Friday, March 27, 1998

KEN BODE, host: For the first time in 20 years, an American president is in Africa. And this time every year you face the tax man. Will they ever reform the IRS? Tonight, on WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW.

Announcer: This is WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW, for Friday, March 27th, 1998.

Now here's moderator Ken Bode.

BODE: Good evening, and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.

President Clinton and the first lady are spending the better part of two weeks in Africa, signaling nearly every day changes in American policy toward that continent. And just about now, a peak number of Americans are either consulting their tax tables or their accountants. We look at taxes and the IRS, each year at about this time, and we will again tonight.

We'll look also at gambling. In particular, at video poker. It's a kind of adult Nintendo, but it costs a lot more and one governor is hell-bent on eliminating it from his state.

We'll take a snapshot of the Supreme Court more or less at midterm, and find that it, too, has sexual harassment on its agenda. And for our roundtable, a surprisingly strongly worded opinion on sex in the workplace from a founding member of the feminist movement.

Those stories tonight on WASHINGTON WEEK. And with me to talk about them are the reporters and columnists who cover them: Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times, Ron Brownstein of US News & World Report, Jeffrey Birnbaum of Fortune magazine, and from South Africa by satellite, traveling with the president, John Harris of The Washington Post.

Analysis: Reforming the IRS

KEN BODE, host: Jeffrey, we're going to start with you tonight. And I want to take some facts from a long article you wrote in Fortune magazine and put these up on the screen for our viewers. OK? How long the IRS was--the IRS law was when it was passed in 1913: 14 pages. How long the tax code is today: 9,451 pages. How much we pay each year to get help filling out our returns: $8 billion. And how much the IRS lost in 1995 because of mistakes, unreported income, and improper deductions: $150 billion.

Jeff, you also say that the IRS ranks at the dead bottom in terms of the Americans' least favorite federal agency. What reform...

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune Magazine): Right, top of the least favorite. Right.

BODE: Top of the least favorite, OK. You say--but there's a move to reform.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: That's right. And the good news is that things are getting at least a little bit better for the IRS. The Senate, this spring, following the House, is going to pass the grandly titled taxpayer bill of rights. And the idea behind it is that this legislation will make the IRS less of a beast and more customer friendly, if that's at all possible. And the legislation will do a number of--of, I think, very worthwhile things. One thing, you won't any longer be considered guilty until proven innocent with IRS court cases. Another useful change would be the end of the so-called innocent spouse problem at the IRS. Right now, believe it or not, the IRS can actually go after mar--divorced people to attach to them--make them pay at least part of the tax liability that their ex-spouses still owe the IRS. But that'll be eliminated entirely by the Senate.

And th--they'll also--the legislation will also establish a new oversight board made up of regular citizens to keep an eye on the IRS. The only problem--the--there are several problems with this legislation. One is that even the lawmakers who are drafting it say that it is mostly window dressing. It doesn't really get to the deeper, more fundamental problems there. And also, the taxpayer bill of rights also has another problem, and that is that it's very expensive. The House version costs about $3 billion. The Senate version about triple that, and lawmakers don't quite know how they're going to pay for it all.

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Jeff, let me just add, given what the--the mission of the IRS is, you know, they could pass all this stuff, they could give out milk and cookies to anyone that whirl--walks into the office, you know, whatever, but the IRS--no one's ever going to love the IRS.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: No.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: I mean, what is the--what is the political motivation here at this time to--to--to do all this?

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Well, this is tax time, and the IRS is the agency that America loves to hate. And I guess to let off a little political--of--of the political pressure, they're always going to try to help the IRS. But it has deep problems.

I think the biggest problem that is not being addressed by this taxpayer bill of rights are the huge computer problems. The--the IRS--its computer system is like a Third World country system. In fact, Third World countries have better systems than the IRS does. They've been trying to modernize these computers for 25 years and have failed at a cost in the last 10 years alone of $4 billion. The IRS commissioner, Charles Rossotti, says that the--the task is so gargantuan, it--it's sort of like trying to rebuild Manhattan with the people still living in it. In other words, forget about it, it's not gonna happen.

Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (US News & World Report): Jeff, in the same vein as--as Linda's question, there are, obviously, some Republicans who feel that the real long-term solution here is fundamental reform of the tax code.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Right.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: And there are many conservatives in the House who want to pass legislation that would sunset the tax agency.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Right.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Just wipe it out of existence by sometimes--in 2001 or so. Is that going to happen? Are the Senate Republicans willing to go along with that level of change?

Mr. BIRNBAUM: I--I--I don't think so. I think politicians, especially at tax time, want to talk about repealing or reforming the entire tax system. They don't really want to do it because that could end disastrously. The other kinds of reforms are a menace on their own. And there's no way we're gonna get rid of the IRS anyway. It will be with us for a long, long time, old computers or not.

BODE: Well, this cost of doing it, Jeff, seems like a--just an excuse at this point to me. If you lose $150 billion in one year just through errors...

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Yeah.

BODE: ...and you can improve it--if it costs $20 billion to improve it, let's do it.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Yeah, they've been saying that for a very long time. And for some reason--for a variety of reasons, the--the--I think our view of the IRS is so ambivalent that basically we don't want to put the attention we need to at the IRS. We'll have to wait for these antique computers to break down before we really go in and try to fix the place, unfortunately.

Analysis: Clintons' trip to South Africa

KEN BODE, host: Well, let's move on and go to South Africa and talk to John Harris. We had a little bit of satellite trouble at the beginning of the program.

John, can you hear me now?

Mr. JOHN HARRIS (The Washington Post): Just fine, Ken.

BODE: It's what time in Cape Town, John?

Mr. HARRIS: Oh, a little after 3.

BODE: A little--thank you very much for being with us. We've had a lot of video here, John, of the president's trip. A lot of crowds, but the most moving moment so far seems to have been in Rwanda, a place where he had no cameras and really, really very small number of people that he talked to, just a moving personal statement about genocide.

Mr. HARRIS: Well, that's right. Somewhere between a half million and a million people died in Rwanda in 1994. At the time, the world knew about this but the world generally did nothing, including the United States. And what President Clinton did is go to Rwanda and speak to the survivors of that genocide and acknowledge that the world made a mistake, and by inference the United States made a mistake by not getting more--more involved.

I think the president was really genuinely very affected by it. He met with a dozen or so survivors of people--people--one man had his hand chopped off and would have been killed except he hid himself in a--a pile of dead bodies. Another woman had lost a half dozen people in her family. They told their stories to President Clinton, also Hillary Rodham Clinton was there. And the president clearly was caught up in the moment. He gave a--what--by nearly every account of the reporters on this trip was a really strong, emotional speech.

Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (US News & World Report): John, it's Ron Brownstein. Today seemed to be another emotional day. The president visited with Nelson Mandela, the prison where President Mandela had been held during the long years of apartheid. What was that event like?

Mr. HARRIS: Again, a lot of symbolism. They--they toured Robben Island, walked around arm in arm. President Mandela, almost 80 now--he's fairly frail on his feet and President Clinton was helping him walk around. He looked at the jail cell where Mandela had lived 18 years. It's a six--six-by-six room. Before going out there they had had a news conference. And I think really in part because of Mandela's stature, the questions that usually beleaguer President Clinton, whether he's at home or on the road, simply didn't come up. We didn't hear Monica Lewinsky's name, we didn't hear Ken Starr's name. Nobody was of a mindset, in Mandela's presence, to ask those questions.

BODE: He might have been a little bit frail on his feet, John, but it looked to us, from what he said at the news conference, that he was not at all bashful about putting his point of view across, that is to say President Mandela.

Mr. HARRIS: Really striking to--to US reporters since we're used to hearing somewhat mealy mouthed politicians speak to us. President Mandela was very blunt, right out of the gates at this press conference. In his opening statement, he emphasized the disagreements he has with the United States over Libya, over Cuba. He said, `Look, these nations, which are outcasts, as far as the United States is concerned, are friends of South Africa. They were with us during the struggle of apartheid. I'm going to be loyal to them.' He said, `It's my moral obligation to be loyal to them.' He said, `If people don't like that, they can go jump in the pool.' Those were his words.

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): John, in terms of the emotional events on the agenda for this trip, I gather there's--there's more emotion-packed events coming up when--when the Clintons move on to their next stop.

Mr. HARRIS: Down--a couple of down days where the president and the first lady are going to go on safari in Botswana. But the trip, I think, is going to end on a real emotional peak. We're going to go to Senegal and Gori Island, which is the--the point of embarkation for the slave trade to the United States. And I expect we'll be hearing a statement on slavery there.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune Magazine): John, this is Jeff Birnbaum. What about...

Mr. HARRIS: Hi, Jeff.

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Hi. What about the role of Hillary Clinton? Has she been playing a big role? H--and--and how do the Africans view her there?

Mr. HARRIS: Well, you have to remember that in most of the stops we've been to, she's a more recognizable figure than the president because she's been here. She was here a year ago following much of the same itinerary, and just like President Clinton is getting this time, she got an exuberant response. And in some ways, they're arriving here as equals, President Clinton and the first lady.

BODE: John, there's one more thing that I'd like to ask you about, and that is that there's a certain anomaly with the president in Rwanda giving a very moving statement about genocide and talking about how American policy can never allow this to happen again. At the same time, with the Kosovo slaughter that went on just about a week ago, we have the contact group in--in Europe saying, `We'll put off doing something about this for another month.' Another month in the context of Rwanda meant half a million people dead.

Mr. HARRIS: That's right. It was--so, as I said, it was a very powerful statement of ideals and the question is: What happens? Can we put those ideals into practice the next time? I talked to several human rights activists about what they thought about President Clinton's Rwanda speech. They said, `Terrific speech. The question is: Will there be the political will to--there to act?' Last time, clearly, there wasn't the political will. President Clinton wasn't even of a mind to try to create it.

BODE: All right, John Harris. Thanks, very...

Mr. HARRIS: Will things be different this time?

BODE: Thanks very much for being with us. Enjoy the rest of the trip, the two down days.

Mr. HARRIS: Thanks, Ken.

BODE: We'll see you back here in Washington.

Mr. HARRIS: I'll do it. Bye-bye.

Analysis: South Carolina's efforts to repeal video poker machines

KEN BODE, host: Let's move on to--to some domestic politics, Ron Brownstein. Every now and then we look at gambling on this show, the spread of legalized gambling. Money and politics from gambling, the social costs, what have you. You often go outside Washington and report--and bring back these reports to us, and the biggest front--the most important front of the gambling wars right now is South Carolina. Tell us why?

Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (US News & World Report): Of all places. South Carolina, which is not--you know, you don't think of in the same breath as Nevada or New Jersey or even Mississippi--finds itself the home of 31,000 video poker machines, which are these very fast, slot--sort of cousins of the slot machine in which you can play blackjack or poker. And you can--you can play a dozen hands in 10 minutes, you can bet up to $20--you can bet up to $20 a hand. And right now the Republican governor of the state, David Beasley, is trying to repeal video poker, which would be a truly striking thing.

It--you know, in--in the--from the mid-1970s when Atlantic City was authorized by the voters of New Jersey to add casinos, until the early 1990s, there's--was a--the gambling industry had essentially a run of the table in the political arena. They won almost every battle to expand legalized gambling of various sorts. In the last few years, the tide has begun to ch--shift a little bit. Since '94, they've lost big ballot initiatives in Florida, in Ohio, in Oklahoma, a couple of other places. But not since the progressive era, not since really about 1910 has a state repealed, on a statewide basis, a form of gambling that had been authorized. It's thought to be essentially impossible because so much money churns through these operations once they get entrenched. And that's exactly what David Beasley is trying to do in South Carolina today.

It's really hard to overstate how prevalent this is. The 31,000 machines are not only in a couple hundred pa--little--tiny, little video poker parlors, which makes them sound grander than they are, but...

BODE: Hmm.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: ...they're also in gas stations, restaurants, convenience stores. They are really ubiquitous around the state. Two billion dollars they took in in bets last year. As one state legislator noted in--in the Statehouse last week, that's more than South Carolina residents spend on gasoline. Now when you have this much activity around the state, it really means two things. One, you have a certain amount of problem with addiction because it's very accessible and it's a very--experts say it's a very addictive form of gambling. And secondly, you have a lot of political clout because there's a lot of money out there.

BODE: Let's go back to the first point. Because one of the constant points of debate in the gambling question are the social costs of gambling. Let's listen to Governor David Beasley from South Carolina on just that point.

Governor DAVID BEASLEY (Republican, South Carolina): (From January 21) One in five players in South Carolina is already a problem gambler and it's only getting worse. Just four years ago, Gamblers Anonymous had only eight chapters in our state, and today they have 27. Thirty-three percent--33 percent--of the players surveyed admitted to having spent the last dollar in their pocket playing these machines.

BODE: Ron...

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Ron, I mean, this--this kind of problem, as--as you've pointed out, is nationwide. Is there something in the climate in South Carolina that's caused this governor of this state to draw the line in the sand at this time?

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, video poker came to South Carolina without anybody really--it wasn't like New Jersey or--or even Nevada where they said, `OK. This is our ticket to economic development.' It came--came there in a sort of flukish way. There was a law in the '70s that authorized payoffs on pinball machines. And then in the early 1990s--1991, the state Supreme Court said, `Well, hey, that includes video poker, too.' So the leg...

Ms. GREENHOUSE: That just ...(unintelligible).

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: The Legislature, right. The Legislature...

BODE: Of all places in South Carolina.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, the Legislature tried to respond and they ended up having a county-by-county referendum, similar to what they--what they did in Louisiana, also. Very hard to win that kind of battle because the--the--the financial resources are so disproportionate. So what you're seeing is the number of machines increase by 50 percent in just the last three years, and truly become prevalent all over the state.

And what's really driven the dynamic there is what is, I think, driven the same dynamic at the national level which is more experience with what the expansion of gambling has meant. Really, you know, the--the figures that--that Governor Beasley cited there in terms of addiction, also the letters that have come in to him since these announcements. You remember Ms. Lonelyhearts? I mean, the--the book? It's like--it's like the letters in Ms. Lonelyhearts. These truly wrenching stories of families who have very little to begin with, finding they have even less when--when the breadwinner stops off on the way home at the convenient store or the gas station and loses an awful lot of their paycheck.

BODE: Ron, we're going to have to ask you to tell us another time what happens in South Carolina because they haven't really settled this problem yet, is that correct?

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: It's still--it's still up in the air. The Statehouse has voted to ban; the state Senate is filibustering and it's not clear that they have enough votes to break the filibuster, although they might have enough votes to get to the ban if they can actually get past the filibuster.

BODE: OK. Thanks a lot.

Analysis: Supreme Court's cases regarding sexual harassment in the workplace

KEN BODE, host: Linda Greenhouse, the Supreme Court is sort of at midterm. Sexual harassment is on the--do you say harassment (pronounced harASSment) or harassment (pronounced HARassment)?

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Harassment (pronounced harASSment) I guess I say.

BODE: Harassment. All right, let's do that, harassment.

Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (US News & World Report): It's OK, Ken.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Right.

BODE: The biggest case, of course, the Paula Jones case. That comes in the court--at a different court in May.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Right.

BODE: But you have the court redefining its position--or kind of refining its position--on sexual harassment: same sex, who's responsible, the corporation or the individual? Tell us about it.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Well, it's very interesting. You know, the law of sexual harassment in--in this country really is a law made by the Supreme Court because there's no federal law that even mentions the words `sexual harassment.' It's been a series of Supreme Court decisions beginning in 1986 which the court has said, in--in quite broad terms, that harassment that is pervasive and severe enough to effectively change the conditions of employment on the basis of sex is a kin--a form of--of sex discrimination in the workplace that's covered by civil rights law. So it's been judicial interpretation.

And what the court is doing now is--is really kind of filling in the blanks. They--they've painted with a broad brush and now we're getting the details. And two cases were argued this week, they had some similarities, some differences. But the--the common question to both of them is how--how the courts are to go about deciding when the employer, the ultimate employer, is legally liable for the harassing acts of the supervisor against a lower level employee. One of these involved lifeguards--supervisory lifeguards, who harassed women lifeguards on the beach. And it was the city who employed all of them--Boca Raton, Florida--was the city liable? And the other was--the question of is the school district liable when a teacher seduces--and this was a criminal act, statutory rape of a--of a 14-year-old girl--seduces her and had a prolonged affair with her. Obviously, he's liable. He went to jail. But is the school district liable even though school officials had no actual knowledge of the situation?

So this is--the questions for the court now are, `OK. We--you--you've set the general guidelines. How is it going to work in the real world? How do you prove a case and how do you win a case?'

BODE: You sa--you sa...

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Lin...

BODE: Can I ask a--one question here?

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Please.

BODE: You sat an--and listened to the arguments here.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Right.

BODE: What was your sense of the court on this?

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Well, my sense was that the really striking unanimity with which the court has addressed the--the broad brush issue. You know, it's right on the cusp of breaking down because these are hard questions.

BODE: Hmm.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: You know, if the employer doesn't know, is it--is it right to hold the employer liable? On the other hand, if the--if the employer has--has its head in the sand and hasn't set up a system where it's very clear what the--the lines of complaint are supposed to be and so on, isn't it perfectly obvious to hold the employer liable? They're tough questions and the court was looking for--really struggling to find some kind of rules that they could hand to the lower court judges who actually have to deal with this material and say, `Here's how you apply it.'

At one point the chief justice said, `You know, we're looking for something--for some ease of administration,' he said to one of the lawyers, `and--and we're not getting it.' Well, I don't know if they will get it.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Why--why are you seeing so many cases come--come together at once? Why are these all happening now?

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Well, I think it's--it's two things. One, I--the--the law has been in--in flux and it's--it's quite new law. And--and these cases--you know, we're all talking about sexual harassment in the political context. Well, these cases didn't come up, you know, just in the last few months. These cases are mostly five or six or seven years old--one. And then, two, in the--the Civil Rights Act--the 1991 Civil Rights Act that enacted some reforms in general federal civil rights law, for the first time made compensatory and punitive damages available to cases like this.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Hmm.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: And so it made them a lot more attractive to bring, and it's become a more--a more common form of lawsuit.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune Magazine): And there are all sorts of discrimination cases that, I guess, are coming up before the Supreme Court. Isn't there one next week?

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Yeah. This is a big discrimination term, actually. And--and next week the court will hear a very fascinating case on Monday involving discrimination against people with HIV...

Mr. BIRNBAUM: Mmm.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: ...people who are HIV positive. This is the first case the court will have taken under the Americans With Disabilities Act, eight-year-old statute, major civil rights law, never yet been interpreted by the court. And it's the court's first HIV or AIDS case, too.

BODE: All right. Linda, thank you.

Analysis: Feminist's reaction to allegations against President Clinton regarding improper workplace sexual behavior

KEN BODE, host: We're going to go to the roundtable now. And for our roundtable, we go to an op-ed that created a lot of discussion in this town this week. The question of why so many feminist movement women support President Clinton when they castigated Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood. The article was written by Gloria Steinem who had a lot to do with establishing proper rules of workplace behavior a couple of decades ago. `Proper sexual behavior,' she says, `yes means yes, no means no. Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey said no, so there's no hostile environment.'

Well, a lot of folks were talking about this around the--around this town this week. What do you guys say?

Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (US News & World Report): Well, I--you know, I thought the article, while having some points to it, also made some rather tortured distinctions between President Clinton's behavior and what she alleged Clarence Thomas' or Bob Packwood's behavior was. But I would say that I--I sort of see those tortured distinctions in a larger context. The people who are criticizing her--the conservatives who are criticizing Gloria Steinem are making some of the same tortured distinctions in trying to explain why they are so agitated about Paula Jones and--and were not about Anita Hill.

And I think the larger point here, to me, is that really scandal has become routinized, as--as both sides see it as a--as a partisan weapon and each side--both conservatives today and--and liberals in the early '90s--really see this as a way to get at a guy they want to get at, more than a way to advance a vision of--of--of the workplace. And I believe that's the way the public is processing it at this point.

BODE: Hmm.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Ken, if you look at polling about--about this whole Lewinsky controversy...

BODE: Well, let's keep--let's not look at polling yet.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: But I need to say...

BODE: I want to--I want to challenge you on what you just said.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

BODE: All right? Look, when Gloria Steinem was writing back in the '70s about this, what she essentially said was, `Women are to be treated equally...'

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

BODE: `...not as sex objects in the workplace.' And that means...

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely.

BODE: ...that--that you do not do it, period. Not that if you do it, and they say no, then it's OK, back off.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: All I'm saying is there's no suc--there's no question there's hypocrisy in this article. All I'm saying is, we should not be surprised by that. Because it is--it is, to me, pretty evident that it's part of advancing, it's seen as part of a broader political fight to her, at this point, in the same way as the people on the other side.

Ms. LINDA GREENHOUSE (The New York Times): Whoa, whoa. I--I wouldn't--I wouldn't fling around hypocrisy.

Unidentified Panelist: Yeah.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: I think there's--I think there's...

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Tortured distinctions.

Ms. GREENHOUSE: Well, I think there's something else going on here. You know, when I read the piece, I thought, `Oh, boy, this is not going to go unnoticed,' and indeed it--it hasn't. I mean, Wednesday The New York Times letters column, there must have been 15 letters about it, most of them critical. But, you know, I think--I think she was making actually some--some interesting points. I think what she was trying to do was to--to--to bring this discussion back into some context and some proportionality. And if I understood the piece, I don't have any, you know, inside knowledge about it, but it seemed to me she was saying, `All right. One action'--there's a--there's a concept to the old comment, `every dog has one bite.' And, you know, if--if my dog bites--bites my neighbor once, well--but it--if my dog bites my neighbor twice, then I'm really in trouble. She's saying, `Let's--let's have maybe some proportionality here before we bring the country's business to a halt.'

BODE: Jeff, we've got to be quick.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune Magazine): I--I just--my view is that her ar--her argument was a little narrow. That is, she completely missed the whole point of adultery, which, politically speaking, at the very least, is not very popular, and--and very hard to--and she didn't even mention that once in the whole piece.

BODE: All right. Well, we could have talked a lot longer about this one.

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

BODE: I wish we had time to do it.

Sign-off: Washington Week in Review

KEN BODE, host: I want to say thanks to our panel and also a special thanks to Gloria Borger and Gwen Ifill who sat in for me the last two weeks while I enjoyed the sun and the fish in the South.

And I'll see you all next week on WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW.