Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 54

1 AlO THE HABTFORO COUxANT: TuMday, Ocwof 1.1, i' President, Congress agree to work peaceably on deticit i ivinita anH three Ret by three Democrateand toeeJRepubUcans hiiiinn zWif.it rmtiipHnn hills drafted sena- Continued from Page 1 and instead focused on the need for cooperation and bipartisanship. Congressional leaders said Reagan was noncommittal when House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, told him that House Democrats feel any deficit reduction measure should be split 50-50 split between spending cuts and tax increases. Wright, to the consternation of some Republicans, has scheduled floor action for this week on a $23 billion deficit reduction package drafted by Democrats before last week's turmoil on Wall Street. House Minor ity Leader Robert H. Michel, said Wright's move "bugs" him and questioned whether it will hamper the negotiations.

Wall Street investors and financial leaders around the world have urged Reagan and Congress to cut the deficit, which is often cited as a root cause of the market turmoil. Although the deficit dropped to $148 billion in 1987 after hitting a record $221 billion in fiscal 1986 it is expected to resume its upward climb if there is no government action. Although there have been suggestions that the budget negotiators agree to more than $23 billion in cuts to further calm the financial markets hnth administration and 1IUHUVHM UMUWWMf congressional officials downplayed those expectations for fear of triggering what one lawmaker termed a "bidding war." But they said they do intend to agree upon cuts that will affect not only fiscal 1988 but later years as welL Negotiators said they were concerned that conflicting signals on the progress of the budget talks could fan fears on Wall Street. One option under consideration Monday was issuing a joint statement at the conclusion of the talks each day, with no further comment by the principals. The talks are likely to focus on the $23 rately by House and Senate Democrats.

Both contain about $12 billion in tax increases, mostly aimed at corporations and upper-income individuals. Congressional leaders said Reagan made clear he wants to avoid the automatic spending cuts under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law and recited how he stirred up controversy when he proposed a 10 percent across-the-board reduction in programs while he was governor of California. "As he put it, the roof, the ceiling fell in," Foley said. Today's negotiations will be conducted from the senate, iour lua.i east two Republicans from tteHone and three administration officials: White House chief of staff Howard Baker Jr Treasury Secretary James A. Baker and Office of Management and Budget Director James Q.

Miller HL The three accompanied Reagan to Mon- day's meeting, along with Vice President George Bush and national security adviser Frank CarluccL Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, Senate Muiority Leader Robert J. Dole, R- Wright, Foley and Michel represented Congress. 1950A Mayoral candidates clash over who is best suited to lead Hartford i ii milMi mi p''mKmmmm snecific nrohlems. 1900 1850 18001 17501 "Many people are adept at problem description, but real problem solving requires an understanding of processes, infrastructure and the possible impact of solutions on problems, and some experience in the elected government arena," Perry said.

"An invaluable lesson learned in my seven years as a state represent--ative in a variety of leadership roles is that the best ideas wither in the glare of the morning light when the groundwork has not been done." 5 Steele, a lawyer seeking office for i i i. ii i it. t. tne iirsi lime, cnaiiengea uie uusi-ness community by suggesting that each company identify an urban problem and make it a company project. Continued from Page 1 here?" About 10 people raised their hands.

"A few," Steele said. "I believe the candidates have an obligation to engage in debate and discuss their ideas openly." Steele said the nature of the campaign made it difficult for voters or even the candidates to learn their differences. "Unfortunately, I don't know all the differences between my positions and my opponent's, because I've heard so little from her about what she would do as mayor," he said. Perry said her priorities as mayor would be to persuade the General Assembly to provide property tax relief to Hartford homeowners, and to lead the city in the fight against crime and drug abuse. She said the city must take "the whole area of social services out of the closet" and do more to address the city's high rate of teenage pregnancy.

She also proposed that police establish a system of precincts. Working with the city manager and city council, she said, the mayor imust produce a five-year plan outlining how the city would address a variety of issues and setting measurable goals. Perry said Steele has shown an ability to criticize her and the Democratically controlled city council, but has not proven how he would be able to lead the council and attack "You people are problem A I Many prooiems in naruora are your problems. You need skilled workers, better schooling, affordable housing, safer streets, cleaner streets, a genuine attack on the drug problem, better bus transportation, a viable downtown and responsive government," Steele said. Steele and Perry differed over Steele's proposed mandatory drug testing for police officers; Perry said she objected to requiring the tests when no one has shown that police are abusing drugs.

They also disagreed over Perry's proposal to reorganize the police department into precincts. Steele said a substation for Asylum Hill makes sense, but the city is too small for precincts. Brad Clift The Hartford Courant BUI'WiJWJiKf mjwfcw- Brad Clift The Hartford Courant Philip L. Steele chuckles at remarks by the moderator in the debate. Carrie Saxon Perry listens to her opponent in Monday debate 1 Fargo defense witness Critic hits Medicare doctor review groups questioned about his past nary disease." "It's clear that only after repeated instances of medical malpractice was the extreme step of a sanction taken," Wolfe said.

Dehn said small groups of doctors practicing in isolated rural areas may develop "marginal" practice patterns and should be brought back into the mainstream of what is generally considered good care. He questioned a recent agreement under which only rural doctors will review the performance of rural doctors. "If you would take that to the logical extreme, you would have only bad physicians reviewing bad physicians," Dehn said. Among other things, Dehn recommended that money for quality-. of -care reviews be doubled from its present level, a projected $468 million for 1986-88.

The doubling would bring the PRO budget to one-half of 1 percent of Medicare spending, still far short of the 5 percent most industries devote to quality control, he said. stances of dangerous care given to Medicare patients since 1985, including as many as 22,000 fatal cases. As a result of recommendations made by peer review organizations, the Department of Health and Human Services has fined 24 doctors and dropped 53 from the Medicare system since late 1985, when the sanction program began. Wolfe said that amounts to a national rate of 10.5 sanctions per 100,000 Medicare doctors. Rep.

Tom Tauke, R-Iowa, raised concerns that PROs are coming down too hard on rural doctors. But Wolfe and Dr. Thomas Dehn, president of the American Medical Peer Review Association, said there is no evidence of that. Wolfe cited the exclusion of a rural doctor who performed four unnecessary surgical procedures and of another who didn't understand "the basic medical treatment concept regarding fluid balance and electrolytes, antiobiotics and bacteriology, treatment of cardiac disease and treatment of pulmo posed also rank lowest in actions taken by state licensing boards meant to discipline doctors. "Thus, people living in a number of states are not being protected from incompetent doctors by either the licensing board or the PRO," Wolfe said.

He identified the eight states as Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Vermont "The failure to use sanctions at all gives the signal that the peer review organization isn't very serious about doing disciplinary activity," Wolfe told the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee. Peer review organizations are groups of doctors hired by the federal government to monitor and improve the care hospitals, doctors and others give to the nation's 32 million Medicare recipients. The health subcommittee hearing came a week after another House panel released PRO statistics suggesting there may have been hundreds of thousands of in Associated Press WASHINGTON The organizations assigned to monitor Medicare doctors have not penalized any physicians in 23 states and the District of Columbia, a critic said Monday, contending the figures show they're not serious about making certain patients get good care. The states have about one-fifth of the nation's 660,601 Medicare doctors and serve more than 6 million Medicare beneficiaries, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Public Citizen Health Research Group, which is associated with consumer activist Ralph Nader.

Wolfe cited peer review organizations, or PROS, in California and Texas, which have penalized 1 1 and 15 doctors respectively, as doing good jobs. But he said other states among them Connecticut, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Minnesota have not had a single sanction. Further aggravating the situation, said Wolfe, is that eight states in which no sanctions were im public. McDermott also defended a video tape he had made for a civil case in Boston's U.S. District Court two years ago.

The video tape, Danaher said, had technical problems and incorrectly portrayed part of the accident involving a plane that crashed in Boston. The video was thrown out by the trial judge, whom Danaher said gave the other side permission to argue to the jury that McDermott had committed perjury through his explanation of how the error occurred on the tape. Defense lawyers in the Wells Fargo case, however, said Danaher was exagerating the incident Defense attorney Jacob Wieselman of Hartford said McDermott fixed the inad-vertant error on the video and the trial judge permitted the jury to see the second video. Wieselman said the other side in the Boston case never alleged that McDermott committed perjury and the side that hired McDermott won the case. Defense lawyers also noted that other government agencies think' highly of the McDermotts, who recently have been hired by the Secret Service to analyze tape.

The issues raised Monday in Hartford were part of pre-trial hearings on evidence a process that started Jan. 13 and is scheduled to continue today. Federal prosecutors have said most of the defendants are high ranking members of Los Mache-teros, a militant clandestine group seeking the independence of Puerto Rico. The group has claimed credit for many acts of violence, including the 1983 robbery of the Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford in which $7 million was taken. Continued from Page 1 hundreds of tapes made by the FBI and found them all to be copies a position rejected by the government, which has said the tapes are originals.

Monday, it was the prosecution's turn to make charges and it was the senior McDermott who had to respond to the allegations. Danaher began his examination by asking McDermott whether he had ever signed a false document. McDermott said no. Danaher also asked if he ever got expelled from the U.S. Naval Academy for lying.

McDermott said no. The prosecutor then introduced evidence showing that McDermott falsely stated he was single when he entered the academy in 1940. He was thrown out of the school within two months for lying on his application and violating the school's policy barring married students, Danaher said. "I apparently did" make a false statement, McDermott conceded. Defense attorney Hal Meyerson of New York City, who defense lawyers say picked McDermott to be the defense team's electronics expert, said Danaher's questions had no relevance since the incident took place 47 years ago.

Danaher said the issue was that McDermott tried to hide his previous actions. Danaher also submitted documents showing that during World War II McDermott promised not to disclose the fact that he worked for the OSS unless the government told him he could. For years, McDermott had included the fact that he worked for the OSS on his resume. McDermott said he assumed the restriction had been lifted since others in the OSS had made their ervice Order bars limits on careers of military wives NThis is a decades-old problem. I'm sorry it had to bubble up to a horrible boil before someone took action.

Pat Reuss Legislative director, Women's Equity Action League Call for import-export ban cites Iranian government's behavior tance to their military and civilian communities," Weinberger said, the increasing numbers of military spouses who hold jobs "contribute directly to the morale and health of our military members." A recent defense department survey found that 44 percent of officers' wives are employed. "It is the policy of the Department of Defense that decisions to seek employment, to be homemakers and to volunteer belong to spouses," Weinberger said. He ordered all of the military services to issue rules complying with the policy by Dec. 1. Air Force investigators found that ranking officers at Grissom created an atmosphere "in which senior officers and their wives had been conditioned to believe that the wives must be willing to give up or severely curtail their employment for their husbands to be considered for positions of higher authority." Investigators also found that "an outdated, unwritten policy of the commander discouraging wives of senior officers from working has contributed to the difficulties." But because there were no written policies that were violated, the investigators said the commanders involved should not be disciplined.

After a yearlong effort to attract attention to their plight from within the Air the two women took their cause to The Indianapolis Star and the independent Air Force Times weekly. This publicity prompted the Air Force to investigate the incidents, Pentagon officials said. Washington Post WASHINGTON Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, responding to criticism from women's rights groups and an internal Air Force investigation, has barred military commanders from interfering with the career decisions of officers' spouses. The order also prohibits discrimination against officers whose promotions have been jeopardized because their spouses hold jobs and are not considered active enough in military volunteer and social organizations.

The policy attempts to reverse a problem that has long permeated military life but has only recently attracted public attention. Weinberger said the policy is necessary because of the increasing numbers of military spouses seeking employment "It's a responsible action by Weinberger," said Pat Reuss, legislative director of the Women's Equity Action League, one of the groups that has lobbied the Pentagon and Congress for such protections. "This is a decades-old problem. I'm sorry it had to bubble up to a horrible boil before someone took action." Weinberger's order of last Thursday stems from an investigation at Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana that found that the wives of two officers were pressured to leave their civilian jobs in exchange for promotions for their husbands. One of the women resigned from her civil service job after her hus- of widespread harassment and job discrimination against women in the military.

The report prompted a congressional hearing and led Weinberger to appoint a panel to investigate. "We would be naive to pretend that one directive will change a lifetime of the way you look at women," Reuss said. "But I think that it's a basic message, at least on paper, that this is unacceptable." The new policy on spouses' careers states, No commander, supervisor or other official will, directly or indirectly, impede or otherwise interfere with the right of every military spouse to decide whether to pursue and hold a job, to attend school, or to serve on a volunteer basis." The order continues, "No military member will be adversely rated or suffer any adverse consequences from the decision of the member's spouse nor shall a spouse's employment be a consideration in either assignments or promotions." Although "military spouses have a proud heritage of volunteer ass is- band's superiors warned that he would not be selected for a promotion if she continued to work. In the second case, an officer asked for reassignment after his superiors pressured his wife to give up her career. Women's rights groups told a House subcommittee this month that the problem is rampant throughout the military.

They testified that officers frequently are told that their advancement will be hampered if their wives are not active in military volunteer and social organizations. Carolyn Becraf then director of the Women's Equity Action League, told the House Armed Services subcommittee that volunteer work had "become a virtual albatross around the necks" of service spouses, and that in the Grissom case "both spouses were being blackmailed to support Air Force tradition." The issue is only one area of mounting pressure against the military in the area of women's rights. An internal Department of Defense watchdog group recently released a scathing report detailing allegations The president said the ban on imports will take effect "as soon as possible" and said the additional controls on exports "will go into effect in a week to 10 days." "Let me emphasize that we are taking these economic measures only after repeated but unsuccessful attempts to reduce tensions with Iran and in response to the continued and increasingly bellicose behavior of the Iranian government" he said. "The United States believes that more normal relations with Iran will evolve as Iranian belligerence and tensions in the area diminish," Reagan said. "We have made these points known repeatedly to Iran, through diplomatic channels as well as public statements.

Unfortunately, the Iranian government's response, to date, in deeds as well as in words, has been entirely unconstructive." Continued from Page 1 "That number is declining in 1987. Those U.S. exports covered by the new controls amount to less than $10 million," he said. In announcing the moves, Reagan said he had consulted in advance with members of Congress. He said, "The measures I am directing are a direct result of the Iranian government's own actions, including its unprovoked attacks on U.S.

forces and U.S. merchant vessels." Reagan also cited as reasons for his moves Iran's "refusal to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 598, its continued aggression against non-belligerent nations of the Persian Gulf and its sponsorship of terrorism there and elsewhere in the world.".