The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WOODRUFF: Good evening. I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary this Thursday, we examine the issues and the politics in congressional White House maneuvering to settle the national rail strike. Next, charges of administration inaction on AIDS from the National AIDS Commission. Finally, we have excerpts from today's stormy Senate hearings on POW's and MIA's. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Tragically insufficient. Those are the words being used to describe the Bush administration's response to the nation's AIDS epidemic. That assessment was made today in a blistering statement issued by the National Commission on AIDS which was jointly appointed by the White House and Congress. The panel met last night with Health Secretary Louis Sullivan. They called for a number of new initiatives by the President. Today they issued a statement saying the administration is not prepared to undertake significant new actions. Dr. David Rogers, the panel's vice chairman, said the White House has no national plan for research and prevention efforts untainted by politics, adding that the problem starts at the top. Sullivan responded during an interview on CNN. He said the criticism was inaccurate, unfair, and a disservice to the American people. We'll have more on the story later in the program. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congress moved today toward intervention in the two-day-old nationwide rail shutdown. The House and Senate are expected to vote tonight on a measure which would impose a 30-day coolingoff period. After that, the two sides would try to reach an agreement or arbitrators would impose one. The Machinists' Union struck the CSX Freightline yesterday and that led the nation's other major freight carriers to suspend service. The rail union said that decision amounted to a lockout. But they failed today to get a federal judge to force the companies to call them back. Amtrak's passenger service was also disrupted. Its entire system may be shut down if unions carry out a midnight strike threat tonight. At the White House this morning, President Bush called for congressional action.

PRES. BUSH: Clearly, the national interest is at stake here and we now face a complete halt of passenger and commuter rail lines and I urge the House and Senate to act to end this strike today. The national interest requires no less. And there must be no further delay. So I salute the Secretary and his people at the Department of Transportation, those members that are working to end this strike, but it must happen, and it should happen today.

MS. WOODRUFF: We'll have much more on the rail shutdown right after this News Summary.

MR. MacNeil: The Commerce Department said the nation's economy grew at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the first three months of the year. That was an upward revision and the best quarterly showing in three years. But at the same time, the Labor Department reported firsttime claims for jobless benefits hit a six-week high in mid June.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Bush today unveiled a $500 million pilot program to provide scholarships to poor and middle income children. The $1,000 scholarships could be used at public or private schools, including religious institutions. Mr. Bush made the announcement at a White House ceremony this morning.

PRES. BUSH: Forty-eight years ago this very week, President Roosevelt signed the GI Bill, creating scholarships that veterans could use at any college, any college of their choice. The GI Bill created opportunity for Americans who never would have had it and in doing so, it helped create the best system of colleges and universities in the entire world. And now, we can do that again, this time by helping state and local governments create the best elementary and secondary schools in the world. The GI Bill for children will help. It'll provide that help to these families. These dollars to spend at the schools of their choice will become the muscle that parents need to create the best schools for their kids.

MS. WOODRUFF: Critics of the scholarship plan said it violated the Constitution's separation of church and state. White House officials acknowledged that they did not expect that Congress would take up the proposal before the end of this session.

MR. MacNeil: The space shuttle Columbia roared from its Cape Canaveral launching pad today into a cloud-filled sky. It was carrying seven astronauts into orbit for a thirteen-day research mission. The crew of five men and two women will perform tests for a new NASA space station. It is the 49th mission of the shuttle program. It will also be the longest, provided it lasts the scheduled 13 days.

MS. WOODRUFF: A former senior Pentagon official said today that the United States had no hard evidence that Americans were left in Indochina when the Vietnam War ended. Roger Shields was in charge of POW/MIA affairs during the 1970s. His testimony was at odds with the Senate Committee's finding that some 133 Americans may have been left behind. Shields testified today at the second day of hearings on the issue. He had this exchange with Sen. John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.

ROGER SHIELDS, Former Pentagon Official: I have testified on many other occasions to that fact that men certainly were carried as prisoner of war at one time and had not come home.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, [D] Massachusetts: Mr. Shields, don't you think it's a little disingenuous to stand up before the nation and have a policy announced that says we have no indication that there are any Americans alive, when you know people are carried as PW and have nothing to suggest they're dead?

ROGER SHIELDS: Senator, if you had the rest of that transcript, you might hear the circumstances which surrounded that. And you will find out that we were debating the issue about whether we had current hard information relating to men who were alive or who were dead. And we had no hard, specific current information relating to men who were alive or who were dead. And we had no hard, specific current information at that time.

MS. WOODRUFF: We'll have more on the story later in the program. Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said today that he was still investigating whether officials at the highest level of government broke the law. He said one or more of those officials, whom he did not name, may have withheld documents or lied to investigators about the 1985 arms for hostages deal. Walsh made the statement in a report to Congress. His investigation is expected to be completed this summer.

MR. MacNeil: Serb forces in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo today agreed to stop firing on the city's civilian population. That word came from United Nations peacekeeping officials in Bosnia. There have been similar promises made in the three-month-old civil war. So far, none of them has been kept. Edward Stourton of independent Television News reports from Sarajevo.

EDWARD STOURTON: This was Sarajevo after the announcement that the Serbs will cease attacks on military targets, smoke rising from a residential district, a pedestrian sent scurrying from sniper fire. The U.N. commander here reacted to the Serbian promise with a caution born of experience.

GEN. LEWIS MacKENZIE, U.N. Force Commander: This is a significant commitment by the Serbs which, if carried through, would let Unprefor proceed with the implementation of the airport agreement. If it fails because of their actions, it will be a very serious setback to Serbian credibility.

EDWARD STOURTON: This is where the two sides face each other in the West of the city, the Bosnians in these apartment blocks, the Serbians about 300 yards away in that village. It's close to the airport and it's an area that's seen some of the fiercest fighting. Yet, the apartment blocks that serve the fighters are still inhabited by civilians. Some are giving up and living, but many others have stayed despite the danger, and among the population generally some skepticism about the Serbian promise.

SPOKESMAN: Although they said that it will be peace, but they open fire, they don't believe.

MR. STOURTON: Nevertheless, by this afternoon, the streets had quieted, and though Sarajevo today has seen fighting, it has at least been spared the shelling from the hills.

MR. MacNeil: The European Community held talks in France today aimed at reviving its stalled Yugoslav peace negotiations. Those talks ended in failure. A cease-fire agreement was reached today in a breakaway region of the former Soviet republic of Moldova. The region is populated by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. They've been fighting for independence from Moldova, which is populated mainly by ethnic Romanians. The leaders of Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania hammered out the cease-fire accord at a summit meeting in Turkey. It calls for the deployment of United Nations observers by week's end. A bomb exploded in London's financial district this evening. Police said no one was injured. It was apparently placed under a car outside a Chase Manhattan Bank building. An Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in the same area in April, killing three people and injuring ninety-one. That's our summary of the news today. Now it's on to the rail strike, AIDS in the Bush administration and today's MIA hearing. FOCUS - SHUTDOWN

MS. WOODRUFF: We do focus first tonight on the national railroad stoppage and congressional efforts to end it. Day two of the strike against one freight company, which led thirty-nine other management operations to close down, left trains throughout the nation stalled, much of Amtrak's passenger lines standing still. The unions have set a deadline of midnight tonight for closing Amtrak's busy Northeast corridor. The White House has urged Congress to intervene, warning that the cost to the economy could be $1 billion a day if the stoppage continues for very long. Members of Congress met behind closed doors late yesterday and early today, trying to crack the bill to get the trains moving again. This afternoon, the House Commerce Subcommittee on Transportation began marking up a bill to force a rail agreement within two months. Members also sought to limit the political damage associated with forcing organized labor and management into a settlement they might not like. The Chairman of the full House Commerce Committee, John Dingell, said Republicans and Democrats had found common ground.

REP. JOHN DINGELL, [D] Michigan: I believe the legislation is the baseball solution, an extension of the cooling off period, submission of offers, and negotiation by the parties, selection of an arbitration panel, which will choose a final arbitrator, one arbitrator, to be selected by the carriers, one by the labor unions. The two will then select a single arbitrator, go after a period of further negotiation, will select one proposal or the other.

MS. WOODRUFF: Union leaders hovering near the committee rooms express dismay at Congress's intervention. Mac Fleming is president of one of the rail unions.

MAC FLEMING, Maintenance of Way Employees Union: If the Congress orders us back to work without our basic fundamental right to strike, then Congress is not doing us any favor.

MS. WOODRUFF: Committee member Democrat Jim Slattery of Kansas defended what he called the compromise.

REP. JIM SLATTERY, [D] Kansas: Neither side will ultimately be entirely pleased with the outcome. That's a given. And what we have to do is something that's hopefully in the best interest of the country and do it as quickly as we can. And hopefully, it will also be satisfactory to both sides.

MS. WOODRUFF: And as we reported, the subcommittee approved the bill this afternoon. The measure must be approved next by the full House and the Senate and signed by the President, all of which are expected to happen by tomorrow. For more on the strike and the congressional response, we are joined by Transportation Secretary Andrew Card, Congressman Gerry Sikorski, Democrat of Minnesota, and a member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Ed Harper, president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads, which represents the nation's major freightlines and Amtrak, and John Peterpaul, general vice president of transportation for the International Association of Machinists. His is one of the three unions involved in the labor dispute. Mr. Peterpaul, I want to begin with you and go back to just briefly to the cause of all this before we talk about what Congress is doing. These negotiations have been going on for what, four, five years overall, is that right?

MR. PETERPAUL: The original servant notices to open up the contracts were served at the beginning of 1988, and the recent recommendations by the emergency board stretched the agreements into 1995 to cover a period of over seven years.

MS. WOODRUFF: So, in effect, have the unions been working without a contract, in effect?

MR. PETERPAUL: Not under the Railway Labor Act. You maintain the status quo until some action comes. It gets very complex within the provisions of the Railway Labor Act.

MS. WOODRUFF: In a nutshell and in layman's terms that all of us can understand, what is it that your union wanted that you didn't get that led you to strike two days ago?

MR. PETERPAUL: Well, the main thing is our labor dispute is with the CSX Railroad. And that's the railroad that we struck. We have no intentions to interfere with any commuter traffic whatsoever throughout the United States. I want to make it clear that the lockout or the shutdown was imposed by the other carriers in support, I think as was shown yesterday in the hearings before the Commerce Committee, but the other railroads shut down in support of the CSX. And to my dismay, they showed no apologies whatsoever for it after their admission. But we instructed our people to maintain commuter service, No. 1, and also keep the Jacksonville Dispatch Center open so that freight and all the traffic can move over the CSX system.

MS. WOODRUFF: Okay. I want to get to that, but what was it that was the sticking point as far as your union is concerned?

MR. PETERPAUL: Several issues. There are several issues. Some of the main issues, like with the CSX, is there was a notice we gave them in 1981 to commence negotiations of their subcontracting out of work. A lot of this came from the event of deregulation of the railroads and the Staggers Act, and what this permitted the railroads to do in establishing short lines, selling off lines and things like that.

MS. WOODRUFF: These are job security issues --

MR. PETERPAUL: Job security issues.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- for your members?

MR. PETERPAUL: Oh, yeah. And it's become very important. I think the main issue -- and with CSX -- now there's other issues involved. There are wages and some other things. But I think to capsulize it, the easiest way was just publishing a newspaper. This past Monday, there was an article by Joe Lewis, that was chairman of the UP, and he says --

MS. WOODRUFF: He was secretary of transportation under President Reagan.

MR. PETERPAUL: Secretary of transportation also, then moved over to the railroads --

MS. WOODRUFF: Rights.

MR. PETERPAUL: -- to take over the UP.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's Union Pacific, but go ahead.

MR. PETERPAUL: Union Pacific. In the article, it was an article talking about the offices of UP getting $15 million bonuses or something as a result of stock increases, but they admitted themselves, they said that well, the reason for it was because of the imposition of the Public Emergency Board 219 from last summer that the Congress imposed, that as a result of it, they had savings because they were able to lay off 4,000 people. Now, that was just the UP Railroad, itself.

MS. WOODRUFF: Union Pacific, okay.

MR. PETERPAUL: Union Pacific, because of the imposition of that Public Emergency Board, they laidoff 4,000 people. If you count the whole industry --

MR. HARPER: But, Judy --

MR. PETERPAUL: -- that's astronomical.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Let's go now to Mr. Harper, who speaks for the carrier.

MR. HARPER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let's hear your version of why this whole thing fell apart two days ago.

MR. HARPER: Well, we have been searching for a settlement for a long time. We are just as anxious as anybody else to get timely resolution to the issues that separate rail labor and management. We'd like to see things move more quickly. But Mr. Peterpaul is fundamentally wrong about who he struck. He struck the freight railroads of America, not just CSX. CSX is one member, one of forty members of the bargaining unit, and he struck against that bargaining unit. So it's not just a CSX/IM issue. It's a strike against the freight railroads of America and the freight railroads of America responded in what was declared by Judge Green this afternoon in a case he dismissed brought by another labor union - -

MS. WOODRUFF: This is a federal judge in Washington.

MR. HARPER: Yes, federal judge in Washington dismissed a union suit, saying that this is a perfectly legal and reasonable self- help mode by one collective bargaining unit being struck by a union.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you argue, Mr. Harper, that they struck more -- they're saying they struck one carrier. How do you then extend that?

MR. HARPER: The CSX is simply one member of the bargaining unit that bargains with the IM and all the other rail labor unions, where the issue is put into national handling. And so CSX is just one member of a group. It's just like an individual machinist is a member of Mr. Peterpaul's union. And just as he would expect that individual machinist to go along with the policies of the IM, we would expect all members of our bargaining unit to go along and work together in the legitimate and appropriate self-help activities available to us.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Peterpaul, what about that explanation?

MR. PETERPAUL: I disagree with that entirely, but you're getting into a complex technical argument there, because we served notices on individual railroads.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right, but we don't want to get any more technical --

MR. PETERPAUL: And I understand that.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about his point is that you strike one union - -

MR. PETERPAUL: Well, listen.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- or rather one company that is an interdependent part of the group?

MR. PETERPAUL: This is the arrogance of the railroad. We did strike one company not to inconvenience the traveling public and also not to hinder the economy of the United States. Remember, they elected to do the rest. We didn't elect to shut down the whole country even if we had the right to do so.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you have --

MR. PETERPAUL: We had the right -- we elected to do one not to cause any inconvenience. Let's be realistic. If you took a map of the whole United States, the whole rail system in the United States, of the United States, and you took out the CSX Railroad, you would never miss it, because there's --

MR. HARPER: That's just not true.

MR. PETERPAUL: -- several other competing railroads that go over, like the Norfolk Southern.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me give Mr. Harper a chance to respond to that.

MR. HARPER: Well, basically, it's just not true that the railroads both compete and there is a seamless web of rails joining all the way across the country. I mean, that may be amusing to Mr. Peterpaul, but the --

MR. PETERPAUL: Sure is.

MR. HARPER: -- fact of the matter is that every day there is, in effect, a train 25 miles long that because his union has struck the CSX can't get into CSX territory. For example, he claims that you can go on any railroad, but the fact of the matter is only CSX covers the automobile plants in their areas, 40 percent of the coal mines in their areas, and the paper mills that are not served by other railroads.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Harper.

MR. PETERPAUL: But make it clear I think one thing is very specific. The USX -- the CSX system can be used in dispatch. The only reason those other carriers would not be able to use it is if they were denied access.

MS. WOODRUFF: Okay. I want to get beyond this, if you don't mind. Mr. Harper, just quickly, can you address a couple of the points that Mr. Peterpaul made. He said it's not only wages. He was talking about job security issues and specifically what did he say, four to six thousand and thousands more of the railway workers have been laid off in recent years. They have not been given the job security that they counted on.

MR. HARPER: Well, a couple of things. First of all, the wage issue is one of the key issues that is negotiated in national handling. It's not a CSX issue, so he undermined his own comment there. With respect to the work rules that he is talking about, he's talking about work rule issues that roll back to 1970. I mean, it almost seems like he's trying to roll back to the featherbedding era in the railroad industry, something that everybody's recognized that we can't stand and that we've got to get away from if we're going to be competitive and survive as industry.

MS. WOODRUFF: Featherbedding meaning jobs that are there for which there is no real work, is that what --

MR. HARPER: No real work, right.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about that, Mr. Peterpaul?

MR. PETERPAUL: I think Mr. Harper ought to come to the bargaining table to see exactly what's taken on -- what's taken place. Let me be specific. From 1981 to 1991, employment in the railroad industry went from about five hundred thirty million -- five hundred and thirty thousand employees to about two eighty. In the same time - - that's about a 50 percent reduction -- in the same time, productivity of those employees rose over 100 percent. And it's caused a lot of side effects. It's jeopardized the railroad retirement system. That's the retirement system from the railroad employees, because of the funding and the amount of retirees and the amount of funding that's done, because of the reduction in employment.

MR. HARPER: I think what everybody would have to admit though was that the terribly inefficient work rules were one of the reasons that the railroads had such difficulty --

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

MR. HARPER: -- in maintaining their economic viability.

MR. PETERPAUL: I think that's a fallacy when you're dealing with shop graphs and people that performed the work because all of this label, just about all of this work --

MS. WOODRUFF: Sorry. We're going to have to let one of you talk at a time. And I need to cut this off.

MR. PETERPAUL: Just about all of this work, when we talk about the reduction in employment, that has been work that's been what you referred to as out source --

MR. HARPER: The incidental work rule.

MR. PETERPAUL: -- or contracted out. And the incidental work rule which they're seeking in negotiation would take, for example, a shop where there's three our four Machinists and say all right, here's the work you do, but the work don't require this high skill, we're going to have --

MR. HARPER: No.

MR. PETERPAUL: -- somebody else do it, which could reduce the employment in that facility or location.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Harper, I'm going to give you a quick response, and then we need to move on to what Congress is doing.

MR. HARPER: Well --

MS. WOODRUFF: Or do you want to respond to that?

MR. HARPER: Well, just say quickly productivity is a key issue, indeed, for everybody, that we've got to operate efficiently. The incidental work rule is a fair work rule. 95 percent -- and this is a key point -- 95 percent of the rest of rail labor has already settled, 40 percent of those who are in voluntary collective bargaining process before Congress ever acted in PEB 219 and the fact of the matter is we're down to the last 5 percent and they're trying to do something basically unfair, cut a better deal than all this other --

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. We're going to stop at that, because I want to turn -- you all are clearly at an impasse and we've just seen that. Sec. Card, the administration reacted right away when this happened and said, we want Congress to step in. What is it that you were asking Congress to do?

SEC. CARD: First of all, we wanted Congress to help make sure that our economy is not jeopardized. Congress in the past has stepped in to resolve these disputes that are intractable. We found that the strike, the lockout, the combination created a situation where our economy was in jeopardy. And we want to see the economic recovery take hold and move forward. And Congress is the only body that can act to resolve this dispute now and the good news is that Congress is on track to do that. The trains will be running if the House and the Senate meet their responsibility today.

MS. WOODRUFF: It has been pointed out by the railroads and those who support them that if the administration was so anxious to see the economy not affected, to see this thing settled, why didn't you urge management not to do what we've just heard Mr. Harper describe?

SEC. CARD: We urged labor and management to get together and resolve their dispute. I've spent hours on the phone talking to both sides, encouraging them to come together to exercise their responsibility in collective bargaining. They chose to exercise self-help, which is under the law permissible. Only Congress can respond now that they've exercised their opportunity under the law. The President took the high moral ground. He called for Congress to act and Congress is now beginning to act. The subcommittee today voted out 14 to 3 a responsible bill that if enacted by both the House and the Senate --

MS. WOODRUFF: What would it --

SEC. CARD: -- would put the trains back on the track.

MS. WOODRUFF: What would it do in a nutshell, just quickly?

SEC. CARD: It will impose -- first of all it will require both sides to get to the table and negotiate. If they can't negotiate well, then there will be binding arbitration.

MS. WOODRUFF: There's a time limit.

SEC. CARD: There will be a time limit. We will know with finality that this process has been resolved and that while that is going on, the trains will run, our economy will not be in jeopardy and then we'll reach finality so that we can move forward with surety their economy will grow.

MS. WOODRUFF: And if they don't reach agreement, there's an arbitrator who's what, appointed from a --

SEC. CARD: Each side would pick one person from the National Labor Mediation Board to then pick a third person who would act as an arbitrator. That third person would then monitor the labor negotiations, labor/management negotiations. When there is an impasse at the end of 20 days, that arbitrator could step in, try to encourage both sides to have a last best offer, let them review that last best offer. If they were still unable to resolve their differences, then the arbitrator would make a final recommendation. He would pick one package or the other package, send it off to the President and the President could disapprove it. But if he did not disapprove it, it would become the negotiated settlement.

MS. WOODRUFF: And you're saying that would produce a fair solution?

SEC. CARD: That would produce a fair solution with finality.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman Sikorski, a fair solution? You voted against what the administration was pushing, or at least a version of it in the subcommittee tonight.

REP. SIKORSKI: I think it's important to understand, Judy, what's happened here and what Congress is expected to do from the administration's perspective and from mine. What happened here -- the nation's railroads contrived to establish a national economic emergency. They put their customers, the businesses of the country at jeopardy. They locked out 200,000 railroad workers. They stranded commuters and they brought this national emergency to Congress and to Washington and said, you solve it, and you solve it on our side. The administration, which says hands off, get government off business's back, generally says get government in, get government's nose in, on the side of the railroads. My objection is simple. You should not reward railroads for irresponsibly taking what was a small border dispute, in effect, with CSX and the Machinists and go thermonuclear --

MS. WOODRUFF: But --

REP. SIKORSKI: -- and bring the company into chaos. And secondly, you should not go after workers' rights, rights of workers who acted responsibly. They did a very surgical, single strike, not asking other unions and other railroads to honor it, and now the administration which had the capacity and still does have the capacity if the President is occupying the high moral ground here, why isn't he telling those 39 railroads that shut out their workers and shut down freight in America to put their workers back to work and deliver the goods so the American economy doesn't suffer?

MS. WOODRUFF: Sec. Card, question.

SEC. CARD: Well, first of all, the President did exercise his responsibility. When these two parties were --

REP. SIKORSKI: The President could have gone --

MS. WOODRUFF: If you'll let the Secretary finish, then we'll come back to you.

SEC. CARD: When the President realized that labor and management could not resolve their differences, he appointed Presidential emergency boards. He appointed people to those boards recommended by labor and management --

MR. PETERPAUL: I disagree with that.

SEC. CARD: -- to put together a plan --

REP. SIKORSKI: We heard this all yesterday, Mr. Secretary.

SEC. CARD: -- that was a formulation for discussion and that was the law. That's what the law requires. The President followed the law. Then that dispute got to the point where both parties could exercise something called "self-help." They exercised self-help. I don't assess motives. We didn't assess motives. We went to Congress. Congress has acted 12 times in the past resolving these kind of disputes. Clearly, the national economy is important. Clearly, America's interest has to be addressed. And only Congress can address that right now. And we're saying Congress should act today --

MS. WOODRUFF: But what about --

REP. SIKORSKI: But they're asking, Judy --

SEC. CARD: -- to solve this dispute. The fact of the matter is - -

MS. WOODRUFF: Let's let Mr. Sikorski speak right now.

REP. SIKORSKI: They're asking Congress to stick its nose in here to reward railroads that created purposely, as they admitted yesterday in testimony, for contriving a negotiating tactic.

MR. HARPER: It wasn't contrived. It's a legitimate --

REP. SIKORSKI: Secondly, secondly, they're asking us to punish workers who didn't do that, who purposely --

MR. HARPER: Well, what we're talking about is a fundamental issue --

REP. SIKORSKI: -- did not strike.

MR. HARPER: -- of fairness here.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Just a moment. Let's let Mr. Sikorski finish. If you could just make that point, because I want to get back -- in fact, let me just stop you there. Sec. Card, he said this several times now, that you're rewarding the railroads for being irresponsible.

SEC. CARD: We're not picking winners or losers in this process.

REP. SIKORSKI: Certainly are.

SEC. CARD: Chairman Dingell --

MS. WOODRUFF: But the unions are not happy with --

SEC. CARD: Chairman Dingell, who is a member of the Democratic Party, acted responsibly. Congressman Dennis Eckhardt, member of the Democratic Party, acted responsibly. We've seen other members of Congress, Chairman Al Swift acted responsibly, a Democrat, put together a package in consultation with the administration. This isn't the administration's bill. This isn't management's bill. This isn't labor's bill. This is a bill that's in America's best interest, and we see it passed today so the trains start running.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Mr. Sikorski, it is true that you're in a minority. The leadership of the Congress of both parties is on the other side.

REP. SIKORSKI: Well, sure. Congress --

MR. HARPER: The fact of the matter as well --

MS. WOODRUFF: If you'll wait just a second, I'll come to you, if we'll just let Mr. Sikorski get a few words out.

REP. SIKORSKI: The fact is that they brought, the railroads brought down the economy purposely to get Congress to come in on their side. The administration -- if it wanted to occupy the high moral ground -- could say to those 39 railroads that shut down but weren't struck go back to work, let this strike against CSX play its way out.

MS. WOODRUFF: Could you say that, Sec. Card?

SEC. CARD: You could say it. It doesn't mean anything. They exercised their responsibility under the law. Again, I don't assess motive.

REP. SIKORSKI: He refuses to say it.

SEC. CARD: We told the labor unions not to get us to a point where we had a strike. We told management not to get us to a point where our economy was in jeopardy. The reality is the trains have stopped running. Now Congress has a responsibility to step in and the President is ready to sign responsible legislation to end this stoppage.

MS. WOODRUFF: Go ahead. Whoever is speaking, go ahead.

MR. HARPER: If we're rewarding anybody in this circumstance, we are rewarding a very small minority, 5 percent of the total of rail labor that's holding out. One of the reasons the process took so long is --

MR. PETERPAUL: This is totally wrong.

MS. WOODRUFF: Could we let Mr. Harper finish, and then we'll come to you, Mr. Peterpaul.

MR. HARPER: The fact of the matter is that a few of the unions feel that they didn't get the deal they wanted so they take another bite at the apple, another bite at the apple, and keep going, and then figure they can have a concerted action, we'll take one railroad here, another railroad there tomorrow.

REP. SIKORSKI: Judy, that's so unfair.

MR. HARPER: It is a strike against --

MS. WOODRUFF: Let's go to Mr. Peterpaul.

MR. HARPER: -- the national bargaining unit of the railroads. That's the fact.

MR. PETERPAUL: Let's be realistic.

MR. HARPER: That's what's fair.

MR. PETERPAUL: 90 percent of the railroad workers did not accept the contract. 90 percent --

MR. HARPER: That's not true.

MR. PETERPAUL: -- of the railroad workers -- if Mr. Harper would let me finish -- 90 percent of the railroad workers were forced - - a contract was forced upon them by legislation. They did not accept the contract. And let's be realistic. How did they get that contract?

MS. WOODRUFF: You're talking about what happened earlier.

MR. PETERPAUL: What happened in Emergency Board 219 and the other situations, those were emergency boards that were selected by the President, the President's men. The biggest supporters in the United States of the President of the United States is the railroad management throughout the country. And what happened is there he is, he picks a Presidential emergency board, the President of the United States, to make a judgment that for the railroad workers it's obvious who's going to come up short --

MS. WOODRUFF: But just a moment, Mr. Peterpaul. But you've got the leadership of the Congress and both the --

REP. SIKORSKI: As a member of Congress, may I comment on that, Judy? Judy, last time Congress was involved, we stepped in and what happened, the railroads became much richer, the executives became much richer and with handsome bonuses, 4,000 --

MS. WOODRUFF: But Congress is about to step in again.

REP. SIKORSKI: -- 4,000 employees in one railroad alone were laid off.

MS. WOODRUFF: Okay.

REP. SIKORSKI: People like my father, who was a maintenance, a weigh worker, suffered 16 percent in pay cuts, lost health benefits.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

REP. SIKORSKI: Now that pattern is asked to be repeated again. That's why I'm in opposition. Just because it's an easy --

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

REP. SIKORSKI: -- way of resolving doesn't make it right or for the benefit of the workers, as the railroads are making that point.

MS. WOODRUFF: Very quickly.

MR. PETERPAUL: And I understand before it was forced upon the railroad workers through a situation --

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

MR. PETERPAUL: -- that was created by the President of the United States.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

MR. HARPER: That's not factually true. SEC. CARD: The solution though is before us. It's in the form of a process that will call for collective bargaining, binding arbitration with finality. Congress will not have to impose one particular solution or another. They say let the process work but bring it to finality through last best offer of binding arbitration. We want to get that bill passed tonight.

MS. WOODRUFF: Gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it at that. We thank you all for being with us. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, AIDS and the Bush administration and today's MIA hearings. UPDATE - LEFT BEHIND?

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, the controversy that lingers over the fate of Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War. Nearly 20 years after all American prisoners of war were supposedly returned or accounted for, a Senate Select Committee is looking into reports that some Americans might still be in captivity. The committee is questioning current and former government officials and much of the testimony has revolved around the issue of whether the U.S. government has been honest in its past accountings either to the American public or to the families of soldiers. Correspondent Kwame Holman reports.

MR. HOLMAN: The Senate hearings began yesterday with committee members divided over whether the evidence they've accumulated already is sufficient to make the claim that missing Americans might still be alive in Indochina. But there was no disagreement when Chairman John Kerry opened the session by asserting that the U.S. government had not fully or properly accounted for all prisoners of war when the Vietnam War ended in 1973.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, Chairman, MIA/POW Committee: There is evidence that some people were absolutely left behind in that status at that time. And it is sufficient to contradict official statements made then and repeated for almost two decades. It is enough to require us now to demand to know why we said what we said back then and if and why we may have failed to aggressively pursue the information that we had.

MR. HOLMAN: Kerry also released newly declassified Pentagon documents, including one from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1973. It acknowledged that from 1965 to 1972, the Pentagon deliberately misled families of soldiers killed or missing in covert operations in Cambodia and Laos. The documents said, "In order to preserve the covert nature of these operations, next of kin of casualties would neither be given the loss location nor details of the mission." that policy was modified in 1973 to give families who asked the location but not the nature of the covert missions. Today Chairman Kerry and other committee members questioned Pentagon officials who were in charge of MIA issues in the early 1970s.

ROGER SHIELDS, Former Pentagon Official: People were asking if we knew that we had left anyone behind. And the answer was, we do not have indications at this time.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: That has been the official line and that has been the line that was articulated in '76 and '80, but the question is: What did we know in 1973, and what did we do?

ROGER SHIELDS: We knew the men had been alive in captivity at one time.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Correct.

ROGER SHIELDS: We knew that the men who returned --

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And to say that there --

ROGER SHIELDS: -- did not know of men who had been left.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: To say that all prisoners of war had returned, as the President announced on the 29th of March, a week before your press conference, was wrong. You knew it was wrong. Let me tell you why. Do you recall going to see Sec. of Defense William Clements in his office in early April, a week before your April conference, correct?

ROGER SHIELDS: That's correct.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And you heard him tell you "All the American POW's are dead." You said to him, "You can't say that."

ROGER SHIELDS: That's correct.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And he repeated to you, "You didn't hear me; they're all dead," correct?

ROGER SHIELDS: That's essentially correct.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And you reported to Amb. Hill that your statement about POW's saying there's no indication anybody's alive became DOD policy, correct, in 1972?

ROGER SHIELDS: That was a response regarding the question of do we know that men are alive. I did not say they are all alive. Nor did I say they were all dead. And I did not know that. What I said here -- and this is Defense Department policy -- if you're looking for policy, because it's not a newspaper interview, it's not a press clipping, it's in an official document of the United States Congress in which I say, people were alive at one time, they should have been accounted for. They weren't. The question now is an open one. I don't know if they are alive or dead and --

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Well, why does Bill Clements, your boss, want to say they're all dead?

ROGER SHIELDS: I suspect that it was his view, just as it's Sen. Smith's view, that someone was alive in 1989 and you don't have evidence to believe it. People disagreed on this issue and they still do.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN, [R] Arizona: Are we talking to some degree about semantical differences here, or are we talking about the fact that the American government and people abandoned those who were still listed as missing in action? In other words, what I'm trying to get at here is what was the thrust of the belief? Is it that the President of the United States said there's no more Americans alive in Southeast Asia and we close the book until the agitation on the part of families and other Americans brought this back to the attention of the American people, or has there been a good faith effort, or is it somewhere in-between, in the view of many of us, that during the seventies, the issue was ignored to a certain degree because of the desire of the American people and the American people to put this issue behind us?

FRANK SIEVERTS, Former State Department Official: The root question is whether there were any opportunities to achieve the return of living Americans. That's the sole question. And no, I don't think there were any. I don't think we had any indications of Americans in captivity. Some of my testimony is intended to bear on that question, because of our past experience of the lengths to which Americans would go if they were talking about POW's held against their will in captivity, the lengths they would go, one way or another, to let us know of this. It bears on the photographs, for example, the idea of Americans cheerfully being photographed and not using that opportunity to somehow convey who they are and what the circumstances are is beyond my imagination. So I think it's not merely a question of semantics. It is, rather, a question of phraseology, of dealing on the one hand with Vietnamese, Lao, and other Indochinese in a positive spirit to hold them accountable, to seek that accounting which is in many cases, of course, was going to involve the return of remains, but at the same time, not to present a false impression, a misleading, overly hopeful impression to the American people. I think the difficulty of phrasing it in a way that handles that situation properly is essentially what's being discussed right here today.

SEN. NANCY KASSEBAUM, [R] Kansas: I think that the confusion lies that unfortunately perhaps it was not handled with as much forthrightness as it should have at the time. And out of all that has come a great deal of uncertainty largely because there were - - it was a very traumatic time for all sorts of different reasons. But I think this lack of forthrightness, sort of differing agendas which frequently happens on the part of various agencies and departments, has made it extremely difficult. I am just not one who believes in conspiracy theories, but I think unfortunately, because we have been such a long time coming to terms with this, and doing in a way and being as forthright as possible, we've created and added a great deal of sorrow and confusion to the process.

MR. HOLMAN: The committee had been scheduled to hear Monday from H. Ross Perot. He now will submit a deposition on his efforts to track down missing Vietnam servicemen. The next public hearings are likely to come in August. FOCUS - AIDS - INSUFFICIENT RESPONSE?

MR. MacNeil: Next, the new charges against the Bush administration's AIDS policy. Today the National Commission on AIDS charged the White House and the Department of Health & Human Services with failing to develop a national plan to fight the AIDS epidemic. Last fall, the AIDS Commission concluded a two-year study. It issued its blueprint for federal action. AIDS Commission members who were appointed by Congress and the White House met with administration officials last night. After a 90-minute meeting with Secretary of Health Louis Sullivan, the AIDS Commission issued a statement saying the administration's response was woefully inadequate. Here to discuss the commission's criticism is Dr. June Osborn, Chairman of the National Commission, who joins us from public television station WTVS in Detroit, and Kevin Moley, Deputy Secretary of Health & Human Services. Dr. Osborn, just tell us your principal complaint against the administration.

DR. OSBORN: Well, it is a complaint of insufficiency. There are many fine people working terribly hard, working flat out within the administration and throughout the country to deal with an epidemic that has truly historic proportions. Our complaint is that the response is far short of historic and, therefore, far short of adequate in the face of such a human disaster.

MS. WOODRUFF: What are the consequences of that in the control and treatment of this epidemic?

DR. OSBORN: Oh, the consequences are pervasive. We have people working terribly hard in every kind of context, prevention, care, the effort to take care of people and keep them off the streets. We have people becoming homeless because they've become ill and because we're unprepared in terms of supportive systems of care. Our public hospitals are teetering and Medicare is being stretched badly. And that's part of the teetering. These aren't new comments, because that report not only was presented eight months ago, but during the two years of our work, we've had people, very dedicated people from the Department of Health & Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense Department with us. The secretaries are in fact officially members of our commission. And so we've been communicating right along with them, but more importantly, the American people have been communicating with us. I'm afraid that in a certain sense, the excitement is about the messenger, us, when, in fact, the excitement should be about the message that we're delivering, which is I think that the American people recognize now, that there's a woeful insufficiency of response. And it's having disastrous consequences for people with AIDS, for people who have AIDS in their family or HIV, and for people who are caring for people with AIDS. Already, 23 percent or more of people in the country in polls say that they know somebody with HIV and were the atmosphere not so hostile, I suspect that number would be much higher because it is still the case that people are hiding their status, trying to hide their grief or their illness.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moley, how do you respond to this? How does the Department respond?

MR. MOLEY: Well, I'd like to speak to the issue of historic insufficiency that Dr. Osborn just raised. The fact of the matter is, Robin, that no time in history has a greater effort been made, has been a larger increase in effort been made during the course of the Bush administration. The fact is that on behalf of AIDS we have increased funding 118 percent. In fact, although many times more people in our country are affected by heart disease, we spend more money on AIDS per capita than we do on our heart disease. We, in fact, have increased our spending levels across all government by 170 percent since 1988, 118 percent just since 1989, at the Public Health Service, an increase of 58 percent. It, in fact, is historic. Dr. Osborn can't name another disease epidemic of any kind ever to affect any nation in history, in which the response hasn't been greater than the effort that has been made in this administration over the last several years. And I defy her to point out in terms of increased effort, in terms of effort per capita, an increase larger than what we had made on behalf of the AIDS community. We share her compassion, but we think she has to more broadly focus her efforts in realizing exactly what we have done and not excuse us, as she has done, of insufficiency. So there's nowhere she can point to where the effort hasn't, in fact, been, to use her term, "historic."

MR. MacNeil: Dr. Osborn, you've been defied to point the insufficiencies.

DR. OSBORN: Let me first comment that it isn't Dr. Osborn pointing. It's a bipartisan commission that was created to try and give guidance to both the Executive and Legislative Branch, and to help develop a national census. I think that the comment is quite accurate that there's never been a disease with more spent. There has never been a more threatening epidemic in the 20th century. We have already a quarter of a million Americans who have been diagnosed with AIDS. We've had more deaths than the combined deaths of the Vietnam and Korean Wars. That number will more than double by the end of 1993. And we have at least a million other Americans, young adults, who should be learning, who should be in the productive years of their lives, on their way to illness. And we are unprepared. Those kinds of assessments on a per capita or a per year basis or comparisons with other diseases fail to take into account that we've had thirty and forty years of researching, of effort, of learning how to care well, for people with well-known diseases. This epidemic has accumulated the statistics I've just mentioned in less than 11 years. It's just 11 years ago that it was recognized and it had a tenure, had started at that time, so people getting sick now are those people who became infected before they knew there was a virus. We have a prevention job to do that's absolutely urgent, or we will be caring for people in the 21st century who got infected tomorrow, and that's a shocking shame, because we do know how to prevent it. Many of the things we've brought up in an effort to renew the public sense of commitment of the government yesterday were things that involved really not too much more than a renewed statement of the agency and rapid development of this crisis. This isn't stable. This isn't a per capita rate. We are going by 1993 to have AIDS be the leading cause of potential years of life lost in the United States. It is already the leading cause of death of young men and young women in many parts of this country, and it hasn't even started.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moley, President Bush, when the commission met with him last year in December, he welcomed their report and he asked what -- for suggestions on what more could be done. The commission is now saying he doesn't want to do anymore. Essentially, you don't want anything new. How do you respond to that?

MR. MOLEY: Well, in fact, Robin, I question the sincerity of Dr. Osborn and the committee in some respects. We share the compassion for AIDS victims and those who are in threat of getting AIDS by lack of information. But for instance, in their report that they issued last evening or this morning, they suggest, for instance, that in our 1994 budget we're going to reduce our commitment to the Ryan White Act. That's something that quite frankly Dr. Osborn doesn't know and as the former assistant secretary for management & budget at this moment in time I don't even know. Those figures haven't been brought to me. They haven't been brought to the attention of the secretary. That's just the kind of influence that lacks credibility, and, in fact, goes right to the substance of their committee's report. They shouldn't be making those kind of unfounded, untoward allegations. It does a disservice to the effort against AIDS, when they politicize the situation as they do in this instance.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let me ask this, since that's so specific. Let's go back to Dr. Osborn on that one. You heard the charge he just made.

DR. OSBORN: Yeah, the charge of insincerity. I assure him I am sincere. Insofar as the numbers are concerned, it is a fact that is a little tedious to establish, but we were careful with it. But there was contemplation of radically reducing the Ryan White funding. Never mind --

MR. MacNeil: We have to explain what the Ryan White funding is.

DR. OSBORN: I need to explain that. I'm sorry, yes. It is the one major act of health care legislation that has been passed by Congress with almost unanimous support at the authorization level in order to help shore up the public hospitals, to care for people who are sick and need care, and in addition, to move into areas which have not yet been hard hit by the epidemic, to help them from feeling the full blast of its force, if preventive activities and organization-like duties at the community and local level could be activated, so it's a very important act. It was drawn together as a disaster relief bill and put forward that way. As I say, it got nearly unanimous authorization legislation, and yet, when it was funded in that year, it was funded at not just over 1/3 of authorized level. Subsequently, it has had small percentage increases and indeed was contemplated for reduction at a time when the number of cities eligible for its funds -- you have to have accumulated at least 2,000 cases of AIDS in a given metropolitan area to qualify -- at the time when that number was about to jump from eighteen to twenty-four, when the number of people diagnosed had doubled, the funds have been held almost level, it was contemplated that they be cut. So there has been a very sad partial response, an inadequacy of means to deal with a massive human disaster. We don't deal with physical disasters that way and I'm very sincere in saying that we must not as a nation that values its people deal with human disasters that way either.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moley, do you want to come back?

MR. MOLEY: Let me just say once again, Dr. Osborn is flat out wrong. The fact of the matter is we have not contemplated reduced funding for Ryan White. We are not even in the stage of budget development for FY-94, which would enable us to contemplate it even if we were intending to do so. And I know of no intention that we intend to do so.

DR. OSBORN: Good.

MR. MacNeil: Dr. Osborn.

DR. OSBORN: I would love to hear that you are going for full funding of the Ryan White Care Bill. That would still only be the disaster relief component of what needs to be a national effort to care for these people and to prevent further HIV spread and infection and a rational means. You have focused us on one of the eight measures that we talked with the secretary about --

MR. MOLEY: And first of all --

DR. OSBORN: -- having distilled.

MR. MOLEY: -- Dr. Osborn, we require an absolute apology from you for making this misstatement as if it is fact. It is not fact. Let's fess up. You've made a mistake. That is incorrect. That should not stand on this national news program.

MR. MacNeil: Dr. Osborn.

DR. OSBORN: Well, I'm interested to hear that said today. It was not said during the 90-minute meeting yesterday. And we had, in fact, talked with the people beforehand too so that without my papers here, I will have trouble giving you chapter and verse, but we'll be happy to work with you, sir. I think that the contemplation of a cut --

MR. MOLEY: This is serious enough a subject --

DR. OSBORN: This is very serious.

MR. MOLEY: -- that you should have your facts straight.

MR. MacNeil: Dr. Osborn.

MR. MOLEY: -- bring them to the attention of the American people and you are flat out wrong, Dr. Osborn.

MR. MacNeil: Dr. Osborn, he also accused you a moment ago of politicizing this issue. Yet, your report today, your statement, talks about there's no plan untainted by politics, is the phrase, in the administration. What are the politics of this situation in this election year, as you on the commission see this?

DR. OSBORN: I don't --

MR. MacNeil: Who is politicizing the issue?

DR. OSBORN: Well, I don't understand that. I'm not -- we are, in fact, a bipartisan commission that had been asked by Congress to report on how we see the situation in the country to both the administration and the Congress. And we have tried to do so conscientiously, have tried to raise the voice of concern to a level proportionate to the scope of the epidemic, and its speed of development. Political -- accusations of politics are difficult to substantiate, but I know of very few people -- I go around the country talking about this epidemic all the time. And once people have the facts and have them clearly, it is not a political matter, and so our suspicion of politics comes from the fact that there is a tremendous inertia where there should be a sense of unified national concern. I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know enough to be able to substantiate that one, however, it is a concern -- and I must point out we've been working three years now. We have been systematically submitting reports and trying to lay out a blueprint for what we perceive to be emergency action and it has taken us a long slow time, eight months since the publication of that report, before we finally said, please, talk with us, because this is more urgent than eight months after the report suggests.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moley, how do you respond briefly to the charge of inertia?

MR. MOLEY: Well, I would again refer to the fact that we've increased the budget substantially in each and every year, historic levels of per capita spending --

DR. OSBORN: Mr. Moley, the prevention budget was cut.

MR. MOLEY: The fact of the matter is we have increased by 170 percent. There is no element of the federal budget --

MR. MacNeil: Okay.

MR. MOLEY: -- which has had a larger increase, not a single element.

MR. MacNeil: Sorry to cut you there, but that is the end of our time. Thank you both for joining us this evening. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the other main stories of this Thursday, Congress moved toward passage of legislation to end the nation's railroad shutdowns, Amtrak faced a midnight strike deadline that would stop all Northeast service affecting hundreds of thousands of commuters. The government reported that the economy grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate during the first three months of the year. And Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said officials at the highest level of government were under investigation to determine whether they broke the law. His probe of the 1985 arms for hostages deal is expected to end this summer. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with our review of the week in politics with Gergen & Shields, plus another Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversation on race relations. She talks with authors Jim Sleeper and Derrick Bell. I'm Robert MacNeil. Thank you and good night.