The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday, President Bush said he was more positive about giving financial aid to the Soviet Union after hearing about their new economic reform plans, Angola's warring factions signed a peace treaty after 16 years of fighting, the nation's index of leading economic indicators rose for the third straight month. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff's in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: On the NewsHour tonight we take a major look at one of the most controversial issues to reach Capitol Hill this year, civil rights. We examine what's behind the angry exchanges between Congress and the White House, and what lies ahead. Then comment on that and other developments from our regular Friday political analysis team of Gergen & Shields.NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WOODRUFF: President Bush met with Mikhail Gorbachev's special envoy today to discuss the Soviet President's latest economic reform program. Yevgeny Primakov and a delegation of Soviet economists have been consulting with U.S. officials this week on how to convert their economy to a free market system. Gorbachev hopes the plan will convince Mr. Bush to grant the Soviet Union most favored nation trade status and $1 1/2 billion in foreign credit. He also wants to attend the July summit of major industrial countries in London. After today's meeting, Primakov told reporters that his country needed patience and understanding from the West. President Bush said that he was feeling more positive about helping the Soviets after speaking with Primakov. He spoke about the new Soviet plan during a photo session with the NCAA swimming champions in the White House Rose Garden.

PRES. BUSH: I liked what I heard and we have some decisions ahead of us and I am not going to pre-judge those decisions. I'm not going to suggest that my mind is made up, nor is the administration position yet firmed up on a wide array of matters with the Soviets. I had the impression that they are undertaking what for them is and what the world is will see as radical economic reform, and when you've had a totally controlled economy and you try to move to a market economy, it's not easy. You need help along the way.

MS. WOODRUFF: Leaders from five of the seven nations attending the July economic summit have said they are willing to let Gorbachev attend. Only President Bush and British Prime Minister John Major remain hesitant. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Sec. of State Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh will hold talks in Lisbon tomorrow on a range of bilateral issues. They arrived in the Portuguese capital today to witness the signing of a peace treaty ending the 16 year old war in Angola. U.S. and Soviet pressure helped bring Angolan President Jose Eduardo DeSantos and rebel leader Jonas Savimby to the negotiating table a year ago. Baker and Bessmertnykh praised the efforts that made possible today's peace accord for the former Portuguese colony.

SEC. BAKER: I expressed to the prime minister the gratitude of the United States and what I felt was probably the gratitude as well of the entire world for the extraordinary mediation efforts of the government of Portugal in bringing about a solution.

MR. BESSMERTNYKH: I think this is a very solid agreement. It is a product of many months of joint efforts by the two parties in the first place, by Portugal, which played a key role in that, and also by the United States and the Soviet Union.

MR. MacNeil: In a surprise announcement, Sec. Baker said he would also meet with Syria's foreign minister in Lisbon tomorrow. Baker said the meeting would focus on U.S. efforts to convene a Middle East peace conference. Defense Sec. Cheney flew to Cairo today for talks with Egyptian President Mubarak. Earlier in Jerusalem Israeli Prime Minister Shamir reportedly told Cheney that the arms reduction initiative proposed by Pres. Bush must focus on conventional not nuclear weapons. Israel is believed to be the only Middle East nation with a developed nuclear arms capability. After the meeting, Cheney announced the U.S. is stockpiling military equipment in the Jewish statement in case of a future war.

MS. WOODRUFF: The UN Sec. General said today that Iraq will have to pay up to 30 percent of its future oil revenues as reparations for victims of the invasion of Kuwait. The compensation will cover such things as environmental damage, loss of revenues and loss of wages. Iraq's ambassador to the UN said the 30 percent figure would be too high for Iraq to manage. Ethiopia's provisional rebel government today appealed for new international aid for an estimated 7.3 million famine victims. United Nations officials, however, said that a tax on supply convoys had forced a temporary suspension of aid delivery to most areas. They described foot shortages as desperate. Rebel leaders said they had reopened the main port of Asab and were working to provide security for relief operations. Lindsay Taylor of Independent Television News is in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. He filed this report on the situation there.

MR. TAYLOR: Despite demonstrations over the past few days, the government remains confident that pockets of resistance will soon have dwindled to nothing. Today many more market stalls and shops in the city opened as people here slowly get used to the sight of rebel troops on most street corners. For their part, the soldiers, some of them just boys, have remained disciplined and relaxed. People are confused by what's happened here this week. Thoughts are turning to the future, however uncertain that future may still be. Here at the Silapi Church hundreds gathered to pray for peace and an end to suffering. With Ethiopia facing the constant ravages of nature, people here are hoping that war at least is now behind them.

MS. WOODRUFF: Italy's foreign ministry announced that its embassy in Addis Ababa has given refuge to the lieutenant general who took over from exiled Ethiopian President Mengistu. The general ruled Ethiopia for less than a week. His whereabouts have been unknown since the rebel takeover three days ago.

MR. MacNeil: There was some encouraging economic news today. The government said its index of leading economic indicators rose for the third month in a row. It gained .6 percent in April, following even larger gains in March and February. The index is one of the government's main gauges of economic activity. The Commerce Department also reported that factory orders jumped 1.8 percent last month. It was the first increase in six months. On Wall Street analysts said the signs of economic recovery caused a record setting day at the New York Stock Exchange. Blue chip stocks led the way as the Dow Jones Average rose 27 points to close at an all time high of 3027.50.

MS. WOODRUFF: William Kennedy Smith appeared in a Florida courtroom this morning and pleaded "not guilty" to charges that he raped a woman at his family's estate in Palm Beach. Smith is the nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts. The trial is scheduled to begin during the week of August 5th.

MR. MacNeil: That's it for our summary of the day's top stories. Just ahead, the showdown in Washington over civil rights and Gergen & Shields. FOCUS - RIGHTS OR WRONGS

MS. WOODRUFF: We devote the bulk of our program tonight to an examination of one of the most contentious issues facing Washington these days, civil rights. A political firestorm has been ignited on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as Congress prepares to take up the legislation next week. We will talk to five key players, but first this background report from Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: Racial segregation by law and the protests that resulted eventually led to passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibited racial discrimination in voting, public accommodations and employment. But equality at the lunch counter and in the voting booth fared better over the years than equality in the workplace. Employers resisted applying standards of the civil rights legislation to hiring and promotion. In a set of rulings in 1989, the Supreme Court supported that view. Six High Court decisions had the effect of making it more difficult for workers to bring and win discrimination suits against employers. Advocacy groups for minorities and women reacted immediately to the court decision. They worked with members of Congress to fashion legislation that would nullify the court ruling. Throughout 1990 the coalition ultimately fought and negotiated with the Bush administration and its conservative and business allies to find a compromise acceptable to both sides. The effort failed but both Houses of Congress, both controlled by Democrats, finally passed a civil rights bill by large margins. And as he had promised, President Bush vetoed it, claiming employers would feel driven to hire specific numbers or quotas of minorities in order to avoid costly lawsuits.

SPOKESMAN: [October 24, 1990] The bill on reconsideration fails to pass over the President's veto.

MR. HOLMAN: An effort to override the veto failed by only one vote in the Senate. It was the first successful Presidential veto of a civil rights bill in history. During last fall's political campaign, the issue of quotas in hiring was exploited in some of the hottest contests.

CAMPAIGN AD: Diane Feinstein has promised as governor to fill state jobs on the basis of strict numerical quotas, not experience, not qualifications, not ability, but quotas. It's unfair.

CAMPAIGN AD: You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?

MR. HOLMAN: That commercial helped re-elect one of the Senate's most conservative members, Republican Jesse Helms, who was facing a black challenger, Democrat Harvey Gant. Such Republican tactics made Democrats in Congress nervous about another bruising battle over a job discrimination bill. The Democratic leadership came up with a new strategy to insulate members from the charge they were pro quota. In their latest version of the bill, quotas in the workplace are expressly forbidden.

REP. JACK BROOKS, [D] Texas: The substitute language says explicitly that this bill will not encourage, require or permit quotas in employment practices. And while I'm sure that people are already -- some folks you know -- probably already buying those 30 second spots in the media to criticize this new substitute as being a quota bill without having read it, we've made crystal clear that the charge is patently false, unworthy of debate.

MR. HOLMAN: Nevertheless, the Bush White House and its allies still refuse to accept the compromise language prohibiting quotas.

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: You can say this isn't a quota bill. You can say it in 15 different languages. You can say quotas aren't permitted, but you know, if you take a bottle of muscatel and you put a label on it and call it Cordon Rouge 1812, it's still muscatel.

MR. HOLMAN: House Democrats charged the Republicans were simply continuing to play politics with the quota issue.

REP. DAVID E. BONIOR, [D] Michigan: It's easy to engage in a politic that divides us and that plays on our fears. That has been the strategy the Republican Party has stooped to, pitting men against women, black against white, just to create a phoney political issue.

MR. HOLMAN: On top of Republican opposition, supporters of the civil rights bill now face desertions in their own ranks. Women in Congress who had supported earlier versions of the legislation now threaten to oppose a new feature in the compromise, a $150,000 limit on damage awards women and other non-racial groups could collect for intentional job discrimination.

REP. BARBARA KENNELLY, [D] Connecticut: Back in 1964, the whole world understood what was going on in equal rights and civil rights. The whole world understood that we were all created in the eyes of God as equal. Since then we got ourselves submerged in legalisms. Just think about what we're doing. We're capping a particular group. We're capping people and telling them they're not equal in the eyes of the law. Now I will be very frank with you. We women, the handicapped, religious groups, never, never thought we were going to dominate the workplace, but we certainly aren't going to vote for a civil rights bill that has caps in it that make all of us second class citizens. And that's what this issue is about.

MR. HOLMAN: Yesterday before the graduating class at the FBI Academy, President Bush declared that even the latest civil rights bill with its explicit "no quotas" clause would cause them anyway.

PRES. BUSH: We want to sign a bill that encourages people to work together. Unfortunately, congressional leaders again want to pass a bill that would lead employers to adopt hiring quotas and unfair job preferences. This week they proposed an anti-quota amendment to take care of the problem, the quota problem. They said it didn't exist. It shouldn't fool anyone. If you look closely at the amendment, you'll see that it endorses quotas.

REP. DICK GEPHARDT, Democratic Majority Leader: This is not a President who wants a civil rights leader. This is a President who wants to save his negative ads from 1988 and use them again in 1992. This is not a President who wants to bring America together. This is the first President in the civil rights era who wants to tear us apart for political gain.

MR. HOLMAN: House Democrats want to muster 288 votes for the civil rights bill, enough to override the promised Presidential veto, enough to send a message to the Senate that it should do the same.

MS. WOODRUFF: We get five perspectives now. Rep. Don Edwards, Democrat from California, is chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, he is a co-sponsor of the bill endorsed by the Democratic leadership. Rep. Fred Grandee, Republican of Iowa, is a member of the GOP Civil Rights Task Force which helped draft the President's alternative civil rights bill. They both join us from Capitol Hill. Rep. Patsy Mink, Democrat from Hawaii, is a member of the House Education & Labor Committee and the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues. Wade Henderson is the National Legislative Director of the NAACP, the National Association of Colored People. And Mike Baroody is the senior vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers. He was the assistant secretary of labor for policy during the second Reagan term. Congressman Edwards, is the President right when he says, as he has yesterday and before that, that what this bill really does is it's going to force employers to hire people who are not qualified by quotas?

REP. EDWARDS: No. I'm sure the President knows better. This bill doesn't have any quotas in it. But the President wants to use this as a political weapon. He likes the idea of using quotas in elections. He intends to use it in the 1992 elections.

MS. WOODRUFF: But he said -- he said that you're fooling people, those of you who support this legislation. His press spokesman said it's a wolf in sheep's clothing. The attorney general said that it was a hoax.

REP. EDWARDS: Well, all I can say is that we were very careful in writing this bill. Why would Democrats write a bill, Judy, that establishes quotas or encourages quotas? The people that we're trying to protect in this bill, women and minorities, have suffered from quotas more than any other groups in America today. Women have a quota in the House of Representatives of 29. Blacks and Hispanics have suffered from quotas all of their lives. So we have no interest in quotas. The bill does not provide for quotas and I assure you both my friend, President Bush, and the attorney general know this very well, but they want the political issue. Jesse Helms used it. It's the Willie Horton idea too, remember that, setting up Democrats.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman Grandy, why are you and other Republicans so convinced that this bill would create quotas?

REP. GRANDY: Well, I believe it would create quotas even though Don is right in saying that it doesn't mandate quotas or in any way sanctify them in law. It is going to result, because, one, of the unlimited damages and, two, the quota language in employers using defensive hiring practices to avoid going into court. The limitations, or I should say the lack of limitations, on compensatory and punitive damages are enough to probably frighten employers to impose quotas in the workplace.

MS. WOODRUFF: I'm going to interrupt you though. Are you saying it's primarily the damage language in there, or is it something else in there?

REP. GRANDY: No. I think there's both. There's the quota language which although supposedly has been cleaned up is now so rigidly drawn that basically it says it's only a quota if you hire unqualified workers. Well, I would submit to you that no employer is going to go out and actively seek unqualified workers. So the definition does not give the employer any coverage, but the threat of being at risk by not conforming to numerical, statistical balances in the workplace will force the guy to take preemptive action and limit the number of blacks or Asians or African- Americans that he will hire and there will be kind of de facto quotas in the workplace, and that is what the business community and smaller employers are arguing and what we're trying to establish in our version and the President's version.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, then let me go right back then to Congressman Edwards on that point. Is that what employers are going to feel that they have to do in order to conform to these statistical realities that he said are going to be presented?

REP. EDWARDS: Judy, nothing that we would ever do would require employers to hire unqualified people, absolutely not. We're just as interested in good business as the Republicans. And what we did here is return the law to pre 1989. For 21 years, under the Griggs' formula, the same rules were in existence.

MS. WOODRUFF: This is a previous Supreme Court decision made back in 1971?

REP. EDWARDS: That is correct. And I asked the attorney general, show me where the Griggs' formula ever, ever created or encouraged formulas. He couldn't find one single case.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. What about that, Congressman Grandy?

REP. GRANDY: Well, I would just say Don is citing the Wards-Cove case, which in the President's --

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, this is another Supreme Court decision, 1989.

REP. GRANDY: But this is -- going to the provision in the bill that defines business necessity which would allow you to get around the quota argument, we in our bill take the Griggs language and describe the manifest relationship to the job in question as the reason to get around any kind of unfair employment practice. The other bills that are being proposed by Don's subcommittee and the new alternative that is coming out do not do that. They add language to the Griggs decision which I think gives plaintiff's attorneys a little bit more leeway to perhaps impose lawsuits on employers that might be guilty or might not. But I think the end result will be a lot of cases that will be settled rather than solved.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. At the risk of getting over my head I know and over the heads of others who are watching who may not be intimately familiar with the language in these Supreme Court decisions and in the legislation, Wade Henderson, what about that point, that there's language in the bill that the White House and the Republicans find it's just going to be too high a hurdle for employers to overcome?

MR. HENDERSON: Judy, nothing could be further from the truth. The characterization that the civil rights bill is somehow a quota bill is unfair and untrue. First, language in the bill explicitly prohibits the use of quotas. It flat out makes it absolutely illegal to engage in quota hiring. Secondly, the argument that somehow the damage provisions of the bill will create de facto quotas or incentives for employers to engage in quota hiring is also untrue, because the damage provisions of the bill only apply to victims of intentional discrimination.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. I want to try to separate damages apart if you don't mind, get to that injust a moment, just to make it as clear as possible. What about Congressman Grandy's point just now that there is language in here that goes beyond what the law used to be and says to employers you've got to jump a higher hurdle? That's really the point, as I understand it.

MR. HENDERSON: Congressman Grandy is simply inaccurate. The language of the Civil Rights Act seeks to restore the law to where it was prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Wards-Cove. You mentioned the Griggs case that for 19 years was the law of the land, and that case established the standards by which employers were held accountable for acts that created unintentional discriminatory effects. No quotas existed under Griggs and nothing in the civil rights bill would now create quotas.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right, Michael Baroody, with the National Association of Manufacturers, obviously representing a business interest, if that's the case, what's the objection? If the law is simply going back to where it was before, why the big complaint?

MR. BAROODY: If that is what the bill did, there would be no complaint. I think we made that in the business community very clear at the start of the process 18 months ago. We think that this bill goes far beyond restoration. The way to restore the Griggs standard from that Supreme Court decision in 1971 that everyone lived under quite well for 20 years -- and Congressman Edwards is quite right about that -- the way to restore that into law is to restore the language of Griggs.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you're saying --

MR. BAROODY: HR-1 does not do that. It varies from that language in ways that you can't be sure the courts will -- it may take years to interpret, just as it took years to solidify the standard under Griggs.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there a way to boil that whole argument down - -

MR. BAROODY: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- so that all of us can understand?

MR. BAROODY: Well, you can boil it down to the language of Griggs, which is that the employment must -- it must bear a manifest relationship to the employment in question, simple language, very clear and direct, and it's not in HR-1.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. What about that, Wade Henderson?

MR. HENDERSON: Mike knows he is being unfair. The Griggs case - -

MR. BAROODY: I don't know that, Wade.

MR. HENDERSON: -- established a standard by which employers were held accountable for acts that created unintentional discriminatory effects. What HR-1 has done is to take the language of Griggs and to put it for the first time in statutory form, and in doing so, the authors and sponsors of the legislation believe they have captured the four corners of the Griggs standard. What we believe we have done and the sponsors of HR-1 have done is to create for the first time the statutory mandate that Griggs established.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

MR. HENDERSON: And we seek to do nothing more than that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman Grandy, you want to respond directly to him?

REP. GRANDY: I guess the only thing I would say is if you seek to capture the spirit of Griggs, why not use the language of Griggs, which is what we do in HR-1375, which is the administration bill. It is taken directly from the Griggs statute and put into the civil rights law. As Mike Baroody was pointing out, substantial and manifest relationship to the job in question, which is what is in HR-1, is a different set of criteria.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why --

REP. GRANDY: To allow different plaintiff determination.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. What about that very point, Congressman Edwards?

REP. EDWARDS: Well, the trouble with the President's bill in this area is that the standards are so low that employers could just discriminate all over the place.

MS. WOODRUFF: But wait a minute. They're saying the standards are simply what they were before.

REP. EDWARDS: The Griggs decision is a big decision and it doesn't have in one line exactly what the standards for business necessity might be. We have used every word, especially in the substitute that we will vote on last, from the Griggs decision. This is what the Business Roundtable people worked out with civil rights leaders in all those meetings. We took the notes from those understandings and put them into the substitute bill.

MR. BAROODY: The BRT has disavowed any compromise.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Business Roundtable.

MR. BAROODY: The Business Roundtable, which did engage in the discussions for quite some time at the start of this year, and they have said that the ground rules they set for those discussions was that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed, because as we already discovered in this conversation, the issues are inter- related. The question of whether it's a quota bill or not has a lot to do with the damages provisions. They never got --

REP. EDWARDS: Aaah --

MR. BAROODY: -- to the damages --

MS. WOODRUFF: Let's talk about the damages provisions.

MR. BAROODY: All right.

MS. WOODRUFF: That, in fact, is a larger concern, is that right?

MR. BAROODY: It is a very large concern among the business community on which I think the business community has been unified throughout.

MR. HENDERSON: Judy, let me make one point before the audience becomes too confused in our discussion. There is a very bright line that separates the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the bill that we have supported in Congress, from the President's bill. The Civil Rights Act does seek to codify the so-called "Griggs standard." The President's bill, on the other hand, while it purports to overturn a recent Supreme Court decision known as Wards-Cove, in actuality tries to codify the underlying language of that decision and as a result, we find that employers will be given a far easier standard, substantially easier than was the case under Griggs, in ways that will permit them to engage in discriminatory hiring that can't and should not be justified. Now with respect to the damage issue, I think there is a point of confusion that needs to be clarified. The damage provisions of the Civil Rights Act in no way relate to the problems of quotas. First of all, damages under the Civil Rights Act are only available to victims of intentional discrimination. It does not apply in instances where a person has been victimized by the unintended consequences of an employer.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. If that's the case, Mike Baroody, why then is the National Association of Manufactures and other business groups opposed -- and after I hear from you, I do want bring Congresswoman Mink in --

MR. BAROODY: Well, first of all, it's not the case. The damages, jury trials, compensatory and punitive damages to which we object, would be available even for a disparate impact, that is, a quota related case, through the simple mechanism of pattern and practice filings. In fact, some lawyers practiced in labor law tell me that if a lawyer brought a suit in court and didn't go for damages, he might be guilty of malpractice, and we could make the case. He would make at least a dual filing of both a disparate impact and a disparate treatment case.

MS. WOODRUFF: So businesses are worried that they are going to have to pay out a lot of money that would put them what, at a great disadvantage?

MR. BAROODY: More than the money. Obviously the money's important, but even more than the money is the way we sort of put employers in a box, damned if you do, damned if you don't, and in either case you're subject to manifold damage awards, both compensatory and punitive. Let me speak, if I may for a moment, about the cap. The cap really is illusory. The cap --

MS. WOODRUFF: This is the limit on --

MR. BAROODY: The limit in HR-1 that purports to limit punitive damages to $150,000.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me come back to you on that very point.

MR. BAROODY: All right.

MS. WOODRUFF: Because I do want to bring Congresswoman Mink in, and I apologize for not getting to you sooner -- but very specifically, you originally supported the Democratic legislation but now you don't, and it's on the damage issue that you've --

REP. MINK: I believe that one of the fundamental virtues of the bills that were reported out of the two committees, both last year and this year, has to do with opening up of a possibility of people who have up to now been denied the opportunity of getting damages altogether, compensatory and punitive, their damages for intentional discrimination have been limited under a term called "equitable remedies," where they could only get re-employment rights and back wages, but no compensatory, no punitive damages. That was the way Title VII was structured under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, under the Civil War Statute of 1886, the one we refer to as 1981, where someone goes in for intentional discrimination and alleges race discrimination, there has always been the possibility of compensatory and punitive damages. So now when we're finally getting some equity, getting some consideration of equal justice before the law, and that's half the country, when we're finally getting there, because of the President's threat of the veto and all of this maneuvering and trying to get a bill through, we find that we have become victims again of second class treatment, and so they're putting a cap now on the damages, not allowing the courts to decide how much of injury a person has suffered and allowing it to be determined on a case by case basis.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman Edwards, why has the Democratic majority in the House decided to put this limit on that, in effect, treats women and other victims of discrimination differently from victims of racial discrimination?

REP. EDWARDS: Judy, I am very much against the cap and when the bill came out of my committee both this year and last year, there was no cap, and we had press conferences and everything else against the cap. However, the brutal fact is that unless there is a cap, women will get no damages at all and the present law will be in effect. We will pick up between 50 and 60 votes for the bill and the Senate has told us in no uncertain terms that unless we get very close to the magic 288 necessary to override the veto, the United States Senate will not even pick up the bill or start the bill.

MS. WOODRUFF: Political reality, Congresswoman --

REP. MINK: No. This is the same thing that we were told last year when they added the cap and it was necessary in order to get this bill through and to get the President to sign into law and so people who normally would not have supported such an inequitable embankment of a concept of equity went for it. And we had the veto anyway. And so we're saying let's produce a bill that we believe in and not have this kind of dual justice system.

MS. WOODRUFF: Wade Henderson, with this kind of a split up in the ranks of the supporters of this legislation, are you going to be able -- how are you going to pull this thing off?

MR. HENDERSON: Well, Judy, as you can imagine, we are deeply torn over the issue of caps in the civil rights bill and we support an effort to try to remove caps in the law. We think it's an important effort that needs to be pursued.

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, this is limiting the amount of damages --

MR. HENDERSON: The attempt to limit damages on behalf of women and persons with disabilities --

MS. WOODRUFF: Right.

MR. HENDERSON: -- we think is terribly unfair, but at the same time, we are also prepared to recognize that the Civil Rights Act in its totality represents a substantial advancement of the law in its present form and we need to make the effort to restore the law to where it was prior to the Supreme Court decisions as well as making an effort to advance remedies available to all persons under the law. My one concern about the way this debate has gone so far is the use of caps as a way of damages, as a way of dividing elements of Congress, the bipartisan --

MS. WOODRUFF: Who's using --

MR. HENDERSON: Well, I'm afraid that the administration, the President, himself, has unfortunately engaged, in my judgment, in a terribly unfair characterization of this legislation. First, he's used the quota issue in a way that I think seeks to divide our country. It's a cynical and divisive manipulation of racial fear and animosity and it's plain to people who, indeed, are deeply concerned about preserving fairness for all Americans. And I think the same is true of the way the issue of caps has been portrayed.

REP. GRANDY: Judy, could I get in on that cap issue a minute?

MS. WOODRUFF: Yes.

REP. GRANDY: Let me just say first of all, as relates to Title VII, it's important to remember that the Bush bill --

MS. WOODRUFF: This is Title VI of the --

REP. GRANDY: -- of the Civil Rights Act. This is the provision under which Rep. Mink would file for damages if she was harassed in the workplace. What we're talking about in the Bush bill is getting rid of just strict equitable relief and going to $150,000 of punitive and compensatory damages. So to that effect we raise the playing field, however, let me just say I agree with Patsy Mink in that I think it is very unfair in this country to have one standard of employment discrimination for blacks and another for women, or people who are disabled, and I might point out that I went before the rules committee and offered a cap on both Title VII and Section 1981.

MS. WOODRUFF: I must say as somebody who has tried to understand this issue --

REP. GRANDY: Let me just try and --

MS. WOODRUFF: -- it makes it very difficult for those --

REP. GRANDY: I'm not a lawyer, myself. I even have trouble understanding what I'm saying, but let me try and get to what the point is. I was trying to level the playing field out, but said that equity and parity in the workplace does not necessarily result in suing for unlimited damages. So why not cap everyone, give them their right to redress, but say after a certain limit, that's all you can collect? The only people that --

MS. WOODRUFF: Congresswoman Mink, do you respond to that just quickly?

REP. MINK: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: And then I want to go to --

REP. MINK: An injury to a person should never be capped, and to say that you are going to cap everybody and make everybody unequal is simply not the way to approach a civil rights bill. And so that cannot possibly be a solution.

MS. WOODRUFF:But, Mike Baroody, you were saying earlier you have a problem with the legislation even with the limit in it.

MR. BAROODY: Very clearly, yes. There are three points about the cap, and I'll try to make them simple, we're proving how complex this issue is, the first is that it proves again that this is not simple restoration legislation. This goes -- the introduction of jury trials and punitively compensatory damages into discrimination law --

MS. WOODRUFF: This is for intentional discrimination.

MR. BAROODY: Well, it's for discrimination, as the court may find it, whether intentional or in pattern of practice.

MR. HENDERSON: It's intentional, Mike.

MR. BAROODY: But let me please finish the point. First, it is not restoration to inject those cases for the first time across-the- board into jury trial. Second --

MS. WOODRUFF: You think it's going further than that.

MR. BAROODY: Much further. The federal labor law for the last 50 years has tried to stay out of courts. This would put discrimination cases into courts. Second, it's not a real cap in any event. It caps punitive damages at $150,000 or more. The more is the amount of compensatory plus back pay. So if compensatory accumulates to $1 million, punitive is $1 million or can be up to that. The cap is illusion. Third, and finally, if I may, I'll just read something to you real quickly. "I am committed to a system for redressing discrimination that provides timely and effective remedies without inducing lawsuits that drag on for years and making adversarial proceedings the preferred forum." I'm reading from last week's veto message by Gov. Lawton Chiles of Florida of a bill that would have --

MS. WOODRUFF: Democratic Governor.

MR. BAROODY: -- Democratic Governor of Florida -- of a bill that would have introduced at the state level precisely those damages provisions that this bill would introduce at the federal level.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me just in that vein read to you, Congressman Grandy -- we're all reading from something -- Bob Woodward's book that's just come out in the last few weeks on the Bush administration defense policies over the last year or two -- at one point he says the White House, John Sununu, told the new secretary of defense, Richard Cheney, when he first came into office that the White House wanted 30 percent of the remaining top 42 jobs in the Defense Department filled by women or minorities, and no one's disputed that, so we have no reason to assume it's not. How is that different from objecting to quotas, objecting to whatever you want to call it in the discussions that we're having right here?

REP. GRANDY: Well, wait a minute. Let's distinguish between affirmative action and quotas. I mean, if you are setting a goal or a preference and say we should do this, we should hire more women, we should hire more blacks, we should try and get more Hispanics in the workplace --

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, 30 percent was the number used.

REP. GRANDY: Well, yeah, but I mean is that written somewhere? Is that part of a directive from the Office of Management & Budget? I really think that that's begging the question a little bit to pull something out of Bob Woodward's book and say that is a quota in the workplace. I think it's important though to distinguish between what is affirmative action, which many, many Republicans are for and support, and quotas, which are numerical, rigid quantities of racial minorities in the workplace, and use that as a standard.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman Edwards.

REP. EDWARDS: Well, I agree with Fred on that. Affirmative actioncan include and should include some decent goals and timetables, but they're not in concrete and they're entirely different from quotas. Affirmative action has nothing to do with quotas.

MS. WOODRUFF: Wade Henderson.

MR. HENDERSON: Well, obviously, we're pleased to hear Rep. Grandy embrace affirmative action and to speak on behalf of other Republicans. That's obviously also what we seek to do in HR-1. The use of the quota argument somehow to suggest that we're doing something wrong or illegal, or trying to entwine special preferences for racial minorities and women, is blatantly unfair. And as I said earlier, it's an attempt to create a divisive atmosphere that plays on racial fears and animosities in a dreadful way.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman Grandy, what about that? I mean, that's the point that Congressman Gephardt, earlier tonight Congressman Edwards and Mr. Henderson and others have made.

REP. GRANDY: Well, I would just say in response to what Dick Gephardt said, he raised the specter of Willie Horton, not us, and as Republicans right now, we don't really need to be divisive among the Democrats because they seem to be doing that very well themselves. There are now two Democratic alternatives to HR-1. There is one Republican substitute which has not changed appreciably from the substitute we offered last year. We are united on the feeling that redress in the courts can provide equity and parity but doesn't necessarily mean a $12 million settlement, and what we're trying to do is split a balance between creating remedies for harassment and creating bonanzas for plaintiffs' attorneys.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about that, Congressman Edwards? He's right about the Democrats being split on this. What's the scenario?

REP. EDWARDS: We're really not split. The -- certain numbers of the Democrats in the Caucus, in particular the Black Caucus, want an opportunity to vote on a much stronger bill, which is HR-4000. The women and I and quite a number of others want a chance to vote against a cap. That's another bill that's going to be offered. But I assure you that when the time comes for the substitute which envelops the understanding, I didn't say agreement, understandings reached with the business community at the Business Roundtable meetings, and all of the other understandings that we have arrived at in the last few weeks, we will have very close to two hundred, to the magic two hundred and eighty-eight votes, and I am guessing that all of the blacks and women will vote with us.

MS. WOODRUFF: Will you support that bill, Congresswoman Mink?

REP. MINK: The substitute, no. I will support HR-4000 --

MS. WOODRUFF: This is the bill --

REP. MINK: -- because at least it has a provision with reference to all the civil rights items and does not have a cap.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about if HR-1 in some form or another passes, goes to the President, he vetoes, and it comes back for an override, what would your position be?

REP. MINK: Oh, I definitely will support the bill to make it law.

MS. WOODRUFF: So they can count on you at that point?

REP. MINK: Right.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mike Baroody, what's the -- what is the business community's attack at this point? I mean, what -- how do you at this point prevent what the Democrats say is going to happen? You just heard Congressman Edwards say they think they've got the votes to override the President.

MR. BAROODY: Well, I don't think they do and we're working very hard on a two track proposition, one, to encourage people to vote against HR-1 for all the reasons we've been discussing, and two, to support HR-1375, the alternative which we think avoids quotas and avoids the litigation bonanza.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Henderson.

MR. HENDERSON: Judy, the business community, among other things, is using a series of racially divisive, highly charged ads very similar to the Jesse Helms --

MS. WOODRUFF: When you say the business community, who do you mean?

MR. HENDERSON: Oh, I'm referring now --

MS. WOODRUFF: Because we've only got a few seconds left.

MR. HENDERSON: -- to NAM, to Mike Baroody's organization, the National Association of Manufacturers, and to a coalition of business groups that Mike operates known as the Fair Employment Coalition. They're using a series of racially divisive, highly charged radio ads that they are playing in the districts of members who are fence sitters and whose votes we need in support of the bill.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, we're going to have to get into that one later, but we do thank you all for being with us this evening. Congresswoman Mink, Congressman Edwards, Congressman Grandy, and Mr. Henderson, Mr. Baroody, thank you all. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MR. MacNeil: Next, some political analysis of the civil rights bill and other issues from our regular Friday team of Gergen & Shields. David Gergen is editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, Mark Shields a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post. Mr. Gergen, give us a reading on the politics behind this fight. What is the White House goal and what are the congressional Democrats trying to do?

MR. GERGEN: Well, I'm sorry to say, Robin, that behind all of those legalisms we heard, I think we had a very sophisticated discussion there, there is a lot of politics going on on both sides. The truth is I think that there's a lot of evidence that the White House is more interested in having an issue here than getting a solution. If you go back a few weeks, what you find is that there were responsible people in the business community who thought that it was possible to reach a compromise solution that everybody could agree on. They were involved in negotiations with the Congress and the White House in serious discussions. The discussions basically ended when the White House participation ended. The Business Roundtable members continued to talk with the Congress and then they got a call from the White House saying stop the negotiations. People at the White House have told me there were a couple of companies that were essentially free lancing in those negotiations, they didn't represent the business community. People at the Business Roundtable have told me just the opposite, and that is that they had people at the table with Congress who could have reached a deal and we could have had a solution if the White House was willing to go along. They also felt that some Democrats were trying to push too hard in some elements, trying to get 'em a radical proposal and was responsible, but they basically felt that the decision was within sight. Now when you think about it, the whole basis of the argument against this bill is we want to protect the business community from having to do things that are unfair to them. If the business community, itself, says, wait a minute, we don't need protection, we're quite happy to work out a solution, then you conclude I think that unfortunately the Bush White House in this instance is playing politics with the issue, wants to have an issue on quotas.

MR. MacNeil: How do you see the politics, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I think the Bush White House is playing politics with the issue and wants to have the issue of quotas just as David said. I'd simply underline it. When you have an issue as powerful as civil rights in this country which carries with it enormous emotional, historical and almost spiritual dimensions and evokes images of great moments and terrifying moments in recent American history, the only way you can counter it is the way the Bush people have chosen to do it, by using quotas. This is ironic, which has an equally strong and equally compelling emotional evocation in the American people, George Bush had two great charities that he supported as a private citizen for a long time, United Negro Colleges and Planned Parenthood, and the irony is to see George Bush not seeking a solution. I mean, to see him squander what was the good will that he generated from sincere efforts in the new era of the Bush administration following the chill of the civil rights community between Ronald Reagan's White House and it, I think the only conclusion one is drawn to is he wants this issue.

MR. MacNeil: Well is the quota issue then strictly a phoney issue?

MR. GERGEN: Well, I think that there is a legitimate concern about quotas in our society and how one deals with affirmative action versus quotas or whether affirmative action drifts into becoming quotas, and I think the Republicans have been right to raise questions about that and frankly there are a lot of -- you find most blacks don't want quotas, but they do want a racially - - a racially -- a community -- particularly in the business community -- that's free of discrimination and frankly I think you could have solved this problem, the parties here could have solved this problem without introducing quotas, so in that sense, it's phoney.

MR. MacNeil: Mark, on the issue of the much discussed in that discussion, the cap for damage awards which people might seek if they claim that there has been intentional discrimination against them, is the Patsy Mink position going to threaten the Democratic majority which would make it vulnerable to a successful veto, do you think so?

MR. SHIELDS: Yes, I think it is. I think that once you start discriminating and making exceptions, discrimination against a white woman is limited to $150,000, against the woman who has to be black is unlimited --

MR. MacNeil: Not because she's a woman but because she's black?

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. I mean, I think you get into very, very strange areas legally and I think it's a pretty transparent attempt on the part of the Democratic leadership to reach out and broaden the net. Make no mistake about it, I mean, the Democrats are not totally pure on this issue. They were rewarding two constituencies that had been loyal, or at least they recognize them there, their grievances, their petitions, blacks and women, and yes, there is -- there is a real concern about quotas and there's a real concern -- I think David touched upon it -- in the business community among those companies large enough to run their own compensatory educational system and bring people in and train them as opposed to the small businesses, which would feel threatened by the specter of lawsuits and would feel compelled somehow to hire people for fear of holding off that charge.

MR. MacNeil: David, let's get at the nitty gritty here. What is underneath the attempt if you're right and Mark is right of the White House to exploit the quota issue politically? What are they trying to do? Where is the actual political benefit in trying to do it? Who are they hoping to get to vote Republican who wouldn't, if they didn't see it this way?

MR. GERGEN: Well, in this case I think that they're doing two things. One, they're trying to by arguing quotas, they're trying to give themselves a little insulation from those people who argue they're heart hardened with regard to race relations. So that they're looking to try to convince moderates and others in the suburbs that what they're doing is okay. But there's no question that what we've seen, Robin, in the last few years has been a drift of many whites away from the Democratic Party, particularly white males, into the Republican Party and this bill is in part being used as a way to lock those people in, to say, look, if you want to vote for the party of quotas and the party that's going to give away this or give away that, then go down that path, but if you want to stick with us --

MR. MacNeil: Because many of those white males fear or think they see jobs that they would otherwise have had going to minorities?

MR. GERGEN: Absolutely.

MR. MacNeil: Either they've seen it or they've heard it.

MR. GERGEN: There's a back lash in this country among whites, you know, reverse discrimination against themselves, and they will rally to this cry of quotas. There's no -- I might point out that I think that this bill, while we've talked a lot about it here, I don't think has, is No. 1 in the minds of a lot of blacks. You know, Bill Raspberry of the Washington Post, for instance, wrote in the past few days, you know, blacks care a lot less about this particular bill than they really care about dealing with the problems of the underclass, and crime and the drugs and that sort of thing.

MR. MacNeil: Bill Raspberry is the first in a series of special conversations that Charlayne Hunter-Gault is starting on this program to run all next week on Monday night, and that series ends, Mark, with the poster of Daniel Yankelovich saying that this affirmative action issue and the back lash against it is going to be an even stronger issue in the '92 election than it was in the '88 election. Do you agree with him on that?

MR. SHIELDS: I hope sincerely it is not, but I don't underestimate its -- the emotional dynamite it carries with it. I would add to what David just put, Robin. That is that a quota specter, that charge, in a time of declining economic expectations and well being, when we have the first generation of Americans who are fearful that their children's future will be less bright than theirs, is even more effective and more emotionally charged. It's no accident that the great advances in civil rights occurred not simply historically in the mid '60s but at a time when we had the political leadership but economically the country was doubling our Gross National Product in the space of 10 years.

MR. GERGEN: I can't agree with that more. Can I just come back to one --

MR. MacNeil: You can't agree with that more.

MR. GERGEN: I definitely agree with that, but I do think that Mark's other point about the Democrats not having clean hands on this thing, it is pernicious to introduce those caps against women. To distinguish between women and blacks when it comes to discrimination, if you're a victim of discrimination, race or gender should not matter.

MR. MacNeil: You would support the Patsy Mink position?

MR. GERGEN: Absolutely. I can't understand why the Democrats are in this position. First, Robin, Barbara Goldsmith is an historian here in New York City, has written about the fact that back in the 1870s, women were looking for the vote, blacks were looking for the vote, and women suffragettes decided to allow the blacks to vote first, to go through the window first, and then we got the 15th Amendment, then women had to wait 50 years to get their right to vote. That's what's happening again here. The Democrats are saying let blacks go first on the question of discrimination and women will get theirs later. That is -- it seems to me that is unacceptable in the 1990s.

MR. MacNeil: Mark, finally, the other issue this week, the President's stand on extending most favored nation trade status to China, after signs that he was going to enter negotiations with the Democrats, he got quite tough suddenly when he spoke at Yale. How do you see the political equation in that one?

MR. SHIELDS: I think George Bush is very much on the defensive on that, on that issue, the question of whether there'll be -- they'll have the votes in the White House as far as any veto is concerned, but I don't think he's in imminent danger on that, but he's certainly, the term of the debate, of the dialogue which were framed in large part by the White House by the use of quotas have not been framed well in this case by the White House, and first of all, there was never a sense on the part of the American people that the President expressed the outrage that we felt collectively as a nation at the brutality of Tiananmen Square, that there was rather a cavalier attitude toward it, and since then we've had just this year evidence of export goods that were made in prison by forced labor, we had the January-March trials of another whole generation of democracy advocates, and no sense from the Bush administration that there would be, that the Chinese were going to have any way to pay for it, almost a double standard emerging. If you're big enough, like the Chinese, there will be no reprisals or no criticism or censure in human rights violations, but at the same time, if you're Cuba, or Vietnam, my God, we're going to be out, we're going to be absolutely spiritually vengeful towards you. And I think George Bush is back peddling furiously on this issue right now.

MR. MacNeil: You couldn't agree with him more on this, David?

MR. GERGEN: I couldn't disagree more on that. The emotional tide is running against the President, the Chinese on a number of occasions have stuck us in the eye here in the past year, but I think the President is going to win on the issue and be successful in Congress because ultimately he's right on the issue and that is if you want to bring political pluralism, if you want to bring freedom to China, the way to do that is to allow the Chinese grow economically. Prof. Sam Huntington at Harvard has just completed a study of 30 nations that have moved in an authoritarian government to democratic governments in the last 15 years. The significant factor in each case was that they first built up their economic foundations and then they moved to political pluralism. That's what the President is trying to do. If you pull the plug on trade with China, you will hurt the very people, the very reformers that we're trying to help who represent the future, and I think that's what the President is arguing and I would argue ultimately will succeed.

MR. MacNeil: Then on Mark's point, why doesn't he do it with Cuba?

MR. GERGEN: We, Robin, we have most favored nation status with 160 nations. We have most favored nation status with Burma, whose human rights record is atrocious, Syria, we just had it with Iraq, and now the President is talking about the Soviet Union.

MR. MacNeil: I shouldn't have asked you that question. I didn't have time to let you answer it. Okay, another time. Mark and David, thank you both. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Friday, President Bush met with Mikhail Gorbachev's special envoy and said he felt more positive about giving U.S. economic aid to the Soviet Union. The nation's index of leading economic indicators rose for the third straight month, and today a federal appeals court in New York threw out the 1989 conviction of Robert Wallack, a close friend of Reagan administration attorney general Edwin Meese. Wallack was accused of taking money from the WedTech Corporation, who influenced Meese. The court ordered a new trial on grounds that a key prosecution witness gave perjured testimony. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back on Monday night with the first in a series of Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversations on affirmative action. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.