The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, Vice President Al Gore talks about reinventing government and four experts debate whether his plan will do it. In her weekly special conversation, Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to sociologist Amitai Etzioni. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton and Vice President Gore announced their plans to reinvent the government today. They appeared between two forklifts stacked with thousands of pages of government documents on the White House lawn. The Vice President said the documents were examples of the senseless rules, red tape, and useless bureaucracy which should be eliminated. He said the plan would save taxpayers $108 billion over five years and reduce the federal workforce by about 12 percent.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: If we make these changes, we can create a government that works better and costs less. We can treat taxpayers like customers. We can provide a quality product. We can hold government employees accountable and reward excellence.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Make no mistake about this. This is one report that will not gather dust in a warehouse. [applause] This program makes sense. It's going to work. We're going to do it.There are a lot of places in this program -- in this report where it says the President should, the President should, the President should. Well, let me tell you something. I've read it, and where it says the President should, the President will.

MR. LEHRER: Administration officials said about 700,000 federal workers manage red tape. They said the goal was to eliminate 252,000 of those jobs. Leaders of the three largest federal employee unions responded favorably to the plan, saying most of the cuts would come from attrition. Senate Republicans were also generally supportive. We'll have Vice President Gore and much more on this story right after the News Summary. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The Senate returned from its August recess today. The first order of business was debate on the nomination of Dr. Joycelyn Elders to be surgeon general. The matter was delayed for a month by conservative Republicans who oppose Elders' views on issues like sex education and abortion. Here's a sample of what was said about her on the Senate floor today.

SEN. DON NICKLES, [R] Oklahoma: He continues to make a lot of statements that I find are intolerant, that are radical, that are clearly out of the mainstream, and that are quite offensive to millions of Americans, in some cases hundreds of millions of Americans. I just think of many of the issues that are confronting us and the surgeon general will be dealing with issues that will affect every single family in America.

SEN. HOWARD METZENBAUM, [D] Ohio: Some groups have labeled her a "radical." I suspect this is because she has made her views on sex education, condom distribution, and abortion well known. It is no secret that she has been outspoken and plans to use the office of the surgeon general as her bully pulpit, however, the No. 1 doctor in the country should not be afraid to step on some toes.

MR. MacNeil: Two white Florida men were convicted of attempted murder today for the New Year's Day torching of a black tourist. With little forensic evidence, prosecutors relied on the testimony of the victim, a 32-year-old New York City man. He identified the defendants as the men who abducted him outside a Tampa shopping plaza. He said they taunted him with racial slurs, took him to a remote field, where they doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. The two could be sentenced to life in prison.

MR. LEHRER: The Muslim president of Bosnia went to the United Nations in New York today. President Izetbegovic met behind closed doors with non-aligned members of the Security Council. He also told the full Security Council the United Nations arms embargo on Yugoslavia was hurting the Muslims. Bosnian peace talks collapsed last week. A Pentagon spokeswoman said today Defense Sec. Aspin was considering going to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo next week. He said there was no itinerary for the visit, which would take place after a brief trip to Belgium this weekend.

MR. MacNeil: The Clinton administration today offered to act as the host at a signing ceremony next Monday for the Israeli-PLO agreement on limited Palestinian self-rule, however, details of the agreement remain to be worked out, and the parties have refused to set a signing date. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat continued to line up support from Arab leaders for the agreement, today winning the backing of Egyptian President Mubarak. In Jerusalem, about 50,000 right wing Jewish opponents of the deal tried to storm the office of the prime minister Rabin. Some of the protesters were bused in from territories which would be transferred to the Palestinian administration under the plan. Police kept the protesters away from Rabin's office. No injuries were reported.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. Army Rangers raided a command and control center of Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid today. Two rangers were slightly wounded in the pre-dawn, airborne assault in Mogadishu. Seventeen Somalis were detained, but Aidid was not among them. The U.N. began a hunt for Aidid in June after his fighters killed 24 Pakistani peacekeepers in an ambush.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to the Vice President and reinventing government and Charlayne Hunter- Gault's conversation. FOCUS - GORING GOVERNMENT

MR. LEHRER: The proposal to reinvent the government of the United States is our lead story tonight. It is the work of Vice President Gore, and today he and President Clinton laid it on the public table. We will have a Newsmaker interview with the Vice President plus some reaction right after this backgrounder by Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: Al Gore spent most of his summer with federal workers in town meetings, listening to their ideas for cutting the size of government and the cost of running it. In forums like this one at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., the Vice President came face to face with some of the problems of a giant bureaucracy.

WOMAN: Well, I spent nine years in the field in three states and five different offices, and I will say I don't think I was ever in an office that was fully staffed and had training when the new regulations hit on time, and I never really felt prepared to be doing what I knew going to get audited on three months after.

MR. HOLMAN: Correcting such problems and streamlining government is not going to be easy. The federal civilian workforce has grown from less than a million in 1935 to more than three million today. In that time, the number of cabinet level departments has grown from nine to fourteen, and the federal budget has increased tenfold. In this century, 12 presidents have come up with plans for reorganizing government. Today, President Clinton said his administration's plan, which contains more than 800 recommendations, would affect every federal agency, eliminate 252,000 jobs, and save taxpayers $108 billion over five years.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The key to remedying both the budget deficit and the investment deficit is to overcome the performance deficit in the federal government. And we intend to make a beginning of that.

MR. HOLMAN: Today's announcement fulfilled a Clinton campaign promise to come up with a plan to improve the efficiency of government. Clinton gave the effort a high profile and appointed Vice President Al Gore to head the review. Gore presented his task force's recommendation on the south lawn of the White House linked by forklifts holding thousands of pounds of what the Vice President called unnecessary federal paper work.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: The personnel code alone weighs in at over 1,000 pounds. That code and the regulations stacked up there no longer help government work. They hurt it. They hurt it badly. And we recommend getting rid of it.

MR. HOLMAN: Included among the Vice President's recommendations are emerging and cutting programs. For instance, the Drug Enforcement Administration would merge with the FBI, saving $187 million over five years. Ten percent of the Department of Agriculture's field offices would be closed, saving 1.7 billion. More than 40 grant programs in the Department of Education would be consolidated or eliminated, saving $540 million. The review also recommends streamlining federal purchasing, allowing taxpayers to pay the IRS with credit cards, and increasing the power of federal managers who hire and fire employees. And the review calls for putting the annual federal budget on a two-year schedule, allowing more time to scrutinize federal spending, rescinding billions in federal highway funds not yet spent by states, eliminating government subsidies for protected industries, and calling on Congress to put an end to so-called "pork barrel spending" on the pet projects of individual members. With more than half his recommendations requiring congressional approval, the Vice President has set up the Clinton administration for another battle on Capitol Hill. The review already is encountering some resistance from members who represent large numbers of federal employees like Democratic Congressman Jim Moran from just across the Potomac in Alexandria, Virginia.

REP. JAMES MORAN, [D] Virginia: If we were to eliminate 1/4 million jobs over five years and not fill them, then it will have a profoundly negative impact upon this region.

MR. HOLMAN: But the idea of reinventing government is attracting the support of some influential Republicans.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM, [R] Texas: It's the right thing to do, and I support it, and I think a lot of Republicans support it, and we're going to get out and get behind it. And if the President is not serious, we're going to find it out very quickly. And I believe he is serious.

MR. HOLMAN: Gramm says he'll propose putting many of the President's reform plans into law as a way of forcing the administration to stick by its pledge.

MR. MacNeil: Joining us now from studios at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House is Vice President Al Gore. Mr. Vice President, thank you for joining us.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Thank you, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: I'm sure you noticed it. The Washington Post today printed eloquent passages from Presidents Roosevelt and Nixon and Reagan, all stirring words on reforming government. Why will your words work magic when theirs did not?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Well, some of theirs did. Franklin Roosevelt brought about a great many changes. But some of the changes that were appropriate 50 years ago need to be revisited. Some of the industrial companies that did business very successfully with that old model 50 years ago have long since abandoned the centralized top down, hierarchical, bureaucratic approach, and shifted to a new information age approach that empowers their employees with more flexibility, encourages innovation, and instead of measuring inputs holds them strictly accountable for the output and for the result and for the performance. There are a couple of things that are unique about this study. You mentioned a few previous ones. We found 500 previous studies in this century, but not one of them that was based on the ideas of federal employees, themselves. Just as these high performing companies have learned the most by listening to their own employees who work where the rubber meets the road, we've taken that approach. Secondly, this is the first one in a long time to be directed out of the White House with the full commitment and leadership and support of the President of the United States. And it's a different political environment. The people are demanding this, rightfully so, and I believe that we're going to see it enacted.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think Ross Perot, who's an enemy on some other issues of this administration, could actually be a help to you in getting this through Congress?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: I don't know, Robin. I hope so. He called me at the beginning of this exercise and expressed very strong support for the undertaking, and I appreciated that very much. I do not know his reaction today. I, I, of course, hope everybody will react positively. I know not everybody will. But I think the vast majority of people understand that the lessons learned by companies in the private sector and a few governmental units that have gone through this process can and must be applied with modifications to the federal government.

MR. MacNeil: Do you see this politically with a lot of other battles ahead of you as a useful bit of bipartisanship, something that could lubricate that, that sentiment in the Congress?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: I hope so. And I do expect so. I welcome the support of Democrats and Republicans alike. Republicans have been very forthcoming in offering to be of help of this, and I'm grateful. Democrats have been very enthusiastic in their support of it, and I include the leadership in that. I include especially freshmen as well, and a lot of pioneers who have been working for years in the Congress on this, this kind of approach. Of course, they'll be resistance. We understand that, but the political ground has shifted. I think the vast majority understand the powerful few who want to protect this pork or that pork can no longer dictate the, the fate of proposals that have the effect of sweeping reform in the government. It really is time to, to make the government work better and cost less.

MR. MacNeil: Let's go to some of your proposals. One of the biggest ones, the biennial budget, the budget every two years instead of every year, was proposed by the Grace Commission to President Reagan. Why would the Congress buy that from you when it didn't from him?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: The first sponsor of it I know of was Leon Panetta, our budget director, back when he was a member of the House of Representatives. And, in fact, if i'm not mistaken, a majority of both the House and the Senate now serving have at one time or another co-sponsored this proposal. As for why it might be accepted from us when it wasn't from Reagan, our proposal is a little bit different, first of all, but there's another factor at work here. And maybe I'm not the best one to say this, but the, the old saying about Nixon going to China is more than just the biggest cliche of the last 20 years of government analysis, it also embodies a hard truth. People with one perspective and background can propose some things that will be met with a lot more resistance coming from somebody who take a different approach.

MR. MacNeil: You mean the last people the public might expect to be cutting the size of government are the Democrats, is that what you mean?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Well, I wouldn't want to say it quite that way. When Bill Clinton and I ran last year, we made it clear that we would be different in our approach not only from our Republican predecessors, but also from some of our own parties past. We want to take a new approach to governing. This proposal is in keeping with that pledge. We're deadly serious about it. The President's prepared to play the full keyboard in implementing this plan, and we're determined to bring it pass.

MR. MacNeil: Another of your proposals is to end government monopolies where you think it's feasible --

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Right.

MR. MacNeil: -- and encourage competition with the private sector. And you mention the government printing office. Why not go the whole way and just put out bids for printing to commercial firms everywhere, and let them all come up with the best prices?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: That's what agencies will be allowed to do under this proposal.

MR. MacNeil: In other words, the GPO could be left with nothing to do?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: That's correct, unless it can compete. Now the GPO also prints some material on its own. 80 percent of what the GPO does now is contracted out to the private sector. They just take a 6 to 9 percent rake-off for overhead off the top. And they say that's justified by the fact that they provide services for the different agencies and departments. And there are a lot of good people there, but, you know, things have changed. We have desktop publishing now. We have a lot of robust competition in the printing sector. We believe we can save a lot of money by bypassing these centralized bureaucracies and opening them up to competition. You know, one example that we learned from a municipal government -- you may be familiar with this story -- Phoenix opened up its garbage collection to competition. A private company got the contract, but then the next year the public bureaucracy doubled its productivity and won the contract back. They've kept it ever since by continually improving their productivity. We think that competition in some of these federal government services will have the same effect.

MR. MacNeil: Describe how you envision the air traffic control system working as a private corporation. I mean, why would it save money? Why would it be more efficient? Why would it be as safe as the one now run by the government?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Well, safety would be kept with the FAA, and under no circumstances would safety be compromised at all. The current operation doesn't work very well because the air traffic control operation in the FAA is encumbered with all of these rules and regulations, the red tape, the bureaucracy, and it really doesn't work. The airline commission that just reported to the President came to the same conclusion that we did in our study of this. The airline companies have long recommended similar actions. Some of them have taken a slightly different approach, but we believe this will streamline the operations of air traffic control, make it a lot better, more effective, and more efficient.

MR. MacNeil: How do -- cutting down the number of federal employees, how you decide who's not needed? I've always been amused whenever there's a snow emergency in Washington -- and there is every time there's half an inch of snow -- they always say on the radio, all non-essential employees stay home, which gives rise to a lot of jokes. Now, how do you, where do you draw the line?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: That might not be a bad test actually, but seriously, we have looked at the effects of the changes we're recommending, and we've identified the particular job classifications that will no longer be as much as in demand after these changes and as these changes are implemented. For example, when you reform the procurement system, you may no longer need 23 different people to get written authorization for the purchase of a personal computer. Some of those 23 people ought to be doing something else. And we've looked at those job classifications. When you reform the budgeting system so that it doesn't take five years from beginning to end of working with a particular fiscal year to go over all this paper work, some of those people need to be doing other things. They're not necessary in their present occupation. So we've identified the particular tasks, the particular classifications where we're recommending that these reductions occur, and we're going to ask for smaller appropriations in those particular categories year by year.

MR. MacNeil: As I understand it, you didn't sit down and ask yourselves, is government doing what it should be doing, or is it doing things it shouldn't be doing, but asked yourselves, is it doing well what it is doing? And I wonder, do I understand that correctly, you have not gone into things that government might not be doing, or you might -- I'm not putting this very well -- I hope you follow me.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Well, I understand your point. We're concentrating on -- we've consciously chosen to concentrate on how the government operates, rather than making political choices about what the government should do. Now, inevitably, there's some overlap between those things, and we couldn't avoid some things that obviously just don't make sense anymore. But in general, we've concentrated -- you're correct -- on how the government operates. We want to streamline it, reinvent it, if you will, re-engineer it, to use the business term, so it'll work better and cost less.

MR. MacNeil: Does that mean that we have now to expect another commission to look into what government should not be doing?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Well, we have the Congress and the President and the American people to make that decision. And that's something that's looked at every year in the authorization and appropriations process. We hope that by stimulating this debate and shaking things up quite a bit we will stimulate discussion of some of the things that the federal government doesn't need to do anymore. And in a few cases, we are saying, look, some of these things just don't make sense anymore. For example, we're recommending a bottom up consolidation of the funding streams going to local government where we just don't think it makes sense for the federal government to spend so much time and effort and money imposing all this red tape on the micro decisions at the local level. Let's shift that to the local level where those decisions can be made but seek measurement of performance and guarantees that every objective outlined in these programs will be met, but at the end of the year let's see whether they did it or not. If they didn't, let's yank the money. If they did, let's continue. But let's shift the burden of proof.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Vice President, thank you very much for joining us.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Thank you, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Now, four reactions to these proposals. Constance Horner was the director of the Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan administration. She's now a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution. Tom Shatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-profit watchdog group that grew out of the Grace Committee. John Sturdivant is the president of the 700,000 member American Federation of Government Employees Union. John DiIulio is a professor of government at Princeton University. He's the co-author of the recently published book, Improving Government Performance. Mr. Shatz, is, will these proposals shake things up quite a bit, as the Vice President just said?

MR. SHATZ: This is a big first step. It's a good start towards fighting government waste. We've been in these trenches for nearly 10 years now. And there have been some changes that have been implemented. There are a lot of things in this report that draw from the Grace Commission and maybe with the Democratic administration it might make a difference. We do need to shape things up. Government needs to change, needs to adjust.

MR. LEHRER: But will these proposals shake it up? Do you agree with that?

MR. SHATZ: A number of these will shake it up. A lot of them are also half measures. We need to take further steps on some of them. But I think that things will begin to change in Washington as a result of this. But it requires commitment and follow-through.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Sturdivant, in general terms, what do you think of it?

MR. STURDIVANT: This, this is a good report. Obviously, there are a lot of parts of that report that give cause for concern, but this is a good direction. It is a good opportunity to change the way government does business. I will tell you, federal employees, as much as anyone else, any other people, want to, government to work better, more effectively and more efficiently. We simply don't intend to concede that high ground to politicians and so-called policy makers.

MR. LEHRER: Do you -- when the Vice President told Robin that the federal employees were very much involved in this proposal, do you agree with that? Is that an accurate report, from your point of view?

MR. STURDIVANT: I would say federal employees were involved in varying degrees depending upon the agency. We were involved at his level --

MR. LEHRER: The union -- in other words, the union leaders were involved.

MR. STURDIVANT: We were involved at his level. Our, our local leaders and our council leaders were involved where they could be, but there was involvement in varying degrees at all levels, some good, some bad.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Ms. Horner, in general terms, what do you think of this?

MS. HORNER: I think for what it does it is a strong and serious report. And I think it's one which if the details come out right when we hear the details that Republicans can and should support very vigorously. It's been very successful already in identifying serious problems. The enormous burden of constraint from regulation that federal managers try to operate under. Worldwide, bureaucracies are imploding, private sector and public sector bureaucracies. IBM, state-owned enterprises in Europe are already imploding. This is an era of people. But I see three problems which, if they are not successfully addressed, will cause this project, a very good project, to fail. One is the issue of what the Congress's reaction will be. This represents a radical reduction in congressional authority and power if it's fully implemented. The second is, given that the federal employee unions have considerable influence over the Congress, what will be the price they will exact in exchange for their support. Will it be so high that it will end up re-entailing the federal manager in constraint? And finally, will the Clinton administration be able to resolve its internal conflict between its activist government ideology, which wishes to add programs and the quite admirable deregulatory impulse of this report.

MR. LEHRER: Those are three super questions. We'll get to some of them in a moment. I want to go to Mr. DiIulio first though for some general comment. What do you think about this? Is this -- do you hear the government shaking from where you are up there at Princeton?

MR. DiIULIO: Well, I'm not sure I hear the government shaking, but I think it's fair to say that the -- excuse me -- the Vice President and the NPR staff and the people at OMB who worked on this report really are to be congratulated. I mean, after all, this is the 11th major effort in this century to reform the federal bureaucracy and the 8th effort since 1883, the passage of the Pendleton Act, which established the federal civil service to look very, very much in close detail at federal personnel and pay practices. I think if you look at this report, I think it's fair to say that when all is said and done it compares favorably to many, if not most, of these previous efforts.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Now, the President said that unlike all those others, the Vice President repeated it to Robin just a moment ago, unlike all those other proposals, this one is really going to get something done. Is there -- what do you remember this, Mr. DiIulio, that would make you think one way or another about that?

MR. DiIULIO: Well, I think the Vice President is right on target when he says this effort is a serious effort to deregulate the federal personnel and trim the system. They're talking about making major changes that would make it easier for the federal government to hire and train and retain and promote first rate workers and, frankly, make it easier for the federal government as well to weed out and, and demote and fire people who don't perform as well. And at the same time, there is plenty in this report that does address the rather inane federal procurement regulations, that the cost to the taxpayer is a lot more for government purchases. So I think this report -- I must say -- is somewhat, to my own surprise, I think this report does go quite a long way to doing exactly what it sets out to do.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Shatz, as somebody who's been involved in these kinds of efforts now for several years, do you think that this one may actually go somewhere? I mean, whatever problems you may have with it, it doesn't go far enough here, whatever, but as written, as proposed by the Vice President and now the President, do you think it really is going to go somewhere?

MR. SHATZ: That, again, depends on what Congress does.

MR. LEHRER: Well, what's your reading of what Congress may do, and what do you think is going to happen?

MR. SHATZ: Well, I think the political climate has changed, as the Vice President noted. There are thousands -- tens of thousands of people around the country -- that are fighting government waste. In fact, we have 550,000 members nationwide. These people, others around the country, want something done. That will help get these things implemented. The Grace Commission, by the way, was not something that gathered dust on a shelf. OMB tracked implementation for several years.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. SHATZ: So there is precedent for --

MR. LEHRER: I'm talking about -- what do you think -- or what is your reading -- you heard what the Vice President said -- hey, look, Democrats aren't supposed to do this. Do you see something different going on now that gives you hope that this thing is going to be actually enacted? That's all I'm asking.

MR. SHATZ: Well, I agree it's like Nixon going to China. I mentioned that long before this came out. This is an opportunity for Democrats to do something. They are the majority party. They control both houses of Congress. Maybe they'll get more votes than they got on reconciliation and actually get some of these things through.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Mr. Sturdivant, you heard what Ms. Horner said, that you all could be one of the problems here, your members, in other words, the federal employees, 252,000 jobs, of their jobs, are going to be eliminated. Are you going to extract a price for those 250,000 jobs, and, if so, what might it be?

MR. STURDIVANT: One of the differences in these recommendations is for the first time the administration has made a commitment to make federal employees and their unions full partners in the process. There will be a national partnership council. We'll be part of it. We will have an opportunity to discuss these measures. We'll have an opportunity to help shape them. We'll have an opportunity to be at the table. So I think that that is a different piece of it, is for the first time everything else has been tried. Now, they're going to try asking the employees to their unions, and I think that that can very well help the move.

MR. LEHRER: But do you all, you and your members, and the other unions and their members, concede that there are too many federal employees, there are too many federal jobs, and that's one of the reasons that the federal government is too expensive and doesn't work very well?

MR. STURDIVANT: That's one of our recommendations, one of the things that we said, is you need to do something about the middle - - too many middle managers. One manager with the average of every seven employees in the federal government, the private sector is one per twenty. We recommended that. We gave that to the transition people. We said you need to do something about the middle managers. You need to do something about a classification system that is overly complex, rigid, hard bound, and doesn't really serve anyone but the classifiers. The procurement process, all of these processes at some point time use employees, and yes, some of those employees are going to have to do other things, and they're going to be reduced.

MR. LEHRER: But also, what you're saying is that some of your employees are also frustrated by doing their jobs by the things that hopefully can be eliminated by this.

MR. STURDIVANT: Right. You got a whole -- you got a larger number of people in the federal government whose business it is to tell you what you can't do. And then you got another group whose business it is to look over your shoulder while you're doing it. Under the new work place where you give employees more authority, more autonomy, more freedom, you don't need all that supervision. You don't need all that control. And, yes, it's going to -- there is less, less employees. There's no doubt about it.

MR. LEHRER: Well -- do you agree that the managers who are left - - there will still be a lot of managers left -- should have more power than they have now to discipline, to fire --

MR. STURDIVANT: Of course.

MR. LEHRER: -- and hire, and transfer, and all those kinds of things?

MR. STURDIVANT: Of course. We support giving the agencies and the managers more authority. The countervailing piece of that is the union will have a larger role to play in the work place.

MR. LEHRER: In what way?

MR. STURDIVANT: Broader scope of bargaining, more partnership. We will be in the work place as full partners, not working in adversarial relationships but helping to identify and solve the problems.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Horner, does that sound good to you, or how does it sound to you?

MS. HORNER: The devil is the details, as always, and, of course, cooperation with the unions is a good thing, private or public sector. The question becomes: Does it, does it develop to the extent that it's not just cooperation but that it is a series of demands which then place the federal manager back in some kind of box, again, just after he's been liberated, or as the price of it's being liberated from one kind of constraint to then be placed under another? I hope that would not be the case, and if it's not the case, I think this is a great, a great series of recommendations.

MR. LEHRER: Let's go to another point that you raised though, and that is that the President and the Vice President can propose, and everybody on every television program in America can say right now, but the Congress could kill this. What's your -- do you think the heat's on so strongly that they might have trouble this time, or do you see this thing kind of dwindling away if we're not careful?

MS. HORNER: The heat is on quite strongly, I think, and that's what gives me optimism here. That being said, it's necessary to keep the heat on. Congress could do some superficial things, garner some political benefit, and then go away, and relay our business as usual back on quietly, and there's only one person who can really keep the heat on, and that is the President. He's got to expand a lot of his political capital to get this done, to see it through, and as the Vice President has said, it's going to take a number of years to do this. If he's willing to do that, it can work. If not, not.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. DiIulio, do you agree with that, that if the President doesn't stay on 'em, this ain't gonna happen?

MR. DiIULIO: Oh, I think that's, that's certainly the case, and I think it's, it's likely that the President and the Vice President and the NPR staff will stay on this one because they have already invested a great deal of their personal and political capital in it. So I'm rather optimistic.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Shatz, a lot of people do not understand that, that members of Congress have constituencies beyond the ones they represent. I mean, they have to do with certain -- I mean, your employees, for instance, are, there are members of Congress who represent them and what not. What is -- based on your experience that when this thing gets up there and they start picking the pieces apart, is it going to be a brutal fight, or is, is it so much in the public mind and in the public spirit, and the public air right now that they will have no choice if the President keeps the heat on?

MR. SHATZ: Well, hopefully, it will be the easier route, but certainly there are members of Congress who are already putting up road blocks.

MR. LEHRER: Like what? Give me an example.

MR. SHATZ: An appropriation bill saying that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing here in Washington has to run three full shifts, five days a week. Why not give them flexibility? Maybe they don't need to do that much.

MR. LEHRER: Who is being protective? What constituency is being protective of that kind of thing?

MR. SHATZ: Well, it's the plant, itself, it's the people that work there. It may come from people, members like Congressman Moran, who have a lot of federal workers in his district, may come from Eleanor Holmes Norton, who likes to see probably people in the district working. There is a floor throughout a lot of agencies. In other words, they cannot employ less than a certain number of people. That's a way to just have people there, whether or not they're doing something useful.

MR. LEHRER: I noticed that in Kwame Holman's report -- I'd read this earlier -- that they're going to close some Department of Agriculture Offices around the country. Is there going to be a member of Congress behind every one of those agriculture offices saying, no, no, no, not this one, that one, this one, that one?

MR. SHATZ: Well, we call these the visible symbols of what members of Congress do for the folks back home. To say they have a field office even though there is no farmers in their district, they still like to say they have it. This is something proposed bythe Grace Commission, approved by former Sec. Madigan. It's now out there again. Sen. Leahy, Sen. Lugar have agreed that this is something that should be done, and here we are, almost a year later, still trying to get this done. These are one of those things that just should be done. It's very simple. It's been agreed to for years. But there will be resistance on that.

MR. LEHRER: Yes. Mr. Sturdivant, you're optimistic though, right?

MR. STURDIVANT: Oh, yeah, we're optimistic, quite frankly. A lot of these recommendations we have been making for the past 20 years. Suddenly, it seems as though an administration is going to listen to us. Federal employees are as hot on, you know, not having waste and not having inefficiency as anyone else. We see it every day. We see the waste. We see the efficiency. We're the ones who are frustrated. Oh, we think that there's a lot of opportunities here. One of the things that we hope though is that - - and where we are -- where the unions are on this -- is trying to approach this with an open mind, trying to set up an environment, have an environment in this town, so that we can have a rational, objective discussion about these proposals, without starting to pick it apart, or without starting to have knee jerk reactions.

MR. LEHRER: Like what? Like go in and say --

MR. STURDIVANT: Without starting to argue for the status quo.

MR. LEHRER: -- let's fire every other person.

MR. STURDIVANT: No. Just continue arguing for the status quo. I don't think anyone, any worker who works for the federal government is interested in the status quo, even if we have to put up with some pain, even if we have to put up with some dislocation. We are tired of being talked about. We are tired of being maligned. We are prepared. We are ready to make some changes in this federal government. We want to work better for the American taxpayer.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Horner, what do you think of the Gore-MacNeil test, that all federal employees who are not considered essential on snow days be, be eliminated?

MS. HORNER: I think you would have very few people reacting to snow days. Snow days is a sore subject here in Washington.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, Ms. Horner, gentlemen, thank you very much. CONVERSATION

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, another in our weekly series of Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversations. Tonight, she talks with Amitai Etzioni, founder of the new communitarian movement.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Amitai Etzioni has always lived in the world of ideas, mostly in the ivory tower of academia, and for the last 13 years at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Many of the ideas of the 64-year-old sociologist have found their way into numerous articles and books. But Prof. Etzioni's latest and perhaps most ambitious work is aimed at creating a movement. It is called The Spirit of Community, its aim, to create a new, moral, social, and public order based on restored community. So far, it's a movement that includes many like-minded thinkers, but Etzioni is its leading promoter and ideologist. Following our walk through Central Park, we discussed why such a movement is necessary.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Prof. Etzioni, thank you for joining us.

AMITAI ETZIONI, Sociologist: Thanks for having me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've identified the problem that you believe is bedeviling America in a major way. What is it?

PROF. ETZIONI: Well, it's not one problem. There's the famous list of poverty and racism and such, but the one I chose to focus on with my colleagues is the decline of what I like to call the social, moral infrastructure. Society has like a road, like a bridge, certain elements which hold it up, and they are the fact that people most times need voluntarily to do what's right. There's cops and inspectors and FBI agents to ensure that we be civil and responsible for our children, for our taxes, for our neighbors, for the environment. That voluntary compliance, what it's like, is very delicate. You can have a society in which people are free from government controls, and I don't like the idea of the government telling us to pray or how to behave in our personal lives, or any other place. But you cannot have a society in which everybody does what they want. So what's the alternative to government control is the voice of the community. We should encourage each other to do what's right, and we occasionally censor in the sense of criticizing each other when we do not behave. Now, that voluntary compliance what is liked has been breaking down in America.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why has it been breaking down, and what manifestations of that breakdown do you see?

PROF. ETZIONI: All right. Now, first, what happened, we started it a society -- I used as my base line the '50s -- it was a rather established society, with a relatively clear set of values. Not everybody did it, but everybody knew what they were supposed to do. But it was also -- society was discriminatory against women. It was racist, and a bit authoritarian. In those days, when a doctor told you what to do, you didn't dare say I want a second opinion.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Or a professor.

PROF. ETZIONI: That's right, or a professor had authority. And we challenged that society, and from my viewpoint, for good reason. And that is not the problem. The problem is as we brought down the consensus, the values of the established society of the '50s, we didn't replace them with any new consensus. So we have, in effect, a kind of measure of moral anarchy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Moral anarchy?

PROF. ETZIONI: Yes. People often ask me if I'm speaking to the ghettos, and I -- I'm speaking, first of all, to the middle class, because the notion that the problems are in one part of a society is just -- doesn't square with the evidence. There are increasingly a number of people in all classes who neglect their children, like this couple who took off to Acapulco as an extreme example.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And left the children home.

PROF. ETZIONI: Unattended in Chicago, I believe. The, the parents -- let us -- and lawyers, who bill, God knows, how many thousand a years and they come home exhausted, and they have no time or energy or interest in their children. We have cocaine up and down the social structure, date rape, all the signs of a society coming apart.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In other words, you're making -- I mean, there are so many problems confronting America now that we see in the newspapers, on television, in magazines, you're drawing some connection between all of them no matter how disparate their manifestation.

PROF. ETZIONI: Right. When a child is born, they have no values, they have no moral commitments. Somebody has to take each new generation and introduce them to the values of the community. Now, later they may rebel and change them, but first, somebody has to introduce them to them. Well, in about half our families, by my calculations, that no longer happens because they are too busy making a living, and not of their fault, economic crisis and such, are not there, either not there physically or not there psychologically. Then these kids come to school. There's already a problem. The schools say, we cannot engage in character education. Yeah, well, then, as it is, just keeping law and order, just teaching English, they graduate, and half of them never had the kind of personality formed which you need to be a civil and productive member of society.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And the reason is economic pressure or --

PROF. ETZIONI: The reason is that you gave up on an agreement, what's right and wrong in the mechanism. There's something which is called the seed beds of virtue. It is where we cultivate these civil, humane behaviors. And they have crumbled under the pressure of economic factors, and a loss of cultural nerve.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: A loss of cultural nerve.

PROF. ETZIONI: Yeah. You see, what happens is like this. Those of us who consider ourselves progressive people, they're so intimidated by the fact that the Claires and the Pat Buchanans took family and community and public safety and fight against crime as their issue, they use them to bash, from my viewpoint, most people, and so we're afraid to touch them. So progressive people don't talk about family. That's a right wing issue. You don't talk about fighting crime, that's a right wing issue; you don't talk about community, that kind of thing, fuzzy thing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But when you talk about trying to teach or restore the values we all share, I mean, you're talking about a nation that is, that is divided along ideological lines, more and more along class lines. I mean, so who determines what values we all share?

PROF. ETZIONI: That's exactly why I'm here. That's why I did The Spirit of Community. That's what it's all about. We're trying to get a dialogue in which we're going to reach across those lines, a new consensus. That's exactly what's missing. And it happens often in American history. When you look at the environmental movement, the civil rights movement, now the debate about the gays, two years ago the nationwide discussion we had about sexual harassment, we have these occasions that there is a nationwide dialogue about an issue and out of a lot of screaming and talk shows and interviews and coffee klatches and water coolers a new consensus does arrive.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If the system is working, as you just described it, you emerge that consensus through debate, if this debate is happening, what's your problem?

PROF. ETZIONI: That this particular debate we're just triggering. The previous debates were not issues. We had the mechanism in place for having nationwide discussion, but we didn't have one for twenty, thirty years on the family, on schools, on committees, precisely the sort of reason you put so well, because people say, okay, talk about it, that's right wing, and they shut up, and we say, let's talk about it differently, but let's talk about it. Let's not yield these issues to some extremists.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let me ask you about one of the tenets of your "communitarian model," which is you say that people have a strong sense of entitlement but a weak sense of obligation to community. Spin that one out for me a little bit. Is that --

PROF. ETZIONI: When young Americans are asked about their right to be tried before a jury, their peers, if they're caught having committed a crime, the overwhelming majority say, yes, that's right. But then when they were asked to serve on a jury, the overwhelming majority said find somebody else, not me. But that's really a -- it's all in there. First of all, it's illogical, the peers will not serve -- there won't be a jury of your peers. Second, it's indecent. That means everybody wants to take and not give. A much more important finding is the overwhelming majority of Americans say they want less government, smaller government, and they want more of every government service. You can list from health to education, to housing, and we say, of course, you're entitled to your rights, and you should fight for them, and they should be sacred. But you also have to realize that every right is a claim on somebody or something, and the other federal right is a responsibility.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One of the criticisms of your idea of communitarianism is that it was, that this is a tragic ideal. You have these sort of utopian longings, but then how do you put them into practical effect?

PROF. ETZIONI: There's only one way to talking, sharing ideas, using the media to have this nation by town hall meeting which is they will always sort out priorities, our direction.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What chance do you give that of success, and how long do you think that will take?

PROF. ETZIONI: Two years ago, when we started the thing, I would have given it one out of a hundred. And it was absolutely flabbergasted to me, never seem to me to surprise how much dialogue we already created on these issues. There can be only one reason. The public is more than ready. So I would say that over the next years, we're going to come to consensus on many of these issues. Next year, we're going to talk about welfare, and I think we're going to change direction on welfare. We are talking now about health care, but part of the dialogue is, what is my responsibility, can I smoke and abuse my body with drugs and drink, and then come to the society, say, pay for me, or do I need to take some responsibility for myself, for my family, for my neighborhood, but these are all communitarian issues, and they are -- we're making progress on pockets of them. On the family, we have not come to a new consensus.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But that's the most fundamental you said.

PROF. ETZIONI: That's right.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it?

PROF. ETZIONI: It's the beginning place, you know. We need to also talk about schools and neighborhoods. About neighborhoods, we are moving. There are more than 10,000 crime watch groups which children participate in protecting their neighborhood. Community policing is spreading from New York to Los Angeles. That's a good idea, to bring police and community closer together, other than being always hostile and enemies. It, by the way, I'm sure will entail changing the kind of people you hire to be police. So there is progress on, on many fronts, but there's a long way to go. And I can't predict for the year. But I think by the end of the '90s we will have recommitted ourselves to a social fabric.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, let's hope you're right, Professor Amitai Etzoni. Thank you for joining us.

PROF. ETZIONI: Thanks for having me. ESSAY - MEMORIAL GROUND

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, an essay on the link between the living and the dead. The essayist is Roger Rosenblatt, contributing editor of "Vanity Fair Magazine."

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The living have a strongly protected relationship with the dead. That point was made in a recent article in the New York Times describing the very large number of very old graveyards that lie beneath New York's arcs, streets, and buildings. The protectiveness comes through in the express desire of the residents of neighborhoods to pay honor to the residents of the graveyards. In Brooklyn, a group opposes the building of an incinerator for the city because the graves of American prisoners of the Revolutionary War lie under that ground under warehouses and piers. In Queens, the renovation of a park is being fought because it lies above the side of a black cemetery of the 1800s. Here in the Bronx, the historical society opposes the building of tennis courts in Van Courtland Park, because the land lies atop an Indian burial ground. The opposition, in short, favors the honor of the dead over the needs of the living, this in a time when so much is needed in the city in terms of recreation, parks, even incinerators. But the living have always felt a special obligation toward the dead, not just the individual dead, a friend or a family member, but toward the entire category. They owe a place on earth, though the dead no longer walk the earth, whether that place takes the form of a grave, urn, vault, tomb, or pyramid. What they are really protecting is their relationship with the past, and, oddly, with death, itself. The relationship with the past is easy to comprehend. Cemeteries are archives of families' histories, national histories. The war dead in Arlington National Cemetery connect America to its wars, to its unity and independence. The writers buried in the Novadervici Cemetery in Moscow connect the Russians with their literature. Thousands in Moscow bring flowers to the graves of Gogo and Chekhov every day. Why? Because the words of Gogo and Chekhov relate what was to what is, even as in the case of these submerged cemeteries in New York when the presence and the past must be felt and not seen, like a buried dream. It is the living's relationship with the dead, themselves, that is more intriguing. Why should there be this civic urge to keep burial grounds intact, to not allow the dead to get too far away from the surface of present life, in spite of the needs of present life? It is as if the living are always aware of how close they are to the dead, how short a moment exists between you brightly here and you gone forever. Too much too take, that thought, too short a step for so great a distance. When people become enraged at the desecration of graveyards by the sub-humans who overturn grave stones or stain them with spray paint, they feel the violation personally. "The grave's a fine and private place," said the poet, Andrew Marvel, but it really isn't. In America, particularly, graveyards are very public places, this country being the first to establish public cemeteries. Beautifully tended grounds like Greenwood in Brooklyn, or Mt. Auburn, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attest to the care people feel for the dead. The attachment to the species goes back and back and down and down, under park here, and building to the center of the earth, the center of the soul. I am standing over a cemetery right now that was used by Bronx families from 1677 to 1909. Hundreds of feet below this pavement, a cemetery of the past, the living standing over a hidden world that offers memory, mystery, and the hope of rest in peace. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Tuesday was the release of President Clinton and Vice President Gore's reinventing government proposal. The plan is designed to save $108 billion and reduce the federal payroll by 252,000 jobs in five years. Reaction from Republicans in Congress, federal employee unions, and others was mostly positive. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with the political fight shaping up over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and a Newsmaker interview withPresident Clinton's controversial choice for surgeon general. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.