The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, President Reagan declined to confirm a report that he authorized covert action against Panama's Noriega, heavy fighting continued between Iran and Iraq despite cease-fire talks in New York. The government reported moderate growth in the economy but with rising inflation. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, Elizabeth Brackett reports on how the drought is affecting migrant workers and Congressman Stenholm and Schumer disagree about federal drought aid. Judy Woodruff interviews the new leader of Hungary and we close with an argument between the doctors and the nurses over a proposed solution to the nurse shortage. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Panamanian Leader General Manuel Antonio Noriega returned to the news today. President Reagan was asked this morning about a Washington Post report that he had authorized covert action to oust Noriega from power.

PRESIDENT REAGAN: I have to tell you, I've seen all these things in the paper and all I have to say is that this is something I can't talk about.

REPORTER: No. I didn't ask you about the intelligence finding. I'm just wondering whether you really think there's any way ofgetting him out of there.

PRESIDENT REAGAN: Well, again, I shouldn't be commenting on that. Certainly he is not good for Panama or good for our relations.

MR. LEHRER: House Speaker Jim Wright came close to confirming the covert action report. He told reporters "I am told it was the subject of CIA briefings." He would say no more. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Iran reported heavy fighting with Iraq today despite cease-fire talks at the United Nations. UN Secretary General Javier Perez De Cuellar met Iraqi Foreign Minister Taraq Aziz in New York and also talked with the Iranian side. After an initial meeting, Aziz told newsmen Iraq would not allow itself to be stampeded into a cease-fire. As the UN inspection team arrived in Tehran to start arranging cease-fire details, Iran reported fresh battles on the Central and Southern fronts. Iraq said it had shot down an Iranian fighter. Meanwhile, Iranian television today broadcast pictures of a rare appearance by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The 88 year old ruler had been reported to be gravely ill. He's shown here attending a Monday prayer service for new recruits on their way to the front. An Iranian military commander called for more volunteers today to meet a new offensive by Iraqi troops and Iranian dissidents who were said to be holding two Iranian cities.

MR. LEHRER: The U.S. economy continues to grow. The Commerce Department said today the Gross National Product grew at a 3.1 percent annual rate from April through June. Inflation was also up. The annual rate was 4.7 percent during the same three month period. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater termed the GNP growth "moderately healthy". He said the inflation number was still low and that it was under control.

MR. MacNeil: Firefighters were battling brush and forest fires in eight Western states today. Thirteen of those fires were burning in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park, the worst outbreak since the late 1800's. One 9700 acre blaze was located six miles from Old Faithful Geyser, but park officials said the fire posed no immediate threat. Major fires were also burning in parts of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and South Dakota. Yellowstone is America's oldest national park.

MR. LEHRER: The Surgeon General of the United States today came out against too much eating and drinking. Dr. C. Everett Koop issued a report which linked bad diet to serious illness and death. He said of the 2.1 million Americans who died last year, 1.5 million of them died from diseases affected by food and drink. He told reporters the primary conclusion of the report is the need to reduce consumption of fat.

C. EVERETT KOOP, Surgeon General: The report reveals clearly that the health of Americans could be improved by changing the diet to one that contains less fat. Diets that contain a large proportion of calories from foods high in fat but low in complex carbohydrates and fiber are associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease and that such diets are also associated with increased risk of diabetes, obesity, and some types of cancer.

MR. LEHRER: Health associations and experts jumped to praise and endorse Koop's report. The American Heart Association had a Washington news conference to do so. A spokesman for the food processing industry predicted the report would cause the development of foods that follow the Surgeon General's guidelines.

MR. MacNeil: A Congressional report today called for immediate action to modernize the air traffic control system. A report by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment said that unless the system is brought up to date, present safety levels may not be sustainable. The report suggested that the rising rate of near mid air collision reports suggests that future growth in commercial traffic is a cause for concern. It also suggested that Congress give the Federal Aviation more money and make it more aggressive in monitoring safety.

MR. LEHRER: Egyptian President Mubarak believes the United States is ready to talk to representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mubarak said so in a Cairo Magazine interview. But in Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy said the no talks with the PLO policy remains in place. In the Israeli- occupied Gaza Strip today, Palestinians staged a strike and blocked streets to protest the killing of a 13 year old girl. She was shot in a confrontation between Israeli soldiers and demonstrators last night. Israeli troops placed a curfew on the refugee camp where the shooting occurred. Today's strike shut stores and halted public transportation in the area.

MR. MacNeil: The National Geographic Society today announced the results of a survey of geographical literacy which tested Americans and people of eight other countries. American adults came sixth in the test. American youth came last. The other countries were Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and West Germany. 75 percent of Americans tested could not locate the Persian Gulf and 45 percent did not know where Central America is. A majority of Americans could not locate Britain, France, or Japan. That's our News Summary. Now it's on to drought relief, the view from Hungary, and the shortage of nurses. FOCUS - DROUGHT AID

MR. LEHRER: We got first tonight to the story of the drought, the story that will not go away. Rain has come to some places in the last two weeks, but drought conditions continue in 40 states. Five have been declared disaster areas. Farmers in Alabama, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Indiana, are thus eligible for emergency loans from the federal government. We look at the story now from two angles, from on the ground in Michigan where a particular group of people are suffering a particular way from the drought and from on the ground in Washington, where tomorrow Congress votes on another form of drought aid. The Michigan story is first. Elizabeth Brackett reports.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: In a good year, Tereso Rango and Felix Guerrero wouldn't be shopping weeds. There would be blueberries to pick this time of year. Because of the drought, there isn't enough fruit to pick and the chemical weed killer didn't wash down into the soil. Felix and Tereso have been coming North from their home in Florida for 10 years.

FELIX GUERRERO, Migrant Worker [Speaking through Translator]: I think that of all the years I've been coming here its the worst it's been. It hasn't rained. Last year we were here and it rained quite a bit. All the fields were full of water. It rained a lot, but this year, who knows?

MS. BRACKETT: Farmer Charlie Nelson, who can't afford the cost of irrigating his 40 acres of blueberries, said that his crop will be 60 percent of last year's, and that the migrant workers will see a similar drop in their income.

CHARLIE NELSON, Farmer: Because of the lack of water and the drought this year, this is what happens to some of the blueberries when they don't get enough water. This plant here why the fruit on it, it's just to of no value at all. It is all shriveled up. This plant will produce zero.

MS. BRACKETT: Irrigation has helped produce some blueberries, butnowhere near enough to keep thirty to forty thousand seasonal workers in Michigan busy. For most of the workers, this year has been a disaster. On Carl Alt's farm North of Grand Rapids, where rain this summer has been seven inches lower than in normal years, the cucumber crop has been poor and there may not be enough corn to feed the cattle. Twenty-four year old Martin Santiago, who travels five days by bus each year to the Alt Farm from Guadalejara, Mexico, said this year is bleak.

MARTIN SANTIAGO, Migrant Worker: Well, we come without -- 10 years coming to this farm to work every year, but this year's too bad to work, no jobs.

MS. BRACKETT: For Juan Urvieta and his uncle Jesus, who also traveled from Mexico, there is only hope that work will improve. Juan is thinking about leaving.

JUAN URVIETA, Migrant Worker: Like me right now I came last two weeks ago, you know, but I ain't working nothing then, so I go to another say --

MS. BRACKETT: A free English class provides something to do and the extra knowledge might help them land a better paying job in a factory. They need to do something to recover the costs of traveling to Michigan, and they have to earn some money to feed their families. In a good year, working ten or twelve hours a day, a migrant worker can earn $4,000 a season. He might take home half of that. This year profit is only a dream. Farmer Carl Alt said the drought means he can't promise his crew steady work.

CARL ALT, Farmer: Work, just when I got work is all I can say, I've got about forty to forty-five people here and most time I can use them, all of them all the time, pickle time, and this year I can't.

MS. BRACKETT: The workers are thinking that next year they might not make the trip North.

TERESO RANGO, Migrant Worker: The feeling is that if it doesn't rain, one has to return to where there is more abundant work, factories and things. If we get another year like this, it's probably better to look for work in Florida. We make barely enough to cover our costs.

MS. BRACKETT: Gary Gershon is Director of the Migrant Workers Legal Assistance Project in Grand Rapids. He thinks this year's drought may scare off workers needed next year.

GARY GERSHON: Particularly if you have people going back this year who would be discussing and remembering how bad this year was, it's a very real possibility.

MS. BRACKETT: Throughout Michigan and the Midwest, farmers know the migrant workers are enduring the worst year in decades, but the farmers say that they're suffering too.

CARL ALT, Farmer: It's hurting them bad and it's hurting us a lot more too. You know, it used fun farming it but this year ain't too much fun, it ain't really. You see everything drying up. Your apple trees are, the leaves are turning yellow on them and it's just, you can't do nothing about it. What can you do? That's mother nature for you I guess.

MR. LEHRER: Now to the Washington story and to the $6.9 billion drought aid package the House will vote on tomorrow. We have two views of it, those of Congressman Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, a member of the House Budget Committee, and Charles Stenholm, Democrat of Texas, member of the House Agriculture Committee, and of the Congressional task force on the drought. Both are with us from the studio on Capitol Hill.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Stenholm, you support this bill. In general terms, what does it provide?

REP. CHARLIE STENHOLM, [D] Texas: In general terms it provides assistance to those crop producers like gentlemen that we just witnessed in Michigan and others throughout notonly the five states that have been declared a complete and total disaster, but also in every one of the rest of our states in which crop producers have lost at least 35 percent of their crops. It also provides for assistance to livestock producers, those who raise their own feed, who have lost a crop, and are experiencing a shortage which could very well cause them to have to sell foundation herds. It provides assistance to those. It also gets into some water assistance when trying to bring water to areas where they don't have it, some drilling of wells, piping possibly for drinking water, et cetera, for livestock. That's the overview.

MR. LEHRER: Well, take these two cases, the two farmers we just saw the report on, blueberry farmers, under this program they could go and get cash for the amount they lost as a result of the loss of the crop.

REP. STENHOLM: The first 35 percent of the loss is theirs and theirs alone. Anything above that 35 percent, they will qualify for 65 percent of the expected income from that crop.

MR. LEHRER: I see. Now how many people, how many farmers do you think this program would affect or would help?

REP. STENHOLM: Unfortunately, that's one of the questions we don't know and at this point in time we do not have all of the budget numbers that we need from OMB for example and we really can't estimate, because rain even today will be beneficial to many of our soybean growers in the country and some of the other specialty crops can come ahead and make a crop if it rains, so we don't know the answer to that. But we do, we can safely say there will be substantial numbers, because this is the worst drought since the 30's.

MR. LEHRER: Is there a limitation on it? I mean, do people have so many weeks or months to apply and this program automatically ends or what?

REP. STENHOLM: That's correct. There is a given time of which an individual has to go in to their local county ASCS office and make the application.

MR. LEHRER: What's the ASCS office?

REP. STENHOLM: Agricultural Stabilization & Conservation Service, which is one in every county in the United States, serves every county.

MR. LEHRER: When I used the figure $6.9 billion this thing would cost, now that came from the Congressional Budget Office, is that a ballpark figure?

REP. STENHOLM: Well, it will be reduced by a committee amendment tomorrow by 1.2 billion so really we're talking 5.4 because we had one amendment that was added in committee that was not supposed to be controversial or costly and it turned out to be 1.2 billion, so we're removing that one. And the House Ag Committee has totally and fully agreed that whatever the budget numbers must be in order to conform with the budget and Gramm-Rudman-Hollings we will reduce the amount straight across-the-board on all recipients to get down to that level.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Speaking of amendments, let's go to Congressman Schumer. You have a couple that you would like, at least a couple that you would like put on this bill. Tell us what they are and why you want them.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: The basic thrust of my amendments is to say, yes, let's give help to the farmers who need help such as the two people on your little film there. The problem is that we're also giving money to people who don't need help. So, for instance, I am asking for an amendment that would say if a farmer made in gross revenues a million dollars this year, he is not or she is not entitled to relief. It seems to me that given this drought year, anyone who can still bring in a million dollars can make it pretty much on their own, and we don't need to subsidize them.

MR. LEHRER: You're talking gross income, not net income.

REP. SCHUMER: We are talking gross income not net income is correct. And the idea is -- and I think most of the American people -- certainly the people in my district, an entirely urban district --

MR. LEHRER: New York City.

REP. SCHUMER: New York City, Brooklyn New York. I told Charlie the closest we came to a farm was a nice Miss Pagliarulo, a nice Italian-American lady on East 26th Street who grew corn in her background, but in any case, my constituents would support money going to the farmers who need help, the farmers who are poor or middle income, who one drought could put them out of business, but when we start giving money to these big huge combines, agribusiness often owned by big companies, that is getting a little ridiculous in this budget time, so my amendment would limit that. A million dollars is still a lot of money. It's less than 1 percent of all the farms in terms of number and we ought to be doing that. A second amendment that I've proposed -- and this is an example of how we simply just when we have a problem tend to throw money at it -- we use what might be called in World War II terms "saturation bombing" as opposed to pinpoint bombing. We just throw money out of an airplane and hope some of it gets to the people who need help. The second amendment says that the export enhancement program, a program designed to encourage exports, get some money cut back. If we don't have enough products this year, if the crops are off by 35 percent, then why are we paying big companies like Continental Grain hundreds of millions of dollars to help export products which we would still be doing even after this bill passed without the amendment I'm talking about.

MR. LEHRER: All right, Congressman Stenholm, let's take his first amendment, the limit $1 million gross income, to exclude those farmers. Will you buy that?

REP. STENHOLM: In the House bill we limit the maximum amount of payment any crop producer can receive at $100,000 and we limit the livestock producer to $50,000. That's the spirit of which Charlie's amendment is attempting to accomplish. Unfortunately I can say I don't know that we can accomplish what Charlie wants to do by using a gross 1 million. I believe that we have already met the biggest part, if not all, of the general idea and principle behind what's he's trying to do. We agree, for example, that the super millionaires and the corporate farmers should not receive undue benefits. We're certainly not throwing money out of an airplane at them.

MR. LEHRER: Well, how do you -- I don't understand then. Your position is that the $1 million cap wouldn't accomplish what Congressman Schumer wants to accomplish?

REP. STENHOLM: I don't know whether it will or not. I do not know how you measure that on every farm around the country on gross income. It's very easy for us to measure a crop loss. You've got yields. You can bring in the proof of what the loss is and it's very easy for us to do that, if anything is under a drought bill, and nothing is, but its easy to do that. I'm not sure how we can take a million dollar gross income cap and relate that to the same drought problems we're talking about. Maybe it can be done. We'll listen to the debate. If that's a better way of doing it than what we're doing, certainly I think we'd be open to it.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Schumer, what about his counter idea that you just restrict the amount of money, nobody gets more than $100,000 or50,000 depending on as he said?

REP. SCHUMER: That is good but it's awfully hard to tell somebody, I think any American from any area that an agri-business or a big wealthy farmer who's doing fairly well this year, although has suffered a crop loss, should get $100,000. We're telling people much poorer than that in urban and other areas in this country that they can't get any kind of subsidy at all.

MR. LEHRER: Your point is that even though a farmer may have had a whole crop wiped out if for other reasons or another crop or whatever they still had an income, that they should not be getting this kind of relief.

REP. SCHUMER: Yes. If we were a country that, you know, we had a big budget surplus and we weren't cutting back program after program, maybe we should, but given the fact that we are, there has to be some kind of restraint. The agriculture budget has gone up very very dramatically. It was $4 billion crop assistance in '81, it's 26 billion now, and when a program grows that quickly, there tends to be lots of little pockets of waste and other things, and that's what I'm trying to get out. I basically support the idea of helping farmers who need help and I think most Americans do.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Stenholm, what about his export enhancement idea?

REP. STENHOLM: First let me make one additional point on the 1 million. Conceivably I can immediately after reflection think of an instance in which a cotton farm or a wheat farm with a gross income of $1 million would qualify for as much as $600,000 under Charlie's amendment. The committee bill would limit to 100,000. So we've got a few problems dealing with how we work it out. That's not what he intends, but it could happen.

MR. LEHRER: Excuse me one moment, I am intrigued myself. Congressman Stenholm, explain how you could be eligible for 600,000.

REP. SCHUMER: Just to clarify, my amendment says if you have a gross income of over a million you get no subsidy, period.

MR. LEHRER: I see.

REP. STENHOLM: A gross income of over six, a gross revenue of 1 million you get no subsidy, period.

REP. SCHUMER: I would concur.

MR. LEHRER: Now the enhancement thing quickly.

REP. STENHOLM: On the export enhancement again we do not know what the total and how bad the drought is. If, in fact, we don't have crops to export, then certainly we will need to reduce the amount of export enhancement. We don't know that. Secondly, the point I would like to make is that thanks to the inventory and thanks to the benefits of the farm program, we had quite a bit of inventory in order to continue to meet our markets. If, in fact, we overreact in the export market area, we're going to give our markets away to our competitors again and then when the crops come in next year, which we're going to be reacting to by taking off production restraints, we could find ourselves back in a much deeper hole than we were in say a year ago when our problems were surplus. The export enhancement program is one that we intend on the Ag Committee to have available as a tool to be used. I would certainly concur with the intent of the amendment, of saying that we shouldn't be spending money exporting, particularly to the Soviet Union, if were in danger of running low in the United States or to our good solid customers in the modern free world, but it's a little more complicated than that.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Well, Congressman Schumer has been nodding his head in agreement and we're going to leave it there. Gentlemen, thank you both.

REP. SCHUMER: I've been nodding my head because Charlie's so persuasive but I still don't quite agree.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Well, we'll see how it shakes out. There's going to be a vote tomorrow in the House on this right?

REP. STENHOLM: That's correct.

REP. SCHUMER: There is indeed.

MR. LEHRER: There's a big head of steam behind it, correct?

REP. STENHOLM: That's correct.

REP. SCHUMER: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: Okay, gentlemen, thank you --

REP. STENHOLM: The President through the Congress.

MR. LEHRER: And the President said he would sign it?

REP. STENHOLM: The President will sign a drought bill. He's got a few difficulties just like Charlie's got with what we on the House Ag Committee have done, but we're going to work it out.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

REP. SCHUMER: Stenholm has gotten Schumer and Reagan to agree on something.

MR. LEHRER: Okay great, thank you both very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the Newshour, Hungary, a documentary report and an interview with its Prime Minister and solving the nursing shortage. NEWS MAKER - HUNGARY

MR. MacNeil: Our next focus, a visitor to the White House bringing the message of economic reform and perestroika from Eastern Europe. Hungary's new Prime Minister and Communist Party Secretary Karoly Grosz met with President Reagan today, the first leader of that country to visit the United States since the Soviets helped the Communists take power there after World War II. We'll have a NewsMaker Interview with Grosz in a moment. First we look at the successes and problems in a country that began experimenting with reform long before Mikhail Gorbachev introduced perestroika to the Soviet Union. Our report is from BBC Correspondent David Selz.

DAVID SELZ: Hungary's own consumer society blazed the trail that Gorbachev now seeks to tread. Budapest's best shops boast a Western quality and sparkle. If you have the money, they provide the goods. It is a picture unrivaled in Communist countries and is now itself deeply misleading. Hungary's economy is in serious disrepair, debt a burden, inflation a plague, unemployment a prospect. Hungary's experience is in its way a warning to Mr. Gorbachev, the reform road is a rocky one. People become easily disenchanted.

IVAN BEREND, Government Economic Adviser: In the 60's when we practically started the reform, the reform was popular. Reform was equal with good supply instead of shortage, food shortage, wheat shortage, et cetera, so it was popular. Nowadays the average people equalize reform with high inflation rate, and you cannot really convince the people that the short run pain will pay in long run gain. And you cannot convince them because at least in the recent 15 years the government promised a lot which were not fulfilled and therefore it lost the confidence indeed.

MR. SELZ: There are already black spots in Hungary's Northeastern industrial heartland where joblessness once a crime is now a permitted reality. Here among the miners of Osd, the process has barely begun, but a twenty-fold increase in Hungarian unemployment is one official forecast for the next two years. The old industries, as in Western Europe, are especially vulnerable. By October of next year, this will be shut, its coal judged too costly to mine. No more subsidies. Realities are being faced and they're painful.

MINER [Speaking through Translator]: A lot of the young people made their living here, so they all have to find a new job. They are rather resentful about it. I mean, these teams got on together well, and the atmosphere was good, but now they are being scattered just like an eagle scatters chickens. Everyone is going in all directions.

MR. SELZ: Such a shakeup for the one time shock troops of communism is epic. An unrest amongst them is not excluded. We were told but could not confirm that Hungarian officials have recently been studying Britain's handling of the miners' strike. Unrest or no, Hungarian miners, no more than any others, do not take kindly to the idea of alternative employment.

IVAN BEREND: Shops could employ twice as many people as nowadays, but a miner cannot go to a grocery shop to work. It's not easy.

MR. SELZ: He will not --

MR. BEREND: Certainly not. Certainly not, his son or daughter probably, but it's a longer period. So we must find transitory solutions and helping by central measures restructuring labor.

MR. SELZ: Have you looked at other people's experiences in this? I mean, have you looked at the British experience at all?

MR. BEREND: Very much, but it's quite recent, because up to the recent years it was an ideological principle to declare and have full employment, so, therefore, we were not really prepared to learn to absorb all the experiences which already invented elsewhere, but now we are doing that.

MR. SELZ: Have you looked at the lessons from Mrs. Thatcher and the miners' strike perhaps?

MR. BEREND: I think we have to to analyze all these measures. That was a very interesting case and we have to learn from all the examples.

MR. SELZ: Winemaking is a traditional business that has languished but is now pulling its socks up, though if there has been one unalloyed success of the 20 years of Hungarian reform, it has been agriculture. The lure for improvement in the vineyards is hard currency earnings, earnings for which a debt-ridden Hungary is desperate. Egovin in the Town of Egga is now permitted to sell wine directly to Western customers, bypassing bureaucratic intermediaries in the capital. It pays. Exports last year were up by 1/4. What Egovin has been able to show in the land of the Rubik Cube is that an established industry can prosper through reliable quality and direct marketing. It's a constant battle. Communist countries are peculiarly resistant to change, all the more stunning then to witness a grassroots political rebellion by delegates to a special conference of the Hungarian Communist Party at the end of May. As in Moscow, the years of Brezhnev ended with the advent of a new star so in Budapest, the old patriarch, Gamas Kadar, had given way to Karoly Grosz, the Hungarian in the Gorbachev mold.

MR. SELZ: How important finally is the success of Mr. Gorbachev going to be for what you want to do here in Hungary?

MR. BEREND: Crucially important. After the 20th Party Congress in the Soviet Union in 1956, a reform trend started in Hungary and when the conservative term happens there in '57, the reform efforts were killed in Hungary as well. Now I think it's probably the first time when we get a back wind and it's much easier now. If the Gorbachev reform will be continued and really developed, then our situation will be much easier. If not, I should have forecast it would be rather negative and destructive, because other developments, domestically, also got a new impetus to criticize and probably even destroy the reform attempt.

MR. SELZ: A new generation engrossed in itself can hardly be expected to recall the seminal events of 1956, but Gorbachev or no Gorbachev, when Moscow sneezes, Hungarians find themselves catching cold on the streets of Budapest.

MR. LEHRER: This morning Judy Woodruff talked with the new Hungarian Prime Minister and General Secretary. The first itemwas why there have been so few visits to the United States by Eastern European leaders.

MS. WOODRUFF: No leader of an Eastern bloc country has visited the United States I understand in 10 years. Why do you think it's been so long?

KAROLY GROSZ, Prime Minister, Hungary: [Speaking Through Translator] I cannot give you an answer to that. We've been preparing for this visit for a long time because the last time we had a Hungarian Prime Minister in the United States was 42 years ago. It is now that we have got an invitation to come to the United States and we were only pleased to answer that invitation.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why do you think the invitation came after so many years?

MR. GROSZ: I think it's more than likely that it's because there's a new trend in the world, a new spirit, a spirit of detente and cooperation in the making. I think President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev shaking hands has created a new situation in the world. And I think it is also great that President Reagan and also Mr. Gorbachev recognize that it's not just the great powers but also the middle who have a role to play in detente and cooperation in the world.

MS. WOODRUFF: How important do you believe, how do significant do you believe are the changes that you are trying to make now in your economic, in your political system in Hungary?

MR. GROSZ: I think that these changes are extremely significant when compared to the practice we've had so far. We have to build on everything that has been valuable in the last 40 years or so which are the foundations of our society, but we have to be more dynamic in our development in growth, therefore, we travel a lot, we try to see as much as we can, we try to have as many exchanges of views as we can, and we try to gain as much experience as we can.

MS. WOODRUFF: To what extent is your success, your ability to be successful in Hungary, dependent on how successful Mr. Gorbachev is, do you believe?

MR. GROSZ: I think all the successes and all the failures have, of course, an impact on other people's lives too, which is of course to say that our task will also be easier if Mr. Gorbachev succeeds and I am convinced that he will succeed but we will carry through our ideas and consent also if the changes will come slower in the Soviet Union.

MS. WOODRUFF: You mentioned also that there are ups and downs. We know that one of the downs you've experienced already is that there had to be a number of people in Hungary laid off work, out of work. How does it square with the socialist system that there now have to be people out of work at least for a period of time?

MR. GROSZ: I think one can square this quite easily because such a major restructuring of the economy inevitably leads to major shifts in the work force, which is to say people have to find not just new jobs but sometimes have to take up new professions.

MS. WOODRUFF: How easy is it for people to understand that there may be periods when they're out of work or when they are adjusting to new work.

MR. GROSZ: It is not easy to make people understand. We have to tell them several times. We also have to explain why this is what our dues are for doing so.

MS. WOODRUFF: You've spoken of political reform that might go so far as a multi-party system but yesterday in a speech here in Washington you said that would have to be under the socialist system. What did you mean by that?

MR. GROSZ: You see, first of all, I believe that it is also possible to create rich means and venues of democracy in a one party system. The essential thing is I think how theinterests and sometimes conflicting interests and opinions of various groups in society can come to the surface and how the leadership of the country reacts to these interests and opinions.

MS. WOODRUFF: I'm asking how far, I guess how far you're willing to let opposition go. For example, very recently you came down very hard on some people who came out to protest to remember the death of Mr. Naja, and I think it calls into question how far you are willing to let people go in your country to express a different view.

MR. GROSZ: You haven't got it right. We are still organizers. While we respected their intentions in a cemetery, to respect the sanctity of these national memorial sites, but they wouldn't listen to us and when we asked them to disband, they provoked our policemen. I find it very hard to imagine that an American policeman wouldn't react if someone kicked him.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there any concern on your part that your efforts to reform both the economy and the political structure of your country might raise the hopes and the aspirations of your people so much so that that might get out of control and be difficult for you to keep under control?

MR. GROSZ: I don't think so. Of course we can always find the extremes in the case of such major changes. One of these extremes is the group of people who wouldn't change anything if it were up to them. Those were afraid of everything that is new and we of course also have the other extreme, those people who would like to change everything and who deny everything that has been and happened so far. But the decisive majority -- and this is I think the most important thing -- is for a faster but balanced pace of change.

MS. WOODRUFF: To what extent are your reform efforts both in Hungary and in the Soviet Union, is this dependent on a good relationship, on detente with the West, with the United States in particular?

MR. GROSZ: To a great extent. If the situation is tense, we have to provide more funds for the military and we cannot indulge in experimenting and then two worlds which close upon themselves and there will be no dialogue, no business, no trade, and no flow of scientific and technological knowledge, and most importantly, the reservations and prejudices people have against each other would growth stronger.

MS. WOODRUFF: In connection with that, if detente were to continue, if we want to call it that, what are the chances that the Soviet Union would begin to pull out some of the 65,000 troops they now have in Hungary?

MR. GROSZ: Detente of course is a precondition to the setting of the number of troops and forces at a lower level on both sides. This is a must if we want to reduce the numbers of troops and also to carry out the proposals made by the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs for all troops stationed abroad to get back to their home countries in a limited period of time. And this, of course, applies both to American and Soviet troops.

MS. WOODRUFF: Could there be a unilateral draw down of those troops, or would there have to be something simultaneously from the NATO side as well?

MR. GROSZ: Well, I think a very modest reduction is of course possible on any of the two sides, but a major reduction, the level of troops, can only happen simultaneously.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. General Secretary, we thank you very much for being with us.

MR. GROSZ: I would like to thank you for the conversation. FOCUS - CARE CRISIS

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight we look at the growing nursing shortage and a controversial plan to ease it. Across the country, many hospitals are turning away patients even when they have empty beds. The reason, a worsening shortage of nurses. One possible solution to this problem was recently proposed by the American Medical Association, creating a new kind of hospital worker called a registered care technologist or RCT. Nurses do not like the report. We begin with this report seen previously on the Newshour on the situation at San Francisco General Hospital. Again, the reporter is Elizabeth Brackett.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The third new patient of the day is brought to the critical care unit at San Francisco General Hospital. This man was severely injured when a steel beam fell on him as he worked on a construction site. He received immediate attention, but the nurses also had to treat the 13 other critically ill patients in the unit. It is a high stress job and the serious shortage of nurses at this hospital has added even more stress.

SUE DAMRON, Critical Care Nurse: We have a gunshot wound here, a stab wound here, motor vehicle accident there, and then on the other side of the unit we have another gunshot wound and another stab wound. They're on every machine possible.

MS. BRACKETT: How busy does that keep you?

MS. DAMRON: Every minute. You get 45 minutes for lunch and that's about it.

MS. BRACKETT: In your 12 hour day.

MS. DAMRON: In a 12 hour day, yeah. You might have time to go to the bathroom.

MS. BRACKETT: Nurses are 11 percent under staffed at this hospital, 15 percent for critical care nurses. In a critical care unit nurses are not allowed to take care of more than two patients at a time. That means when beds fill up in critical care, patients are turned away. By 4 o'clock in the afternoon on the day we were at San Francisco General Nurse Sue Damron said her unit was at its unit.

MS. DAMRON: We are full now. We have to divert ambulances because we are full. In fact, we probably should be diverting now.

MS. BRACKETT: Damron says when a hospitalwide diversion is called, the pressure is increased, not decreased.

MS. DAMRON: Whenever there is any diversion it causes pressure in all the critical care areas to free up beds. We may be full in here, but something happens to a patient out on the ward, and they become critical, they need an ICU bed and there are none available, so it's a matter of triage. You have to determine who is the sickest. Is the patient who is already in the ICU the sickest, or is the patient out in the ward now the sickest. There's no possible way that we can give safe care to these patients with this kind of staffing or there's no way we can taken this patient from the ER with this kind of staffing. And yet the expectation is there that you do it.

MS. BRACKETT: How much longer do you think you can last?

MS. DAMRON: Six months.

MS. BRACKETT: Really?

MS. DAMRON: Yes, six months to a year. That's about my limit I think.

MS. BRACKETT: Nurse burnout is just one of the causes of the nursing shortage that is affecting hospitals across the country. Low salaries are another reason. Beginning pay for nurses is generally between eighteen and twenty thousand dollars a year. That is competitive with start-up pay in other professions, but many hospitals are demanding college degrees from their nurses with no corresponding raise in pay, and after 10 years of experience, a nurse still will be only earning around $26,000 a year and will have to work weekends and nights to earn that pay. Judy Spinella is the Chief Administrator for Nursing at San Francisco General. She says a third problem is the image of the nursing profession.

JUDY SPINELLA, Nurse Administrator: Now that there are many other opportunities for women I think that they're choosing different fields and different professions because the image that the public holds for nursing is that of a servant to the physician, a handmaiden, someone who is more of a waitress. Nurses are highly educated to perform physical assessment skills and really observe what's going on with a patient. They're there continuously. They do very high-tech kinds of treatments with patients and are a very integral part of the health care team.

DR. JOHN LUCE, Staff Physician: What is there to induce a nurse to go to nursing school when more and more women are becoming physicians and doing a great job at it? I think it's the matter of being your own boss, having your own autonomy, having the respect of your peers, and nursing has always been a position that's been secondary to medicine.

MS. BRACKETT: Would physicians be willing to give up some of their control to nurses?

DR. LUCE: Not the physicians I know.

MS. BRACKETT: Like most hospitals, San Francisco General has begun an intensive recruiting program to try and fill the vacancies. The Sunday Help Wanted sections in San Francisco's Sunday papers and in newspapers across the country are filled with ads for nursing positions. Some hospitals have begun offering bonuses. Others tout their training programs or offer to pick up the tab for advanced degrees. San Francisco General brings in specialty nurses from across the country and pays their living expenses for months at a time. Even with all that, the nurse recruiter at San Francisco General says the shortage is only going to get worse.

JOANNE BURIK, Nurse Recruiter: I think that unfortunately it's going to be horrendous in three to four years. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Right now we're missing the specialty kind of nurses, but when we get into the total decreased numbers of nursing students in two years graduating, in three years graduating, in four years graduating, then it's going to be horrendous.

MR. MacNeil: Now we look at the controversial solution proposed by the American Medical Association. Dr. Robert McAffe is a Trustee with the AMA and Lucille Joel is President of the American Nurses Association. She joins us from public station KCPT in Kansas City, Missouri.

MR. MacNeil: Dr. McAffe, briefly describe the AMA proposal. Who would qualify as a registered care technologist. What training would they have, and when they had it, what would they do in the hospital?

DR. ROBERT McAFFE, American Medical Association: The RCT, as we see it, is a critical new pair of hands to be added to the health care team. In no way does this mean to substitute or to replace a nurse. I will tell you right now that I agree with everything that you've shown us in this previous spot. The crucial shortage is upon us. 80 percent of hospitals in this country knew that. We happen to think that although we have supported the concept of nursing education of the future, the baccalaureate program, the two year associate degree program, and we have for six or seven years now, we don't see young people electing to go into nursing through those routes, and yet we think there's a cadre of young people out there, high school graduates, may want to get into the health care field, but who cannot afford a college education. We think those people might serve as a pool to come into the hospital to exhibit and learn some task-oriented skills dealing with patients at the bedside, nothing as critical as you've shown in your previous film here but something doing simple tasks at the bedside, helping to feed a patient, getting a patient out of bed and going to the bathroom and back, monitoring an IV, changing a bed, assisting in the transportation of that patient back and forth, simple things, things that sometimes family members do now when the nurses are not available to do it.

MR. MacNeil: These would be high school graduates and they would have how much training.

DR. McAFFE: They would begin with a two month period of on-the- job training in a training situation. At this point they would then obviously have it or not have it and be given an assistant's rating. That does not give them a certification. They then must commit to seven more months of similar activity in this kind of a setting in order to get a basic certification as a registered care technologist.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Ms. Joel, why is the nursing profession so opposed to RCT's?

LUCILLE JOEL, American Nurses Association: First, let me say thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak for nurses and the American Nurses Association. Nurses are often the silent majority. The American Nurses Association and nurses are appalled that the American Medical Association would claim the right to step in and solve nursing's problems. We know our problems; we know the solutions; and we've consistently asked medicine to get behind us and to help us with our agenda. The RCT is an ill conceived solution. The RCT could potentially be dangerous, could be costly, could be very ineffective and confusing to the public. It's a consumer issue and nurses have stood by the consumers at the bedside traditionally through AIDS and TB and polio and everything else.

MR. MacNeil: Explain how it could be dangerous, Ms. Joel.

MS. JOEL: The RCT is an amateur. What Dr. McAffe has described is nursing. It's not assistive types of work that nurses want to get rid of. If you ask any nurse why they went into nursing, it's to minister a very personal intimate service to people. The RCT would potentially distance the nurse, the professional who is in charge, from the bedside and insert people who are task-oriented near the sickest of people. The people who would be the most at risk would be those who are most dependent, the very old, the very young, the very critically ill.

MR. MacNeil: Is it that it would be dangerous for the patients, or that it's taking away from nurses things that they enjoy doing?

MS. JOEL: Not that they enjoy doing, things that are necessary for them to do. Patients are much more acutely ill today, care is much more complex. It's impossible to render care to the type of person that is in a hospital today without understanding all the scientific implications underlying that care.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let's get Dr. McAffe to answer a couple of those. You've hear what was said, that it would be ineffective, that it would be dangerous for the reasons Ms. Joel has just given.

DR. McAFFE: Well, Lucille has identified this as a problem in nursing. It's a problem not in nursing but in patient care. Doctors take care of patients too. Our patients tell us there's a problem at the bedside. We see this when we visit patients at the bedside. The problem is not that the nurse doesn't want to be there. That to me if I were a nurse would be the most ideal place for me to spend my day, but the nurse because of the critical illnesses of patients now in hospitals has been spread so thin that she must devote her time to the priority concerns as you've seen in San Francisco General. Now I practice in the Northeast. I practice in theNortheast, and I have a serious nursing shortage in my hospital. We have closed beds. We are told --

MS. JOEL: Let me interject --

MR. MacNeil: Just let him finish, Ms. Joel. Back to you in a second.

DR. McAFFE: We have only a 10 percent vacancy rate in our nursing compared to San Francisco General, yet, we had to close our burn unit two weeks ago, the only tertiary burn unit in the entire State of Maine. Now we have a problem. Now I will tell you now that this is a simple solution that we think can work. If we have a commitment by those who want to deliver better patient care, additional patient care, necessary patient care, then I think we ought to get going with something like this pilot project.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Joel, may I ask you, what is the difference between the kind of training and the level of work the RCT's would do that the AMA is proposing and nurses aides, which is something the nursing profession has accepted for a long time?

MS. JOEL: Nurses aides are prepared under the nursing educational system and they're under the control of nurses. The RCT is a person who is prepared through on-the-job training with a very slim academic background. Nurses aides are even limited in what they can give today. We have licensed practical nurses who are prepared in programs that are very tightly monitored by us. In fact, the RCT in its three levels replicates the levels that nursing has provided traditionally. One piece that I take great offense at is the insinuation sometimes that not calling a person but having them do nursing would make it a more attractive role. I hope Dr. McAffe realizes that the RCT directly undermines nursing's attempts to solve its own problems. We will be recruiting from the same student pool, we will be using the same limited number of educational dollars, and we will be inserting someone at the bedside who will further decrease the satisfaction that nurses have. Nurses do need assistants. We have said this.

MR. MacNeil: How do you answer that, Dr. McAffe, that you will be undermining the profession's own attempts to recruit more nurses?

DR. McAFFE: If I could go back 20 years when there was a doctor shortage in this country and we looked at the concept of somebody substituting for physicians, we created nurse practitioners. Twenty years later we wouldn't wish to turn the clock back at all. They have turned out to be a delightful addition, a very necessary, important addition to health care, particularly in primary care, pediatrics and psychiatry. And yet 20 years ago, the same statements from physicians would be similar to what Professor Joel is telling us tonight, that this would be fragmentation in practicing and another layer, et cetera, et cetera. Let me point out that there is an interesting example going on right in New York City at this time, the concept of an emergency medical technician which began as somebody independently certified outside the hospital system, caring for emergency victims in an ambulance. They've been brought in to work in emergency wards and now in this city are being utilized side by side with nurses in critical care units to help free up the time that you heard that poor nurse from San Francisco General say is stressing her out.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Joel, nobody disagrees about the shortage.

MS. JOEL: No.

MR. MacNeil: If this isn't the solution and you oppose it, what is the solution to get that 10 percent or 15 percent of beds that are closed open again?

MS. JOEL: All right. There are very simple solutions and I think medicine, both medicine and nursing wantthe same thing, quality care and more minutes at the bedside. Organized nursing has continuously said that we need more help with the non- nursing functions. Currently, in hospitals, nurses invest about 10 to 40 percent of their time in non-nursing types of activities. We do need assistive personnel.

MR. MacNeil: Like what? Tell us what.

MS. JOEL: People for transport, for messenger service, for expanded clerical duties, for expanded housekeeping technology that reduces our charting and paper work. We need all these things and only for the single purpose of allowing us to give more minutes of care to the patient. We don't want to give up the patient time. We want to give up the tasks that have cluttered our day over the last few years.

MR. MacNeil: How does the AMA respond to that?

DR. McAFFE: We would agree entirely with what she is saying and we have supported nursing's endeavor and will continue to do so. My nurses have just gotten a 13 percent raise. I wish they can get it again next year, and I'm going to do everything I can to make that happen, but while we're waiting for new people to go into nursing through traditional roles, we have got to explore something else.

MR. MacNeil: We just have a few seconds. Is the AMA going to try this as a pilot scheme somewhere?

DR. McAFFE: We're going to have a meeting next month with a variety of other nursing organizations and again look at the alternatives. We've been directed by our house of delegates to do so. The board will make a decision.

MR. MacNeil: We have to leave it there. Ms. Joel, thank you very much for joining us in Kansas City, Dr. McAffe, in New York. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Wednesday, President Reagan declined comment on a Washington Post report that he had authorized covert action to oust Panamanian Leader General Manuel Noriega, but he did reiterate his belief that Noriega was bad for Panama, and for U.S./Panama relations. And there was more heavy fighting between Iranian and Iraqi forces despite cease-fire talks at the United Nations. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight and we will be back tomorrow night. I'm. Robert MacNeil. Good night.