client." In the wake of the numerous allegations, Ethics Committee Chairman Doc Hastings last week said Committee Republicans were ready to investigate.

REP. DOC HASTINGS: I am here today with three of my four colleagues on the Ethics Committee to announce that we are all prepared to vote at the earliest opportunity to impanel an investigation subcommittee to review various allegations concerning travel and other actions by Mr. Delay.

KWAME HOLMAN: But an Ethics Committee investigation of DeLay, or any other member, won't happen until the Committee's five Republicans and five Democrats agree under which rules they will investigate. Last year, Tom DeLay was admonished three times by the House Ethics Committee for inappropriate behavior. But this year, Republican leaders managed to push changes in the ethics rules through the Republican-controlled House. However, Democrats on the evenly split Ethics Committee have refused to accept the new rules. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia is the committee's top Democrat.

REP. ALAN MOLLOHAN: It is an effort to impose, because the majority can impose through a majority vote, rules upon the Ethics Committee that the Democrats weren't even consulted about. The process is violated; it's a principle extremely important to preserve, as you can understand; if we do not do the ethics in a bipartisan way in can quickly become a tool in the hands of the majority to assert influence over the minority, number one. Number two, the rules themselves were bad.

KWAME HOLMAN: Under one old rule, a complaint against any member would lead to an investigation automatically unless the committee formally disposes of it. Under the new rule, a complaint against a member would be dismissed automatically in 45 days if the committee can't decide what action to take. And Mollohan said that could happen on the evenly split committee.

REP. ALAN MOLLOHAN: In a deadlock situation under the rules trying to be imposed on the Ethics Committee, that complaint would be dismissed.

KWAME HOLMAN: DeLay himself recently offered his own interpretation of the rules change during an exchange with the Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer, on the House floor.

REP. TOM DeLAY: What some partisans had found, that if there was no agreement and charges brought against a member, the member would be hung out to dry. There would be no action, or there could be automatic action without a majority vote of the committee. That is the problem. That is what allows people to use it for partisan politics, is that if one side or the other decides to deadlock the Ethics Committee, then the member that has been charged can be held out and held up for many days, if not months, before a resolution of that charge comes. The speaker came up with a way to make sure that the committee is bipartisan because it requires a bipartisan vote to move forward.

REP. STENY HOYER: We see it differently, Mr. Leader. What we have created is the ability of both sides to stop investigations in their tracks; both sides. Our side, if we block up, and our five say you are not going to investigate Steny Hoyer, they can do it. Either one of us could protect ourselves; either one of us. Your side could protect yourselves by your five holding firm. Our side could protect ourselves by holding firm. That may protect us individually, but our position is it does not protect the institution, and that is what our concern is. Yield to my friend.

KWAME HOLMAN: And there is another concern some members have expressed, that if and when the Ethics Committee gets back to work, it might be deluged with new ethics complaints based on partisan politics. Delaware Republican Mike Castle:

REP. MIKE CASTLE: I do feel that both parties use this as an offense and defense. Clearly, the Democrats are using it as an offense on Tom DeLay, and Republicans are now looking at other Democrats with the idea of building it up as a defense if you will. And so that's not a particularly good situation in terms if getting work done down here.

KWAME HOLMAN: In fact, demonstrations outside today's Social Security forum indicate Tom DeLay's politics now are vying with the president's policies for the public's attention. The president however still believes DeLay can help him achieve his policy goals. In fact, the two men shared a plane ride back to Washington this afternoon.

FOCUS - DROPPING OUT

GWEN IFILL: Latino school dropouts-- a report from Spencer Michels.

SPENCER MICHELS: For years, studies have shown that the chances that a Hispanic child would drop out of school have been greater than for any other group. At age 16, Aaron Chavez dropped out of a San Jose, California, high school.

AARON CHAVEZ: I guess you could say I started going into drugs, and started to hang out with the wrong crowd.

SPENCER MICHELS: With gangs?

AARON CHAVEZ: Yeah, with gangs.

SPENCER MICHELS: Chavez, whose schoolwork had been good, but then declined-- says some teachers were pushing him out.

AARON CHAVEZ: There was a teacher that would stereotype people like gang members, and he would pick at them. No shame. It was putting me down.

SPENCER MICHELS: In his junior year, he quit Mount Pleasant High School, which is 50 percent Hispanic. Researchers believe that between 40 to 50 percent of young Hispanics leave school before finishing, or in the case of many immigrants, never attend. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics continue to have the highest dropout rate of any ethnic group, although the graduation rates for black and American Indian youth are almost equally low. A 2005 study by Harvard and the Urban Institute found that only 54 percent of Hispanic males in California graduate from high school, compared to 71 percent for all students. And the report says schools dramatically underestimate the number of dropouts. It concludes that large urban school districts have become "dropout factories." Both recent immigrants and Hispanics who have been in the U.S. for generations have high dropout rates, especially when they're poor, according to Robert Cervantes of the California Department of Education.

ROBERT CERVANTES: The dropout rate for nonimmigrant Hispanics that are here for first, second, third, fourth generation, depending upon the socioeconomic status, is still high, however you run the numbers.

SPENCER MICHELS: He says poverty itself doesn't cause dropouts; it's that many schools don't inspire Hispanic students.

ROBERT CERVANTES: The majority of them-- not all of them, but certainly the majority of them-- attend de facto segregated schools where they have the least qualified teachers, the less enriched curriculum... programs that other kids have that they don't have access to.

SPENCER MICHELS: Another reason cited for lack of academic advancement among Hispanics is a culture that values staying close to home. That's according to Esperanza Zendejas, superintendent of a San Jose School District.

ESPERANZA ZENDEJAS: In the Hispanic culture, oftentimes the talk of university is more like, "oh, they're going to leave the house, and what are we going to do?"

SPENCER MICHELS: But new efforts are being made in San Jose and throughout the state to stem the Hispanic dropout tide and get kids into college. At Mount Pleasant High-- ironically the school Aaron Chavez dropped out of-- several approaches are used to keep kids interested in school.

TEACHER: So would you take your graph paper, please, and put a vertical line straight down the middle?

SPENCER MICHELS: Besides the traditional remedial classes for low-achieving students, Mount Pleasant and 2,000 other schools across the nation provide special daily classes for slightly better-performing students through a program called Avid.

STUDENT: Our presentation is going to be about building the perfect application.

SPENCER MICHELS:: In addition to readying students for the SAT's, college essays, and advanced placement classes, Avid provides daily, continuous contact with the same teachers over four years of high school.

STUDENT: There's always someone there. You have the teacher's phone number if you need help.

STUDENT: You're with a group of students for four years, so it's like we're all family. Everyone knows everyone pretty well.

SPENCER MICHELS: But special classes like these usually exclude very poor achievers, and don't always work for everyone enrolled-- Aaron Chavez, for example.

AARON CHAVEZ: Avid was hard. I was not used to college prep. They were helpful for other students that were making it, but for kids like me, I didn't have no goals or aims.

SPENCER MICHELS: Chavez finally returned to school, graduated, and entered community college, because of another special class called Puente, or "Bridge." It's designed to acquaint Hispanic students with literature written by Hispanics.

STUDENT: Having Latino authors there to back us up is showing other people, you know, we can learn about ourselves and still be successful.

AARON CHAVEZ: It wasn't the literature, it was the teacher. The teacher would take the time and stop and talk to me-- treat me like a person than a gang member on the streets, and always looked at me as a person.

SPOKESPERSON: So this is last year right here?

SPOKESMAN: Yeah, that's from last year.

SPENCER MICHELS: School Superintendent Zendejas acknowledges that teachers are a key to preventing dropouts.

ESPERANZA ZENDEJAS: You can't assign your best teachers to teach your best students. You have to start changing the thought, and your best teachers have to work with your most disenfranchised kids.

SPENCER MICHELS: Across San Jose, another program, called the Foundry, targets Hispanic and other at-risk youngsters who don't like school, students like Anthony Varela, who talked about his experiences last year before he graduated.

ANTHONY VARELA: I'm doing literature. I'm doing "Hamlet."

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you like it?

ANTHONY VARELA: No.

SPENCER MICHELS: Why not?

ANTHONY VARELA: Because I think it's boring.

SPENCER MICHELS: Before arriving at the Foundry, Verela was slipping into behavior patterns that didn't help him achieve in the classroom.

ANTHONY VARELA: It seems so easy to just, like, not do your work and to just lay back and hang out with friends and do drugs, and it seems so much harder to, like, do your work and then be successful.

SPENCER MICHELS: While he still didn't like school, Varela did relate to the Foundry, with a largely Latino student body of about 75. It's a one-year program for chronic problem makers. Four teachers plus an army of volunteers attack the dropout problem by giving each kid attention-- something many have been missing-- and structure and responsibility too. Each student has to punch a time clock. In a math class held in a woodshop, the teacher tries to work with each student. Somehow, many of them start liking school, and in Enrique Flores's case, leaving his gang membership behind.

ENRIQUE FLORES: I'm just staying away from them. I still say, you know, "what's up?" To them once in a while, but that's just it.

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you do homework?

ENRIQUE FLORES: Yeah. Since I've been here, I've been doing a lot of homework. (Laughs)

SPENCER MICHELS: The Foundry puts emphasis on Latino culture, convinced it will inspire students to read and learn.

STUDENT: "A Chicano is both Hispanic and Indian. The term 'Hispanic' alone negates our Indian heritage."

SPENCER MICHELS: Part of the curriculum for the Latino studies class comes from an organization called the Hispanic Education and Media Group, which tries to convince schools to teach an appreciation for Latino culture and history. Margot Segura is executive director.

MARGOT SEGURA: When you understand the contributions of your community, then you have a purpose. You know why it's important to study. You know why it's important to read literature.

SPENCER MICHELS: Giving students individual attention, holding small seminars on drugs and alcohol, has been effective. Counselors say Foundry students rarely go back to crime, and most students stay clean and sober, and eventually re-enter regular school. But recently, the County Education Office has curtailed several of the foundry's programs, including field trips. Sustaining alternative programs like this has been difficult, especially with new nationwide emphasis on academic test results in the "No Child Left Behind" program. But even if high school programs like the Foundry do manage to survive, they are not enough, according to Russell Rumberger, professor of education at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

RUSSELL RUMBERGER: Well, I think high school's basically too late. A lot of these problems are ones that have accumulated over the years of schooling prior to high school.

SPENCER MICHELS: Rumberger says that despite some individual school successes, state and federal efforts are largely stagnant. And so for the Latino population, the dropout problem is likely to get worse, not better.

RUSSELL RUMBERGER: The group that's most at risk, Latinos, is the fastest- growing ethnic group in the country, so that alone is likely to increase the incidence of this problem in the absence of some kind of intervention effort.

SPENCER MICHELS: That intervention, Rumberger says, must come long before high school in order to break a dropout pattern that has existed for a long time and shows little improvement.

FOCUS - WOUNDS OF WAR

GWEN IFILL: Now, how families care for seriously disabled veterans of the Iraq War. Susan Dentzer of our health unit has our report. The health unit is a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

JOSEPH BRISENO: Open, okay? Thank you. I love you Jay, I love you.

SUSAN DENTZER: This is how the day begins for Jay Briseno, with his father, Joe, lovingly brushing his grown son's teeth.

JOSEPH BRISENO: Okay, that is done. Okay, can I wash your face now, you can go back to sleep?

SUSAN DENTZER: These daily care giving rituals have gone on for nearly two years, ever since Jay Briseno was wounded while serving in Iraq. An army reservist, he was working as a civil affairs specialist to help rebuild the country. Then came a fateful day in June 2003.

JOSEPH BRISENO: Jay was shot point blank by an Iraqi randomly, I mean, one of the bystanders that shot him because there were a lot of Iraqis in that area. And the bullet went into the back of his neck and exited here, his cheekbone.

SUSAN DENTZER: The shot severed Jay's spinal cord and left him paralyzed from the chin down. Two subsequent cardiac arrests cut off oxygen to his brain, leaving him brain damaged.

JOSEPH BRISENO: And I want you to smile if you can feel my hand, my touch, okay? Why don't you smile. Can you feel that? Okay.

SUSAN DENTZER: Today, Jay Briseno is fully conscious but unable to speak. He communicates by smiling or grimacing. Army officials say he's the most seriously disabled soldier yet to have returned from the war in Iraq. Although Jay Briseno's is the worst case, there are also several hundred other very disabled soldiers and Marines. They're among the nearly 11,600 wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan. With their numbers growing, the Army last year launched a special disabled soldier support system known as DS-3. It's helping disabled soldiers like Jay Briseno get the services and benefits they're entitled to and smoothing their transition back to an altered civilian life.

JOSEPH BRISENO: Okay, I'll be quick.

SUSAN DENTZER: As much as these seriously disabled veterans need assistance, so too do their families. Suzanne Mintz heads the National Association of Family Caregivers, which advocates on behalf of an estimated 50 million Americans caring for disabled family members.

SUZANNE MINTZ: When you are dealing with chronic illness or disability, your life is outside the norm and people who haven't experienced things like that, families who are not living with people who need assistance on that level don't have a clue. Most of it goes on in bedrooms and bathrooms and so the rest of the world doesn't see. It is a total act of love. It is definitely a sacrifice. But I'm sure they can't imagine doing it any other way.

SUSAN DENTZER: Caring for Jay now requires a 24/7 commitment from the Brisenos, Filipino immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens. Besides the long hours, there is hard physical labor, and at best, sporadic sleep at night. Dr. Steven Fish is a neurologist who is Jay's primary physician at the Washington, D.C., Veterans' Administration Medical Center.

DR. STEVEN FISH: They are a very close family and they insisted that he remain at home. They've created an intensive care unit in the basement of their home to care for him. The father has actually left his full-time job to be the full- time caregiver for... for Jay.

SUSAN DENTZER: In fact, Joe Briseno, who served in the U.S. Army himself for 16 years, quit his most recent job as a computer software quality inspector to coordinate Jay's care.

JOSEPH BRISENO: You know, anyone's family, you cut the income in half, it's, you know, it'll be a burden. Jay will never be an inconvenience for us and, regardless, we are ready for how long it would take to care for Jay because he is our son. He's our child.

SUSAN DENTZER: Jay's mother, Eva Marie, has kept her day job to preserve some family income. Even so, most of her time and attention is focused on Jay.

EVAN MARIE BRISENO: I love my son, since he was born; I let my husband talk about this because it's too emotional.

SUSAN DENTZER: The Brisenos have received substantial help from the Department of Veterans' Affairs which pays all the bills for Jay's medical care. After some initial foot dragging and the intervention of the Army's DS-3 unit, the VA also provided Jay's special bed and his other medical equipment. A specially trained nurse paid for by the VA provides virtually round-the-clock nursing care. And every several months, Jay can spend two weeks at the local VA hospital so his family can get a break. Sandy Garfunkel, director of the Washington VA Medical Center, acknowledges that the bill for all this care is high.

SANDY GARFUNKEL: I would estimate that if we go through a whole year, considering everything that we do, it approaches a half a million dollars a year, and that, by the way, is probably what it would cost if Jay was in the medical center in our intensive care unit. The guidance we've received from people above us is that, that's our mandate, to obviously provide care for all veterans, but certainly the veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan receive some priority and the highest, the highest level of care that, that we can give.

SUSAN DENTZER: And the highest level of care is what Jay Briseno requires given the extent of his injuries and disability, says the VA's Dr. Fish.

DR. STEVEN FISH: He is unable to breathe on his own. He is dependent on a ventilator for breathing. He requires suctioning through his tracheostomy tube. He requires frequent repositioning and turning. He...

SUSAN DENTZER: Because?

DR. STEVEN FISH: Because, to prevent pressure sores, he requires feeding through his-- the tube that goes into his stomach.

JOSEPH BRISENO: Jay eats four times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a little snack at night. (Laughs) This is what he eats.

SUSAN DENTZER: Once a day, Joe Briseno and the nurse use a special lift provided by the VA to hoist Jay out of bed.

JOSEPH BRISENO: There's a lot of safety precautions. If the sling is not all the way up to his neck, it's very, very dangerous.

SUSAN DENTZER: They help him into a special wheelchair and push him a few feet to the nearest window.

JOSEPH BRISENO: This is the most exciting part of the day for Jay. Yes, it looks cloudy, but looks good. Do you want to watch TV? Huh? We put on the Simpsons?

SPOKESMAN: You going to be okay, you need my help?

SPOKESPERSON: I'm all right.

SUSAN DENTZER: The quiet times are interrupted every now and then by the occasional big emergency. That happened one day in mid-March, as we were scheduled to meet with the family. Jay suddenly had difficulty breathing through the tracheostomy tube inserted in his throat. Emergency medical technicians and an ambulance were summoned. Jay and his parents were rushed to the VA Hospital in Washington so the tube could be replaced. Two more emergency trips to the hospital would take place over the next three days before the breathing tube problem was resolved. Suzanne Mintz of the Caregivers' Association says ongoing crises like these take a huge emotional toll on families.

SUZANNE MINTZ: Care giving families grieve and I call it perpetual grief, because unlike when somebody dies and you can come to some resolution, in care giving if the person continues to go down, to go down hill or even if stay the same but they're passing milestones in life, there are losses. And so the grief goes on and on and just maybe when you feel like you've gotten over some of it, something else happens.

JOSEPH BRISENO: That is true. That is a true statement because, in the basement, every day, tears, laughter, smiles, pain, fear, hope, faith, you name it, everything, love, in the basement. And each moment that Jay can... can share with us we treasure because we don't know. God can take him away any time.

SUSAN DENTZER: The Brisenos told us their abiding religious belief gets them through, as does support from their local Roman Catholic Church. Three times a week, Dick O'Connell, a church deacon, visits the Briseno home to bring communion to Jay.

DICK O'CONNELL: Hey there, how's my buddy? Got a big smile for me, huh?

SUSAN DENTZER: O'Connell breaks up a small portion of a communion wafer and dissolves it in water. Then Joe Briseno injects it into his son's feeding tube. Jay smiles.

DICK O'CONNELL: We thank you for the nourishment...

SUSAN DENTZER: Through their faith, the Brisenos draw hope that Jay will improve to the point that he might one day walk or speak again. We asked Jay's neurologist, Dr. Fish, about those prospects.

DR. STEVEN FISH: I don't think it's likely that he'll ever walk again with medical technology and science at the current level that we have now. However, you know, he did have a good deal of cognitive recovery which was not really expected either, so I don't tell the family that it is never going to happen because I know that they feel that they need to have hope.

SINGING: Happy birthday to you --

SUSAN DENTZER: And so hope filled the air at Jay's recent 22nd birthday party, held in March at his former high school.

SUSAN DENTZER: Along with the friends and family present were VA and Army officials. Jay was awarded a purple heart. Later, his father told us how proud he was.

JOSEPH BRISENO: He's my son, but he is also an American hero.

SUSAN DENTZER: But so are you.

JOSEPH BRISENO: Maybe. I'm just doing my best.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day: The Senate Finance Committee began sifting through options to overhaul the nation's Social Security system. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs acknowledged a spike in violence in Iraq. But he insisted the U.S. is not "losing the war." And Syria ended its military presence in Lebanon today after 29 years. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.