Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Page 6 'Cllt 09HltCOCk Wednesday, August 30, 2000 Congress close on minimum wage deal By Curt Anders©n Associated Press WASHINGTON— Signs of com promise have emerged for a bill to raise the minimum wage by $1 over two years, now that House Speaker Dennis Hastert proposed to move the legislation without two key tax cut proposals that drew objec tions from President Clinton. Senior White House officials and Democratic congressional leaders said Monday that Hastert’s offer could represent a breakthrough in long stalled negotiations on size and speed of a minimum wage increase and the composition of an accompanying package of tax breaks for business. “We will study Speaker Hastert’s offer and hope to work with the GOP, which now seems possible for the first time, to produce a bill that is in the best interest of working Ameri cans,” said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. Hastert, R-Ill., said in a letter to Clinton that Republicans still want ed a $76 billion package of business tax breaks paired with the wage mea sure. But they would remove propos als to abolish the estate tax and to change pension laws, including in creased contribution limits for 401(k) plans. Both are subjects of separate bills moving on their own. Democrats have long sought in these prosperous economic times to increase the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage, but Republicans say tax breaks are needed to cushion the higher costs that would fall on busi nesses. “It is very clear that a vast ma jority of congressional Democrats and Republicans would like to see a balanced approach achieved before we adjourn,” Hastert said in the let ter to Clinton. “I believe that we can work together te pass this legislation when we return in September with strong bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate.” According to Clinton adminis tration1 estimates, about 10 million workers earning between $5.15 and $6.14 an hour would be directly helped by a $ 1 minimum wage in crease. For a full-time worker now earn ing minimum wage, it would amount to a $2,000 annual raise. Gene Sperling, the president’s chief economic adviser, said the White House would “take a fresh look” at the tax package now that “the most objectionable poison pills” were removed. “If this movement reflects a Re publican willingness to work with us to remove remaining barriers, then perhaps we can come to a bill the president could sign,” Sperling said. Republicans are divided on the merits of increasing the minimum wage, but with House control at stake in the fall elections some want to head off potential Democratic attack ads claiming they favor tax cuts that skew to the wealthy, such as abol ishing estate taxes, but have done nothing to give raises to the low est-paid workers. Under Hastert’s proposal, the minimum wage would rise to $6.15 an hour over two years: 50 cents on Jan. 1 and 50 cents on Jan. 1, 2002. The proposal would provide busi ness tax breaks worth $76 billion over 10 years, down from $122.7 billion in an earlier House version of the bill. The tax package includes: • Immediate 100 percent health insurance premium deductibility for the self-employed, sooner than un-* der current law. Individuals could deduct from their taxes 100 percent of health ex penses without itemizing, if they are not covered by an employer or gov ernment plan or by Medicare. • Repealing excise taxes on pro ducers and marketers of distilled spir its, wine and beer. • Raising the business meal de duction from 50 percent to 80 per cent; increasing the amount of busi ness equipment eligible for an expensing tax write-off from $19,000 to $35,000; providing tax credits for timber companies’ reforestation costs; and restoring a law allowing a busi ness seller to pay taxes in installments rather than requiring a lump sum. • Extending through 2004 the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, giv en to employers that hire certain dis advantaged workers. The speaker’s plan would also make changes in several workplace regulations: updating exemptions for computer professionals, changing employer rules for workers who receive tips, equalizing rules for sales people and changing the way over time is calculated when hourly work ers get bonuses or performance in centives I U.S. might ask for compromise on Egypt’s border By Hamza Hendawi Associated Press CAIRO — President Clinton will visit Egypt on Tuesday at a time when President Hosni Mubarak has been leading a diffi cult diplomatic effort to reach a deal between the Arabs and Israelis on sovereignty over Jerusalem. Egyptians fear Clinton will use his considerable influence to uige Mubarak to persuade the Pales tinians to be more flexible in dis cussing a sharing of power in the holy city that stands at the heart of the impasse over reaching a peace agreement. And not just that, but to do it in time for a final Pales tinian-Israeli settlement before the end of Clinton’s term as president. “One fears most that we may be faced with a new American-Is raeli ploy that is shrouded in am biguity to perpetuate Israeli sov ereignty” over Jerusalem, wrote Makram Mohammed Ahmed, ed itor of the Egyptian political week ly Al-Mussawar. Clinton’s visit, announced Fri day, is “a big effort, it’s a very big effort to reach a deal before the end of his term, said Mohamed Sayed Said, an analyst at Cairo’s independent Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “It reflects the U.S. adminis tration’s desire to save (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Barak,” said Said, who believes Barak risks los ing the next Israeli elections if he does not strike a peace deal with the Palestinians — something he promised to do while campaign ing for the last elections. In comments made Saturday during a visit to Nigeria, Clinton said people shouldn’t “read too much” into his impromptu stop in Cairo. However, he made subtly clear that he expects Mubarak’s peacemaking efforts to be ongo ing and that his decision to stop over is meant to support that. “I think it’s inconceivable that we could have a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians without the support of President Mubarak,” he told reporters. “We don’t underestimate the continu ing difficulties, but I’m pleased they’re still working and work ing under enormous pressures.” Mubarak has been at the cen ter of frenzied Middle East diplomacy since the collapse last month of the Palestinian-Israeli summit at Camp David — a fail ure blamed largely on the dead lock over Jerusalem. He has met repeatedly with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — most recently on Saturday — as well as with Israelis, other Arab leaders and U.S. en voys. Meanwhile, his endeavors to reach a deal on Jerusalem are un der scrutiny by most of the world’s estimated 1.2 billion Muslims. Many will be quick to condemn him at the first hint of what they view as a sellout. As speculation over Clin ton’s visit continued, a top Pales tinian official said Saturday that Egypt will not back down on the Jerusalem issue. “The Egyptian position is very clear on the issue of sovereignty,” Hassan Abdel Rahman, the Pales tinian Liberation Organization’s envoy to Washington, told reporters in Jerusalem. “They have never said that they are willing to accept Israeli sovereignty” over Muslim holy sites in east Jerusalem. Mubarak has over the years forged a close working relation ship with Arafat and emeiged, with Washington’s blessing, as a key me diator in Arab-Israeli peacemak ing. Arafat demands full sovereignty over all of east Jerusalem, which includes important holy sites for Muslims, Jews and Christians and was in Arab hands before Israel captured it in the 1967 war. But Israel is willing to allow only lim ited Palestinian powers there, ar guing that Jerusalem must remain as its undivided capital. “U.S.-Arab allies in the region are in a very awkward position,” said Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East department at Lon don’s Royal Institute for Interna tional Studies. Each Arab leader “has to wor ry about his own life if he is seen to be selling out on Jerusalem,” Hollis said. Patricia Nixon Cox denies book’s allegations of violence By Michael Sniffen Associated Press WASHINGTON — Patricia Nixon Cox unequivocally denies her late father, President Richard M. Nixon, struck her mother and doubts he took an unprescribed mood-alter ing drug in the White House. Nixon’s elder daughter, better known by her nickname, Tricia, says those and other allegations in a new biography “describe things that nev er took place.” “Because I lived at home with them and my sister, I can state un conditionally that at no time during 1962 or ever did my father ever strike my mother or did my moth er e ver have physical signs or bruis es of the type claimed in this book,” siie told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. “My mother was not a fragile flower. She was very strong. She would have left forever if anything like that had happened,” Mrs. Cox said. Her late mother, Patricia Nixon, “was my father’s strongest supporter and really believed in what he was trying to accomplish.” Mrs. Cox lives in New Yoik with her husband, Edward Cox, a lawyer, and speaks in public very rarely — far less than her younger sister, Julie. She sought out the interview to re but allegations in “The Arrogance of Power,” a book by BBC journalist Anthony Summers that was pub lished Monday. .“My parents... are not able to speak for themselves now,” she ex plained. “This needs to be said, because it’s the truth. I was there.” Summers’ allegations that Nixon struck his wife are based on sec ondhand or thirdhand sources. Tire most specific of Summers’ allega tions is that Nixon struck his wife either just before or just after losing his 1962 bid to become governor of California. That defeat was marked by his outburst to reporters: “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” Summers writes that a now deceased Los Angeles reporter, Bill Van Petten, told an unidentified friend that Nixon beat his wife “so badly she could not go out the next day.” Summers also writes that retired Washington lawyer John Sears, who worked in Nixon’s successful 1968 campaign for president, told him that he had been told “that Nixon had hit her (Pat Nixon) in 1962 and that she had threatened to leave him over it.... I’m not talking about a smack. He blackened her eye. ” Sears told Summers he learned this from two lawyers, both now dead, Waller Taylor and Pat Hillings. Mrs. Cox noted that “these claims are based on statements at tributed to two persons no longer alive by a man (Sears) who did not meet either of my parents until years after 1962.” The book also said that in 1968 Nixon was given 1,000 capsules of the mood-altering drug Dilantin, an anti-convulsant used to counter epileptic seizures, by Jack Dreyfus, founder of an investment firm. Drey fus later supplied another 1,000, it said. Dreyfus told The New York Times he gave Nixon the drug “when his mood wasn’t too good.” Dreyfus claimed the drug deals ef fectively with fear, worry, guilt, anger, rage, depression and other conditions. “While I have no direct knowl edge of what, if any, medications my father may or may not have taken throughout his life, I did have per sonal and daily contact with him,” Mrs. Cox said. “What I do know is that his personality and his mood did not change. He was con sistent.” She doubted he took medication to improve his mood, because “my father believed unless something was very serious you just avoided medication. He wanted to always be sharp and concentrated.” Her father declined Novooain at the dentist’s office and “didn’t take hay fever medication because it made him drowsy,” she said. “He was part of a generation that believed you should be stoical. ” After years of decline, Caesareans on the rise By Lauran Neergaard Associated Press WASHINGTON— Caesarean sec tions started dropping slowly in the ear ly 1990s after an outcry that Ameri can women undergo too many — but now they're on the rise again. Most puzzling: Why C-sections are increasing in first-time moms, not just in women who previously had one. And where pregnant women five determines how likely they are to wind up on the operating table — C-sections are more common in the South than out West. Now, with Caesareans inching back up to 22 percent of U.S. births, the na tion’s leading obstetricians’group is issuing new guidelines to reduce un necessary C-sections and reserve the surgery for mothers and babies who tru ly need it. There are many suspects in the C section rise — state-by-state variation particularly suggests doctors’ habits sometimes can overshadow medical need. “Maybe we’ve become too tech nical,” says Dr. Jean Walker, an attend ing obstetrician at Chicago’s Rush-Pres byterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, which is taking new steps to lower C sections. “We’re going back to natural things like walking more often and birthing balls and really encouraging nat ural descent of the fetus.” To do that, Rush just began a nurs ing change — back to more continuous, hands-on care during early labor, espe cially for first-time moms whose labor takes longer, a big reason for C-sections. After all, studies show women who have continual care from nurses or midwives get fewer C-sections than when busy nurses just pop by every so often to check how early labor is progressing. Make no mistake: Caesareans can be life- or health-saving for many moth ers and babies. Fetal distress, disorders that make labor risky for the mother, a baby simply too big or wrongly posi tioned all are important reasons for C sections — and hospitals that special ize in high-risk pregnancies will perform more. But avoiding unnecessary C-sec tions also is important. Women’s risk of death, although still small, is three to seven times higher than during vaginal delivery, says the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Not to mention increased pain, longer hos pital stays and a higher risk of post-de i livery infection. C-sections liave risen for three years, climbing another 4 percent in 1999 to account for 22 percent of live births, the government reported this month. That’s lower than the nation’s high of 25 percent in 1988 —but nowhere near the federal goal of a 15 percent C section rate tliis year. And it reverses a steady decline in C-sections between 1989 and 1996. Now look state-by-state: Fewer than 17.5 percent of births in Utah, Wis consin, Colorado, Alaska or Vermont are C-sections. But more than one in four births are C-sections in Mississip pi, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Jersey. Wjrse, the most dramatic variations in hospitals’ C-section rates are among first-time moriis with healthy babies in the right birth position, says the ACOG. Those discrepancies suggest doc tors’ habits play a big role, says Dr. Roger Freeman of the University of Califor nia, Irvine, who chaired the new ACOG guidelines that outline practices and con ditions linked to higher C-sections — and uige doctors to check for ways to improve. Caesareans see wge 7 News Briefs ■ Syphilis might not have come from New World LONDON (AP) — Recent excava tions at a medieval friary in Northern England add weight to the theory that syphilis didn’t come to Europe from the New World. Skeletons excavated at Hull, dated to between 1300 and 1450, had clear signs of syphilis, said Anthea Boylston, a paleopathologist and leader of an ar chaeological team from University of Bradford in north England that con ducted the dig. Several other skeletons also showed signs of the disease, she said. ■ Tenn. university announces birth of cloned cow KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP ) - University of Tennessee researchers have announced the birth of a cloned dairy cow using a quicker and less complicated method than that used to clone Dolly the sheep. Researchers said Monday that a brown and white calf named Millie, short for Millennium, was bom full term on Aug. 23, weighing 62 pounds. She is the third bovine cloned from adult cells bom in the United States, but the first Jersey and the first using standard cell-culturing techniques. ■ Brazil seeks strong trade bloc RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — An ambitious dream to bind South America’s economies together with transport and communication net works — something that could take up to $100 billion and at least 10 years to accomplish — is expected to dominate the first continent-wide presidential summit this week in Brazil. The two-day summit, which starts Thursday, will bring together South America’s 12 chiefs-of-state in Brasil ia, where they will discuss building a network of highways, railroads, bridges and river transportation and telecom munications systems as a means to spur the region’s economic integration. ■ Libyan welcome for freed hostages TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — A plane canying six former hostages traveled to Libya on Monday for an extraordi nary welcome by Moammar Gadhafi. The Libyan strongman earned un precedented international thanks for persuading Filipino rebels to release the group. A plane carrying the former hostages left Cebu, Philippines on Monday headed for Tripoli. It landed in the United Arab Emirates for refuel ing in the early afternoon and was to resume its trip later in the day. ■ Businesses, schools hit by failed satellite MEXICO CITY (AP) - A $250 million satellite seems to have died in space, cutting service to major compa nies, beepers and thousands of rural school children who depend on tele vised instruction. Operators said Monday that ser vices were quickly shifted to other satellites. But education officials said that some schoolchildren could remain without classes for weeks.