16- The Michigan Daily - Friday, December 9, 1994


Gingrich takes up Social Security, Medicare solvency

Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - Acknowledg-
ing the need to curb the growth of
entitlement programs, incoming
House Speaker Newt Gingrich said
yesterday that wealthy retirees should
buy their own health insurance and
that Congress eventually must "look
at" long-term and perhaps painful
ways to keep Social Security solvent.
Denying Medicare to retirees with
annual incomes of more than $100,000
would save the government about $6

billions in five years, Gingrich said.
During a breakfast interview with
reporters, he also expressed regret at
having suggested that as many as one
in four White House staffers had used
drugs before joining the Clinton ad-
ministration and at calling President
and Mrs. Clinton one-time members
of the "counterculture."
The outspoken Georgia Republi-
can said he stands by his remarks, but
added that he should have kept them
to himself. "If I had to say it over

again, I probably wouldn't say it,"
Gingrich said.
"I don't delight in controversy. I
like achievement," he said, saying his
remarks were routine bumps that one
faces during any job change. "I'm try-
ing to learn a new job," Gingrich said.
Had he not made those remarks,
Gingrich acknowledged, "the country
might well have been better off for it."
His comments about Social Secu-
rity and Medicare, the tax-financed
health insurance program for the eld-

erly and the disabled, are significant
because Republican leaders in recent
years have flatly declared Social Se-
curity untouchable, and past efforts to
restrain Medicare spending have
proved politically lethal.
Gingrich's remarks come as a bi-
partisan Commission on Entitlement
Reform and Tax Reform is complet-
ing a report to Clinton next week -
thus ensuring the issue even greater
visibility in the days ahead.
Budget experts say Congress will

never eliminate the federal deficit
unless it curbs spending on the big
entitlement programs that provide
guaranteed government benefits to
millions of Americans.
Gingrich prefaced his suggestion
that Congress cannot avoid taking up
the Social Security funding issue by
saying the retirement program must
remain undisturbed for the foresee-
able future, calling the solvency ques-
tion "a problem ... somewhere around
25 to 30 years from now."

Gingrich


BOSNIA
Continued from page 1
justified or wise. But if it occurs, we
are prepared to participate."
Republican legislators, who
have been critical of the
administration's Bosnia policy, gen-
erally approved of Clinton's deci-
sion but cautioned against Ameri-
can forces getting bogged down in
the Balkans. "In my view, planning
for the withdrawal of U.N. Protec-
tion Forces is the appropriate course
of action," said Sen. Robert Dole
(R-Kansas), Senate majority leader
in the new Congress.
Current plans envision the with-
drawal not just of U.N. Protection
Force (UNPROFOR) soldiers but
also their 8,000 vehicles, "thousands
of tons of supplies" and "other non-
governmental private humanitarian
agencies that might want to come
out as well," the defense official
said.
The size of the NATO protec-
tive force will depend largely on
the attitude of the warring Serb, and
allied Muslim and Croat groups. A
"benign" withdrawal -that is, one
under friendly conditions - would
require a substantially smaller force
than a "hostile" one marked by "con-
certed resistance and attacks on
withdrawing columns," the senior
administration official said.
The "high end of the worst-
case scenario" would involve as
many as 25,000 U.S. troops, the
official said.
Any U.S. ground force introduced
in Bosnia, the defense official said,
would be armed sufficiently to protect
itself as well as facilitate the with-
drawal. "So you could expect it to be
substantially better armed than the
UNPROFOR force whose departure it
would be covering," he said.

Clinton, leaders
meet in Miami
for trade summit

AP PHOTO
The first UNHCR humanitarian convey stops 37 miles south of Zagreb in Bosnia on its way to the city of Bihac.
Officials secure release of 20 Canadians

Los Angeles Times
MIAMI - With free trade their
mantra, President Clinton and the
heads of 33 governments began
gathering in Miami yesterday for an
unprecedented summit aimed at tear-
ing down barriers to commerce
throughout the Western Hemi-
sphere.
The Summit of the Americas,
the first such regional meeting in 27
years and the largest ever, opens
formally today with speeches, toasts
and much fanfare. President Carlos
Menem of Argentina hailed the sum-
mit as "perhaps one of the most
transcendental events in recent years
in our continent."
Although tricky issues such as
immigration, drug-trafficking and
Cuba are expected to find their way
into the three days of discussions,
the meeting will focus principally
on trade. U.S. officials said the
strength of the summit rests on a
"Plan of Action," copies of which
circulated yesterday, that outlines
concrete steps to larger goals, in-
cluding an agreement to freeze il-
licit money-laundering assets and
establish protections for migrant
workers.
Clinton administration offi-
cials sought to portray the meet-
ing as a major achievement and a
natural next step following trade

agreements with Canada and
Mexico and the Pacific Rim, as
well as the hard-fought revision
this month of the General Agree-
ment on Tariffs and Trade, or
GATT.
Others are less optimistic.
"I think high andl false expecta-
tions are being created," Peruvian
President Alberto Fujimori said. "I
don't think we are going to come
out of the meeting with a stronger
America and measures that benefit
the population."
Clinton will meet with leaders
of a vastly changed Latin America,
one eager to open its markets and
welcome foreign investment, but
still unable to better the lives of
millions of poor. With the end of
the Cold War and the fall or re-
tirement of military dictatorships
and leftist guerrilla movements,
economic issues have replaced
security concerns. Emerging from
the "Lost Decade" of debt crisis
and civil war, Latin America is
enthusiastically seeking a new re-
lationship of interdependence and
cooperation with the United
States.
Still, many Latin and Caribbean
officials feel neglected by the
Clinton administration, which has
exhibited little interest in the region
and proposed no policy initiatives.

Los Angeles Times
ZAGREB, Croatia - In the one-
step-forward, two-back pattern of the
U.N. mission here, officials secured
the release of 20 Canadian captives
yesterday and piloted supplies through
to embattled Bihac while Bosnian Serb
rebels attacked with missiles and con-
tinued to hold hundreds of other peace-
keepers hostage.
Shortly after a 14-truck convoy
of food and fuel for ill-supplied
Bangladeshi troops was let through
Croatian Serb road blocks, Bosnian
Serb fighters fired a surface-to-air
missile into a civilian area near the
main U.N. base in the Bihac pocket,

mission spokesman Paul Risley re-
ported.
U.N. troops hoped to investigate
damage caused by the missile Fri-
day, but were unable to leave their
base at the time of the missile's
impact at 7:30 p.m. because they
had no fuel for their patrol vehicles.
Gasoline was among the few
days' worth of supplies let in for the
1,200 Bangladeshi troops, Risley
said, adding that the missile dam-
age would be examined at first light.
While hailing the convoy's arrival
as a minor breakthrough, he con-
demned the SA-2 missile attack as
"a weapon of terror."

"An SA-2 fired towarq a ground
target is an extremely unstable, im-
precise missile packed 4ith high
explosives," Risley said.
Bosnian Serbs earlier in the day
released 20 Canadian troops held
for more than two weeks at a jail in
the Sarajevo suburb of Ilijas, but
nearly 300 other U.N. troops re-
mained in their detention, Risley
said.
Thirty-five other Canadians con-
fined to their observation posts near
the town of Visoko were allowed to
rotate out, but their newly arrived
replacements are still virtual pris-
oners.

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