The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is off today. On the NewsHour tonight the new tax cut and what it means to taxpayers; Susan Dentzer looks at the quality of health care information online; Ray Suarez asks, what the census tells us about the American family; Elizabeth Farnsworth talks to novelist James Salter; and we remember Congressman Joe Moakley who died today. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: America's war dead and veterans were honored across the country, on this Memorial Day. In Washington, President Bush paid special tribute to World War II veterans. Margaret Warner has the story.

MARGARET WARNER: After a Memorial Day breakfast at the White House, President Bush signed a bill clearing the way for a much-debated World War II Memorial to be built in Washington.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I know that those who have seen war are rarely eager to look back on it. And the hardest memories of all concern those who served their country and never lived to be called veterans. Yet memory is our responsibility. We're in their debt more than a lifetime of Memorial Days could repay. The generation of World War II defeated history's greatest tyranny, leaving graves and freedom from Europe to Asia. Our nation must always remember their heroism and humility and terrible suffering. And that memory must be and will be preserved on the Washington Mall. Applause

MARGARET WARNER: The President also announced he was creating a task force to suggest reforms in the way health care is provided to veterans and military retirees. In signing the bill, the President sought to end a lengthy fight over the location of the World War II memorial. The approved site is at the east end of the reflecting pool between the Washington monument farther east and the Lincoln Memorial to the west. Critics say the siting would destroy the open vista between the older monuments and violate the character of the mall with a design that's too grandiose. The design, picked from more than 400 entries, calls for two 49-foot arches for the victories in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters -- 56 pillars one for each U.S. State and territory that contributed troops to the war effort; and a commemorative wall honoring the more than 400,000 American soldiers who died. The bill, signed today, overrides a lawsuit by opponents challenging the way the site was chosen.

SPOKESMAN: Present arms.

MARGARET WARNER: Later today Mr. Bush laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknowns during the traditional ceremonyat Arlington National Cemetery.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Today we honor those who fell from the line, who left us never knowing how much they would be missed. We pray for them with an affection that grows deeper with the years. And we remember them, all of them, with the love of a grateful nation. God bless America.

GWEN IFILL: The World War II Memorial will cost an estimated $160 million. Most of it's already been raised, through private pledges. Millions of Americans will begin receiving tax rebates this fall as part of the tax cut bill Congress approved Saturday totaling more than $1.3 trillion. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law the first week of June. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Russia's defense minister today dismissed reports the U.S. Might buy Russian missiles. The "New York Times" and the associated press reported such an offer was in the works, if Moscow agreed to scrap the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. That would clear the way for a U.S. missile defense shield. The defense minister said there's been no such offer, and he said Russia still opposes getting rid of the treaty. Police and activists in Oldham, England called for calm today. Over the weekend, the town outside Manchester was torn apart by racial rioting between Asian and white youths. They battled each other and police with bricks and firebombs, in the worst such trouble in Britain since the 1980s. Police said far-right groups demanding separation of the races had whipped up tensions. Congressman Joe Moakley died at a hospital outside Washington today. The Massachusetts Democrat had an incurable form of leukemia. He announced his illness last February and said he would not run for re-election after nearly 30 years of service. He was 74 years old. We'll have more on his life at the end of the program tonight. Between now and then, the impact of the tax cut, health care information online, what the census tells us, and a conversation with novelist James Salter.

UPDATE - TALKING TAXES

GWEN IFILL: First tonight, a look at the largest tax cut in 20 years.

GWEN IFILL: Meeting in unusual Saturday sessions over the holiday weekend, both the House and Senate passed President Bush's tax cut bill by wide margins. After negotiators worked late into the night hammering out its final details, the President hailed the compromise as a promise fulfilled.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Today, for the first time since the landmark tax relief championed 20 years ago by President Ronald Reagan, and 40 years ago by President John F. Kennedy, an American President has the wonderful honor of letting the American people know significant tax relief is on the way.

GWEN IFILL: And Senate Republicans, poised to lose their majority next week, were jubilant.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: This is a great day for the people who do the work and pay the taxes and pull the wagon in America and who often get forgotten by their government.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY: And I think leaving this money in the pockets of the taxpayers rather than sending it to Washington, will help us with our fiscal discipline.

GWEN IFILL: But many Democrats complained that using the budget surplus to pay for $1.35 trillion in tax cuts is short- sighted.

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD: This is an excessive idea; this is an idea that we cannot afford, Mr. President.

GWEN IFILL: The 400-page tax cut bill would: incrementally reduce individual income tax rates and create a new bottom rate of 10 percent; gradually eliminate the marriage penalty tax; gradually repeal the estate tax; eventually double the child tax credit to $1,000; and increase contribution limits for individual retirement accounts and 401K plans. Most of the tax provisions won't be complete for at least five years. Plus, all the tax cuts would expire in 2011, unless Congress votes to renew them. North Dakota's Kent Conrad, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, argued that the cuts in the income tax rates mostly help the wealthy.

SEN. KENT CONRAD: This bill doesn't pass any fairness test, no fiscal responsibility test. It does not pass the fundamental test we ought to apply to any tax bill. This final tax bill is clearly unfair. The top 20% get 71% of the benefits. The bottom 20% get 1%. 71% of the benefits to the top 20%; 1% to the bottom 20%.

SPOKESPERSON: Mrs. Carnahan, aye. Mr. Torricelli, aye.

GWEN IFILL: But Democrats helped supply the margin of victory in both chambers. In the Senate, 12 Democrats supported the tax cut legislation. Montana's Max Baucus co-authored the bill.

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: It also very much helps the distribution of this bill toward middle- and low-income Americans. Every American gets a tax cut from this bill. The most wealthy get a greater tax cut because they pay the most taxes. But I might say that middle-income Americans also get a very significant tax cut -- in fact, proportionately more than current law.

GWEN IFILL: Taxpayers will be seeing some benefits from the bill immediately. By late summer or early fall, the IRS will begin mailing refund checks, ranging from $600 for joint filers to $300 for singles without children. The bill now goes to the President for his signature.

GWEN IFILL: Now, how the bill will affect individual taxpayers. For that, I'm joined by Clint Stretch, director of tax policy for the accounting firm, Deloitte and Touche. Welcome.

CLINT STRETCH: Thank you. It's nice to be here.

GWEN IFILL: First question which we all want to know is about those rebates. When do we get them and how much will they be?

CLINT STRETCH: The rebates will be late summer, early fall. They're going to be $300 for a single taxpayer, $500 for a single parent, $600 for a married couple whether or not they're two earners. Being married is enough.

GWEN IFILL: That's a one-time tax rebate. You get it back as a check that looks like a tax refund.

CLINT STRETCH: It's going to look like a tax refund check. It is one time but it expresses rate changes that are being made in the bill. You'll get the same $600 again next year. It is going to be in your withholding next year.

GWEN IFILL: When do we see the rest of these cuts? We see all these wonderful talks about the cuts you just saw outlined in that taped piece. When will we actually see it?

CLINT STRETCH: Some of them start next year or even this year and then gradually phase in until the rates are effective 2006. The estate and gift tax repeal doesn't come until 2010.

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about the tax brackets, because that's where Congress did its nuts and bolts work.

CLINT STRETCH: That's where the real money is.

GWEN IFILL: Walk us through it for the moment, comparing what we are doing now -- how the tax brackets look now and how they will look in 2006.

CLINT STRETCH: Right now we have five brackets. They go from 15 to 28 to 31 and then up to 36 and the very top rate, the last 1% of the country is 39.6.

GWEN IFILL: And that would change how?

CLINT STRETCH: Those are all going to come down generally about three points. The 15% bracket will be cut into two pieces so there will be a new 10% bracket and then some 15 remaining. Thenwe'll bring the 28, 31 and 36 each down three points to 25, 28 and 33. The top bracket, which is now almost 40%, will come down to 35.

GWEN IFILL: So let's talk about how... The President wanted 33% I believe.

CLINT STRETCH: He did.

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about now how that actually applies in nuts and bolts way for people who don't really know what bracket they're in. Say you're talking about a single person with no children. How does this tax cut bill affect that person?

CLINT STRETCH: Well, a single person with no children you have to look at their income range, it's going to be at least $300 and then as their income goes up you're going to see that there are greater amounts of tax cut -- at $75,000 there will be over $1100 of tax cut when it's fully phased in. For somebody at 400,000 it will be $14000 of tax cut.

GWEN IFILL: And we're talking about over ten years.

CLINT STRETCH: Over ten years. If you look on your graphic, the first-year tax cut is more modest.

GWEN IFILL: If you're a married person with no kids, how does this apply to you?

CLINT STRETCH: Well, you're going to be not all that different from the single person except you're going to start with that $600 tax cut and then build from that. So you're going to have tax cuts at the low end of $700 perhaps and then raising as you go to the $400,000 level you'll be up at about $14,000 again.

GWEN IFILL: The extra little bit kicks in if you are married with children.

CLINT STRETCH: That's right. If you're married with children, you get a child tax credit under present law of $500. That goes up right away to $600 this year and then eventually to $1,000. So each kid you have, you get an extra $100 tax cut this year and eventually an extra $500 tax cut -- on top of that there is some changes in the rate brackets for married people that, whether or not you have kids, you get net enriches the tax cut for marrieds.

GWEN IFILL: What happens to the marriage tax penalty that was supposed to help people?

CLINT STRETCH: They do have a provision. It's not limited to people having marriage penalty. It helps everybody who is married by raising the standard deduction for people who don't itemize -- married people who don't itemize so that they pay less income tax by having a greater standard deduction. They also broaden out the 15% rate bracket to make it include more income and thereby take money out of what would otherwise be the 28% bracket. And so that lowers marriage penalties -- for people who have what's called a married bonus they pay less tax because they're married. They get a bigger marriage bonus now.

GWEN IFILL: What was in Congress's mind -- this is a dangerous question.

CLINT STRETCH: Sounds like one.

GWEN IFILL: What was in Congress's mind when they decided to phase this in over time. Why?

CLINT STRETCH: Congress was trying to fit a very large menu into a... On to a small platter. The money they have to work with is the surplus over ten years. It's coming in slowly -- most of surplus in the last five years. So they wanted to start the tax cuts but have them effective by and large in the later years when the money is projected to come in.

GWEN IFILL: Did the child care tax credit which is being attached for people with children -- does that offset some of the complaints that Democrats were making about the fact that so much this tax cut seemed to benefit the wealthy?

CLINT STRETCH: They did do a number of things around the earned income tax credit and the child credit to help those complaints. They've made it easier to get a refund of the child tax credit now, so that if you're a lower-income worker you can get a check back from the government. That did reshape the distribution effect, make it a bill that is relatively more generous to the poor.

GWEN IFILL: The other thing that the President talked about a lot besides the marriage tax penalty, the repeal of that, was the estate tax or as Republicans call it the death tax. They talked about saying that inheritance should not be taxed at such an onerous rate. Does this bill do anything to address that?

CLINT STRETCH: Well, this bill will eventually eliminate the estate tax or the death tax.

GWEN IFILL: Eventually.

CLINT STRETCH: Eventually by 2010. In the meantime right now the rule is you pay tax up to 55% rates above $675,000. They're going to bring those rates down immediately to 50 and then eventually to 45 and they're going to increase the exemption amount. So next year it will be $1 million and then it will go up in steps until it gets to $3.5 million by 2009. They're going to lower the estate tax for a while and then have a promise to repeal it in 2010.

GWEN IFILL: 2010 is when all of this expires and then Congress has to act again. Why is that?

CLINT STRETCH: Well there's a fun he'll budget rule that says you cannot cut taxes outside of the years that you're looking at in the budget resolution. So all of these provisions are scheduled to go away after 2010. That would create the biggest expiring provision in the tax law has ever seen. Clearly Congress intends these things to be permanent. If there's the money to make them permanent, certainly we will and we'll probably do it even before then.

GWEN IFILL: If they do extend this, it's going to be more than $1.3 trillion cost.

CLINT STRETCH: It will be a lot more. There's a whole lot of expense in 2011, 2012 in this bill.

GWEN IFILL: The House added something to this bill that the Senate did not, about 401(K)s and IRA's which people obviously know what those are. It involves money that they're putting toward their own retirement. And this final bill does include this. What does it do?

CLINT STRETCH: What they do is increase most of the pension plan limitations, IRA's, 401(K)s, some of the special plans that people work for charities have. The IRA limit goes up from 2,000 to 5,000. The 401(K) limit goes up from 10,500 to 15,000. Those take four or five years to phase in. Very substantial increases. For people who are able to save, this is going to give them a great way to save tax free. Most people unfortunately can't save even at the present law limits, most of their working lives. But most people are going to find that they don't get an immediate benefit, maybe they get a benefit later when the kids are out of the home, the mortgage is paid off and they have a few years when they can go to the max and they're going to find that max is much higher.

GWEN IFILL: Adoption care... Adoption benefits and dependent care benefits. How will that change?

CLINT STRETCH: The adoption credit goes up by essentially double. You can take $10,000 worth of adoption expenses into account and they do some other things around special needs adoptions. And then the dependent care credit, they improve that, the current law you can take only $2400 for one kid or $4800 for two or more kids into account as an expense. They raised those limits to $3,000 and $6,000, so you're going to get more credit and for lower income people, they raise the percentage rate by which you calculate that credit.

GWEN IFILL: The result here is we're going to see more in consumer spending when people get the money back in their pockets.

CLINT STRETCH: That's what people hope will be the result.

GWEN IFILL: This is what you're waiting to see. This is the big question.

CLINT STRETCH: We're all waiting to see.

GWEN IFILL: Clint stretch, thank you very much for joining us.

CLINT STRETCH: Thank you, Gwen.

FOCUS - ONLINE HEALTH

GWEN IFILL: Now, the quality of online health care information, reported by Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: In the past year more than 60 million Americans are estimated to have gone on the Internet in search of health information. Breast cancer patient Pat Hodge was one.

PAT HODGE, Breast Cancer Patient: The Internet gives you so much more. You can be as inquisitive as long as you're awake. And there's no one that judges you on the questions that you ask or the searches that you do.

SUSAN DENTZER: Hodge says she went online before a visit to her doctor this week. She hoped to learn more about a new drug aimed at fighting recurrence of breast cancer.

PAT HODGE: I just went on to a regular search engine and typed the words "breast cancer drug," and I knew the name of the drug, FEMARA. And I actually got 1,060 references.

SUSAN DENTZER: Examples like this testify to the Internet's power as a tool for gathering information about health care. But a study published in the recent issue of the "Journal of the American Medical Association" suggests that the tool is far from perfect, and that it often yields information that isn't useful or complete enough for consumers. Ann Monroe is with the non- profit California Health Care Foundation, which funded the study.

ANN MONROE, California Health Care Foundation: We've all heard the term "caveat emptor"-- "let the buyer beware." There's "caveat lector," which is "let the reader beware." And I think in this case it's "caveat clickter." When you go to click on that web site, you need to really remember that it is not going to be a substitute for talking with your provider.

SUSAN DENTZER: The JAMA study is the most comprehensive to date on the quality of health information available over the vast reaches of the Internet. Dr. Gretchen Berland of the California-based RAND Corporation was the lead author of the study.

DR. GRETCHEN BERLAND, RAND CORP.: One of the reasons that we decided to do this study was because despite, you know, millions of pages and thousands of web sites out there, little was really known about the quality of health information on the Internet.

SUSAN DENTZER: So the RAND study tried to simulate what average consumers would find if searching the Internet for critical health information. First, Berland's team of researchers chose four conditions: Breast cancer, depression, childhood asthma and obesity. They then had trained searchers enter those terms into so-called Internet search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Alta Vista. And because roughly one-in-eight Americans is now of Hispanic origin, the team also used Spanish-language search engines, like Terespondo, to see how well the Internet worked for Spanish- speaking consumers. Berland says the volume of information produced was overwhelming.

DR. GRETCHEN BERLAND: Some of the search engines, if you type in "breast cancer," will offer you upwards of 950,000 possible sites that you might get taken to.

SUSAN DENTZER: And as anyone who's ever searched the Internet knows, these sites can be highly variable. There are government-sponsored sites, like those of the National Institutes of Health, carefully reviewed by top medical experts. There are also be commercial sites, some also expert-written or reviewed, but others produced by people with little or no medical expertise. Still others are sponsored by drug companies or other firms eager to sell products. And then there are sites sponsored by patient-advocacy organizations, or even individual web sites posted by patients themselves. The RAND team applied a simple set of tests to determine whether the information contained in this huge variety of sites was really relevant for patients. A site was deemed relevant if it mentioned up to 40 key terms associated with a particular medical condition-- for example, "inhaler" for childhood asthma, or the drug "Tamoxifen" for breast cancer. The results weren't auspicious.

DR. GRETCHEN BERLAND: Using English-language search engines from start to finish, a user would have about a one-in- five chance of finding relevant content. On Spanish-language sites the odds are even worse. They have about a one-in-eight chance of finding health information on the Internet.

SUSAN DENTZER: The RAND team also focused further tests on a group of the most popular health web sites, such as Dr. Koop.Com and webmd. Berland says that for each of the four disease conditions, a panel of experts drafted five to ten questions that they thought a good health web site should answer.

DR. GRETCHEN BERLAND: A question that related to breast cancer screening that the breast cancer expert panels felt should be there was, "How often should I have regular mammograms?" "How... Do I need to have a regular mammogram if I don't have a family history of breast cancer?" So these were very... What the expert panels felt were very basic questions.

SUSAN DENTZER: What the RAND analysts found was both good news and bad. What information there was on the health web sites was almost always accurate, but the problem was that it usually wasn't complete.

DR. GRETCHEN BERLAND: What we found was that on English-language sites, about a quarter of the time the topics that expert panelists felt were important to be addressed by a web site, weren't there.

SUSAN DENTZER: Dr. Claudine Isaacs is a breast cancer specialist at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. She says some of the omissions on the Spanish sites in particular were startling. An example was not reporting comparisons of mastectomies and a procedure known as lumpectomy. In mastectomy, the entire breast and some surrounding tissue is removed; whereas in lumpectomy, only cancerous tissue is removed from the breast.

DR. CLAUDINE ISAACS, Georgetown University Medical Center: When they looked at some of the treatment options for newly diagnosed patients, they didn't indicate that lumpectomy with radiation was equivalent to mastectomy. That is a basic fact, one of the things that I would consider sort of, you know, one of the very basic facts about breast cancer and about breast cancer treatment. And the fact that it was omitted was certainly worrisome about the rest of the information that was included in the site.

SUSAN DENTZER: Berland acknowledges that the JAMA study itself isn't a perfect assessment of health information on the Internet.

DR. GRETCHEN BERLAND: The Internet is a moving target. It's a huge... I really think of the Internet as sort of this very fluid-moving organism. We took one slice in time.

SUSAN DENTZER: And in fact, officials at the top search engines and web sites that the RAND researchers examined, say things have already changed since the study was undertaken last fall. Take the site ivillagehealth.Com, which, until recently, was called allhealth.Com. Site officials told us that they had already taken steps to improve the site's quality, such as having better-qualified experts review the information displayed. Meanwhile, various groups of search engines and health web sites have already produced voluntary quality guidelines and ethics standards. The JAMA study may now encourage these to be more widely adopted.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight the census and the American family; a novel about fighter pilots; and remembering Congressman Joe Moakley.

FOCUS - FAMILY PORTRAIT

GWEN IFILL: Ray Suarez paints the nation's family portrait.

RAY SUAREZ: The 2000 Census figures released earlier this month describe a nation of increasingly complex and extended family trees. The new numbers reveal that the makeup of the American family continues to change. Married couples with children now only make up 24 percent of all households and households headed by single mothers increased by more than 25 percent during the last decade. In addition, the number of Americans living alone grew almost twice as fast, as the population did during the 90's, to over 27 million. The 2000 Census also showed that Americans are living longer; the median age of a U.S. resident increased during the 1990's to 35.3 years, the highest ever compared with 32.9 years a decade before. The number of Americans 85 and older surged 37 percent during the 1990's, while the nation's total population rose just 13 percent. Finally, data released previously showed that Hispanics in the U.S. are close to surpassing blacks as the largest minority group in the nation. The Latino population grew by over 58 percent over the 1990's, to reach 35.3 million, just under the current Black population of 36.4 million. What does it all mean? We're joined by Martha Farnsworth Riche, a demographer and former director of the U.S. Census Bureau; Reverend Andy Hernandez, Professor of Political Science at St. Mary's University in San Antonio and author of the "Almanac of Latino Politics 2000," and Isabel Sawhill, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Well, guests, during the last couple of weeks there's been a lot of "gee whiz, man bites dog" sort of headlines about some of these numbers. Where would you guide us? What would you want us to look at? Martha Farnsworth Riche?

MARTHA FARNSWORTH RICHE: Well, I think that we need to acknowledge that every single household type grew in numbers, but what I find particularly interesting it that share of households with kids in them declined below a third of all households. That's a decline that's been going on for a long time as our population gets older; that is, as Americans live longer lives, more of their children have grown past the age 18. So that's a natural thing to happen, but it still means that our families now look a lot different from the families with kids that were so common when we had shorter lives.

RAY SUAREZ: You've explained what's feeding into that number. But what's the significance of the number? How does it change the way we live?

MARTHA FARNSWORTH RICHE: Well, I think one of the most significant things is that we have more people at older ages, at older ages pre-retirement. We have more equal numbers of people in every adult age group. And so that means that we're going to be seeing in all our institutions, whether it's schools, whether it's work, whether it's businesses, we're going to be seeing a whole set of interests simultaneously of younger adults and middle aged adults and older adults all asking to be met. And that's going to be pretty interesting.

RAY SUAREZ: Isabel Sawhill, when you look at the numbers, what jumps out at you?

ISABEL SAWHILL: I think what jumps out at me is the fact that we have much more varied living arrangements and family patterns than we used to. You mentioned the sharp decline in the number of married families with children; that's about half what it was in 1960. We have a lot more single-parent families raising children. We have a lot more unrelated single individuals just heading up their own household and living by themselves. Some of those are young people who haven't yet formed families. And many of them are older people who now have the economic wherewithal to not have to live with their grown children.

RAY SUAREZ: Can we over emphasize some of these numbers? You know, a lot of people have glommed on to that living single number when many of these people are perhaps transitionally single - not yet married or just widowed or widowers.

ISABELL SAWHILL: Oh, I think it would be very easy to look at this and suggest that it was somehow or other unfortunate, because I think the reality is a lot of this is a reflection of our affluence. It used to be that young people had to live with their parents until they got married; they couldn't afford to go out and get their own apartment, which is so common nowadays, and similarly with the elderly. I do think it's somewhat troubling, though, that so many children are growing up in single parent families. We know from the research that it is better - other things being equal - to be raised in a two-parent, married family. That doesn't mean that there aren't single parents out there who are doing heroic jobs in raising children, but I think, in general, it's not a good trend when you have more and more children being raised by only one parent. And, increasingly, those children have been born to a woman who was never married, and many of them have very loose, if any, connections to their fathers. And most of them or a very large proportion of them, anyway, have very low incomes.

RAY SUAREZ: Andy Hernandez, take us beyond the headlines and the raw numbers to what you would want us to remember about the context.

ANDY HERNANDEZ: Well, I think one of the changes that's been talked about quite a bit over the last few months is just this great increase in the racial diversity of our nation, and that's reflected in the increase in ethnic and racial diversity of our families. If you look at the student population, only about 2/3 - over 2/3 - 63/65 percent -- now of the student population is non-Hispanic white; the rest are minority. If you look at other trends, including immigration trends, they're really bucking some of the trends of non-Hispanic whites. For example, Hispanics tend to have almost 18 percent of their households in family households, so there's a counter trend; they tend to have children in their households - 55 percent have children in their households. They tend to have larger families. And while it is true that the rate of the rise in single female households with children has also occurred in the Hispanic community, it has occurred at basically the same rate. It hasn't occurred any faster than any other group. So I think there are counter trends that the Hispanic community because of its large population growth, because of these immigrants - are bringing to the table. And on the question of whether or not we have a change in what we understand families to be, I think that's happening. I think these demographic changes are changes in the way we think of ourselves as Americans and the way we think of ourselves as a family.

RAY SUAREZ: Certainly one of the things that social scientists are always trying to puzzle out when looking at the counter trends that you suggest is whether over time the Hispanic family profile will start to resemble that of the population as a whole, or whether this will sort of posit - present to the rest of society a different way of having families that will affect America as much as America affects these newcomers.

ANDY HERNANDEZ: Well, I think you have to look at what people say in surveys about what they want, their family values and what they want for their children. And if you look at what Latinos say, when asked to define what they mean by the American dream, they all want, the majority of them, to make a better life for our children. When immigrants were asked why do you come to this country, the overwhelming majority said to work and make a better life for our children. So I think there's great - not only interest but there's a deep-seeded value, vision, and hope and aspiration on the part of Hispanic families to make a better world for their children. Now, how do we explain the fact that many Hispanic families are being best by all kinds of challenges and problems? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with class. I think you have to look at economics; I think you have to look at poverty. There's nothing written that just because you have a two-headed family household that they're not going to be dysfunctional. There's nothing written in stone that a one-parent family household or an extended family household without the traditional family household as we think of it, two parents and children, are necessarily dysfunctional. You have to ask the question what's led to these families being created in this way that leads to them being dysfunctional? There are a number of two parent with children family households that are also dysfunctional and also challenged by a lot of the same problems.

RAY SUAREZ: So how do we puzzle this out, Isabel Sawhill? The numbers also say that the skyrocketing rates of divorce moderated; the increasing rates of teen childbirth moderated during these years, some of the push back that is creating single family households. How should we understand what's going on in this 281 million people that points us to the future?

ISABEL SAWHILL: Well, it's a very complicated picture, first of all. But if I were to try to simplify it, I would say that what's happened is the divorce rate has leveled off. The divorce rate was increasing rapidly in the 60's and the 70's, and then it leveled off since the early 1980's, and that's not what's driving the growth of single parent families anymore. I'm also glad you mentioned the fact that the teen birth rate is coming down; both teen pregnancy and birth rates have come down quite dramatically in the 1990's, and that's very good news, although we still have rates that are more than twice as high as most other industrialized countries. And I think that's a problem. I think early child bearing outside of marriage is a problem, and it's that early child bearing outside of marriage that is still driving the growth of single parent families. So it's not just that there's a second parent lacking in that family; it's also that many of those families are formed, more than half of them, when they're still in their teenage years. Too many of them have not completed much schooling. They're very - have a very difficult time making it in today's labor market, which, of course, requires a lot of education, and so their children are also at risk of not having access to the American dream because of the fact that they were born to a very young, single mother.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Martha Riche, maybe you could continue that thread, because we tend to see these numbers, especially when they're fresh and new, in strictly social terms, who we are kind of terms; but they have tremendous economic impact, don't they?

MARTHA FARNSWORTH RICHE: Well, they certainly do. One point I'd like to make is that in reference to the Hispanics and other populations, they're younger. All of our minority populations are considerably younger than our white, non-Hispanic population. And that's what's driving the increasing diversity in the schools and amongst young people. At the same time we see much, much less diversity amongst older people, people who are concerned about saving for retirement, about Social Security and all those things. So I think that makes it a little harder for us to find commonality in the dialogues that we have over how we take our resources, our public resources, and put them in one place, or another place. That's going to continue. All of the trends that we've been talking about here, ongoing trends, we do expect to continue to have longer lives, and that's good - but we're doing it at a slightly different pace. We can look at our commonality and say that on average Americans have two children per family, and they all want to do well by them, and that education is important for all of them. But that's what we have to learn to do - to not look at superficial differences, I'm old, you're young, I'm majority, you're minority, but at the real commonalities we have for getting the American dream and moving all of our kids ahead.

RAY SUAREZ: One thing that jumped out at me is that there are fewer 25 to 34 year olds.

MARTHA FARNSWORTH RICHE: That's right.

RAY SUAREZ: Than there were earlier. It's sort of a small age --

MARTHA FARNSWORTH RICHE: That's right.

RAY SUAREZ: -- cohort surrounded by big ones. What does that mean over time?

MARTHA FARNSWORTH RICHE: Well, that's the other factor that's going on here, though we don't all of us have the same number of children in each generation - we know we had this very large baby boom; they're the ones right now who are entering the empty nest stage. And that's part of making married couples without children our largest household type. The group that came right after them is called the baby bust. That's our 25 to 34 year old group; they're much, much smaller; they actually declined by about 15 percent. And so it's remarkable that during the 1990's, even given this, every year we had more children born in this country than we did the year before. But there's no doubt that when we have these different generations replacing one another, in a given part of the life cycle, that causes some consternation until you understand what's going on.

RAY SUAREZ: And Andy Hernandez, we've talked about social and economic - maybe some political trends we should be looking for coming out of these numbers?

ANDY HERNANDEZ: Well, I think that the point that I will make is that we are going to have some political interests coming out of different perceptions of need. If you have only about a quarter of the American households that have children in them, then you're not going to be building a large political base for those kinds of issues that require investment - things like education, like early childhood care. And to complicate matters, because so many of those children will look very different from the children that non-Hispanic whites know and grow up with -- as you know, one of the things that has come out in the census data is that we tend to be more segregated than we were 10 years ago.

RAY SUAREZ: Residentially you mean?

ANDY HERNANDEZ: Residentially. That's right. So children, white children and non-Hispanic whites are growing up in neighborhoods that there are no Blacks and Hispanics for all practical purposes. There are certainly none that reflect a good majority of Hispanics or Blacks or working poor. The other point I want to make here is it's really important to understand that families are set in communities, that you can't separate communities from families. And the fact of the matter is that right now about 61 percent of all Latino children are growing up in poor neighborhoods, about a third are in poverty. Over half, more than half are growing up in poor neighborhoods. So these kinds of questions where minorities are growing up in poor neighborhoods will lead to different kinds of policy and political interest - policy outcomes based on political interests -- and I think we are all going to have, unless we are able to frame our vocabulary in a way that's inclusive of all the children and all groups, and all Americans, we're going to have a clash around political interests because of the demographic changes.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, thank you guests all for this snapshot of a work in progress. Thanks.

CONVERSATION

GWEN IFILL: Now another of our conversations about new books. On this Memorial Day, Elizabeth Farnsworth talks to the author of a novel about fighter pilots.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: James Salter's new novel "Cassada" tells a story of fate and courage in the squadron of American fighter pilots in Cold War Europe. It's a world James Salter knew well. He graduated from West Point in 1945 and became a fighter pilot himself. He's also the author of five other novels, short stories, screenplays, and a memoir "Burning the Days." He won the Pen/Faulkner award for fiction in 1988. Thanks for being with us, Mr. Salter.

JAMES SALTER: Well, a great pleasure, Elizabeth. I'm one of your many admirers.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I find Robert Cassada to be a haunting figure. He kept me awake several nights running. Tell us about him, please, where he comes from in your imagination and what you wanted to accomplish with this story about him.

JAMES SALTER: Well, he doesn't come from my imagination entirely, of course. He comes from... He comes from life. I'm not a writer who invents people. I draw from life, as most writers do. He's a composite, naturally. But he's based on one... One figure more than others. This is A... You know, I write about... I've written about appetite, desire, the life of the senses, the life that I think is the true life, the great life. But this is not such a book. This is an early book. This belongs to a period when I was first learning to write really, and this is a novel about youth and daring, and the great desire to belong, a desire, I think, that never goes away. You want to be... You want to be like the others, you want to be as good as the others. Or to put it in more classical terms, you want to be highly regarded by the man and admired by the women. And this is the story of a great desire by a young man.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said it's an early novel. It's very unusual in that you actually completely rewrote an early novel to produce this book, right? And that novel was published, that early one?

JAMES SALTER: Yes, that was called... Well, it had a rather pretentious title. It was called "the Arm of Flesh." I wouldn't... I mean, it hasn't been in print for years, and I didn't want it to be. I didn't think it was worth being in print. Jack Shoemaker, the editor in chief at Counterpoint, convinced me that I was wrong, that it was worthy, and that it should be republished. But I felt that it had to be rewritten completely if it was going to be republished. And so I sat down to do it. I must say that it would have been impossible to do without the earlier book. That younger writer that I was then supplied all the details that made the story true, and I suppose in a sense the passion also that makes it true. I couldn't have done that now.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It's been quite successful, whereas your earlier novel wasn't so successful. What do you think changed? Was it something in you?

JAMES SALTER: Well, I think it was something on the page. I mean, I hope.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But something in you made that possible, the years of experience, years of life?

JAMES SALTER: Well, I would put it another way. I think it was Phil Silvers once said, he picked up a trumpet during a break in the show or something and started playing it. Everybody was amazed, and he said, "well, you know, you hang around long enough and you learn some things."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So would you read from this book, please? And set the scene for us. Tell people a little bit of the story.

JAMES SALTER: Well, this is the flying story. As I say, it's not... It's not a technical story -- although there are things in it that make it real. It's a story about ambition, and Cassada is the central figure in it, although there's another very important figure, the operation officer in the squadron; Captain Isbell is his name. He's described as being... As having every quality that one would want in such a figure. He had only one flaw: He was an idealist. And he sees something in Cassada that I wouldn't say the others don't see, but that is more or less ignored or put aside by the others. One day he flies with Cassada. These are fighter planes. Of course, these are jet fighters; you fly alone in them. And they go up together. This is toward the end of a routine flight on a very beautiful unextraordinary in every respect except for weather day. So here they are coming back. "They had spoken hardly a word. The earth lay immense and small beneath them -- the occasional airfields white as scars. Down across the Rhine, the strings and barges smaller than stitches. And then a city glistening, struck by the first sun, Stuttgart, the thready streets, the spires, the world laid bare. 'What a day Cassada,' said when they landed. Isbell agreed. His body felt empty, his mind was washed clean. 'Ingle Stat,'.. Cassada said. 'Have you ever noticed Ingle Stat passing over?' I look down and think how I'd like to be there. 'You know what I mean? Have you ever been there?' 'A couple of times,' Isbell said. 'It's not as great as it was this morning.' Cassada was looking around, taking things in with his sea- blue eyes. 'You could say that about every place,' he commented."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said in an interview once, "I believe there's a right way to live and to die. The people who do that are interesting to me. I haven't dismissed heroes or heroism." And of course, that's all very clear in this book, which is about that very subject. Is this something that comes inevitably from your experience at West Point, in your own experience as a fighter pilot, or does this interest in that sort of thing predate that?

JAMES SALTER: I was a kid when World War II broke out. And I was formed not only by those years and everything that happened in them and the language of them and the spirit of them, but also by the years that preceded them, which were the years between the wars. And so naturally my reference, my-- what can I say-- my way of seeing the world was powerfully formed by all that. And perhaps that's... and also, I don't know, I guess I like Wagner more than I like Schubert.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You actually saw battle over Korea. And you were quite a long time a fighter pilot. You didn't leave until 1957, and you graduated from West Point in 1945. How did your desire to become a writer manifest itself and when?

JAMES SALTER: Well, I mean, I was a writer as a schoolboy. I was a schoolboy poet, of course; most schoolboys who write are. And I was interested in writing all along. I mean, I read. But you know, you get in the service, the service is not an intellectual occupation. It's the life of... It's the life of action, of course -- action and boredom, I should say. And I was always interested in writing. I wrote a little when I was an officer, but I didn't have time for it. And then after Korea, I... about two years after, everything that had happened there, I kept a journal. I've always thought it was not in-depth, it was merely a record of missions and some notes about people, various things, anecdotes occasionally. And I kept thinking I could make... something should be made out of this. I hate to see all this vanish. This was, in a sense, the great voyage of my life. And I decided I would like to write a book about it, but I couldn't think of what to write. And then one day, as sometimes happens, the idea for it came to me whole and complete, about two years after I had gotten back. And that was the book called "The Hunters," of course. And I just sat down and wrote it. I don't remember whether it was hard or easy to write. I only remember that it seemed to... It seemed to be all there, just waiting for me to pull it in. And when I had done that, I felt, well, perhaps... Well, of course, I thought I was a writer, but this was confirmed by the fact that Harper Brothers said, "yes, we like this book very much, we'd like to publish it." And then it went on and it got quite good reviews. And I thought, "well, I wasn't wrong. And underneath all this, latent in me, I am a writer." And so I decided that's what I would try and be.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, James Salter, thanks so much for talking with us.

JAMES SALTER: Thank you, Elizabeth.

FINALLY - IN MEMORIAM

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, we remember Congressman Joe Moakley, who died today of leukemia. Earlier this year, after Moakley had announced his illness, Kwame Holman profiled the Massachusetts Democrat and the district he served for almost three decades. Here is an excerpt.

KWAME HOLMAN: John Joseph Moakley was born into South Boston's Irish American enclave 74 years ago. At 15, he joined the Navy and served three years in the South Pacific. But it was at the right arm of another legendary Boston Democrat, former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, that Moakley honed his political skills.

REP. JOE MOAKLEY: 1952, I was first elected to the Mass House. Speaker O'Neill was elected to the U.S. House that same year, and a young fellow named Jack Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate. That was a good year, 1952.

KWAME HOLMAN: But 20 years later, Moakley faced what he calls his most difficult time in politics. Many of his friends and neighbors took to the streets toreject court-ordered school busing between predominantly white South Boston and the black community of Roxbury. Moakley too, opposed the busing order, but refused to join in the demonstrations. For that his South Boston constituents demonstrated against him.

KWAME HOLMAN: That was one of the worst times.

REP. JOE MOAKLEY: Terrible time. Terrible time.

KWAME HOLMAN: Demonstrations at your house...

REP. JOE MOAKLEY: Well, it was because my people thought that I should be out in the streets, and screaming and hollering and railing people. And I said look, I'm against it, but I'll do my work in the halls of Congress. But that wasn't enough. See, the whole thing was that the way that the remedy to busing was they were going to bus everybody from South Boston into Roxbury, and the school in each area, there was no difference. And there was just an exercise in futility. If they were going to bus them into areas where the school system was much better, fine. But this was just trying to equal the color situation by an artificial means, and there was no pot of gold at the end of it. The schools in Roxbury were no better than the schools in South Boston.

KWAME HOLMAN: Leonard Alkins is President of the Boston NAACP. He has known Joe Moakley for more than 30 years.

LEONARD ALKINS: He was one of the few politicians from the South Boston area who was not inciting to riot. He was responsible, and that's why people of color have respected him for all these years.

KWAME HOLMAN: Moakley also is respected for his ability to steer federal money back home. By far Boston's number one example is the Big Dig. The troubled harbor and freeway overhaul has seen projected costs double, then triple. Nonetheless, Joe Moakley and the rest of an influential Massachusetts Congressional delegation have kept federal dollars flowing to the largest single public works project in U.S. history. And it was Moakley who almost single-handedly secured the federal funds to erect the new U.S. courthouse in South Boston. An expert in urban programs, Moakley proudly says it's helping anchor needed redevelopment.

REP. JOE MOAKLEY: It's a state of the art courthouse, and people come from all over the world just to view it.

KWAME HOLMAN: After a ceremony on April 18, the courthouse will bear Moakley's name. Moakley suggests his work largely is a function of where he came from.

REP. JOE MOAKLEY: Public service, you know, is the ability to help the most vulnerable in our society. And if you represent an area that has a lot of blue-collar workers, you're going to get a lot of people who are going to need your help.

MAN: And I always said Joe Moakley always took care of Southie and I hope the people realize that.

REP. JOE MOAKLEY: Atta boy.

GWEN IFILL: Earlier this year President Bush saluted Joe Moakley as, quote, a man of strong opinions and brought respect. In this town, the President said, it isn't always easy to combine the two.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the other major stories of this Monday, Memorial Day. President Bush signed a bill authorizing construction of a World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Russia's defense minister dismissed reports that the U.S. would buy Russian missiles if Moscow agreed to scrap the anti-ballistic missile treaty. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.