captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: day two for health care reform at the supreme court came with sharp questions from justices about whether the government can compel citizens to have insurance. good evening. i'm jeffrey brown. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. on the newshour tonight, betty ann bowser reports on the day inside and outside the court, and marcia coyle and susan dentzer examine the arguments. >> brown: plus, we get reaction from two legal scholars: former u.s. solicitor general walter dellinger and georgetown law professor randy barnett. >> ifill: then, judy woodruff updates the violence in syria amid reports of a possible peace plan, even as the death toll

continues to rise. >> brown: we have the story of an illinois company that's retraining its workers to meet the demands of highly skilled manufacturing jobs. >> you've got aging now, a disinterested younger generation and then you've got what's left in the middle and that's not enough to fill the need. >> ifill: and ray suarez talks to author eric klinenberg about the growing number of americans who are content to live alone. >> they're not going to settle with living the wrong person in the way they might have 50 years ago. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: the president's health care overhaul was back before the u.s. supreme court for a second day, and the justices zeroed in on the central issue. newshour health correspondent

betty ann bowser begins our coverage. >> reporter: the arguments today inside the court went to the heart of the affordable care act. whether it's constitutional for the government to require its citizens to purchase health insurance. it's by far the most unpopular and contentious part of the new law. although the term "individual mandate" does not appear in it. the mandate requires that practically all americans have health insurance. that can be through medicare, medicaid or employer-sponsored coverage. if you don't any of those, you'll have to buy it. and if you have trouble paying for it, the federal government may give you a subsidy. but the bottom line is everybody has to have health insurance and if you don't you'll have to pay a penalty on your tax return starting in 2015. the justices heard two hours of argumenton the mandate alone

and the second of threeaysme of hearings. the toughest questions for the government came from conservative justices, including antonin scalia. solicitor general donald verrilli told the court a mandate was essential for a health insurance market to work for americans wherever they get any kind of medical care. >> how do you define the market that broadly? health care. it may well be that everybody needs health care sooner or later but not everybody needs a heart transplant. not everybody needs a liver transplant. >> that's correct, justice scalia but you never know if you're going to be that person. >> everybody has to buy food sooner or later so you define the market as food therefore everybody is in the market therefore you can make people buy broccoli. no. that's quite different. that's quite different. the food market, while it shares that trait that everybody's in it, it is not a market in which your participation is often

unpredictable and often involuntary. >> reporter: some supporters of the law say the mandate is pivotal to financing the affordable care act. the executive director of health care for america now: >> if everybody carries insurance it becomes more affordable for all of us and we can eliminate insurance company abuses like denials of care and dropping people when we're sick. a very small number of people in the united states will be impacted by the so-called mandates and that's the beauty of this law. we all benefit when we carry insurance. insurance gets more affordable. >> reporter: the law's challengers-- including 26 states and the national federation of independent businesses-- view the mandate as a federal overreach of power that's unconstitutional. tim phillips is president of americans for prosperity. >> they think that a dramatic escalation of government power

and say in the lives of individual americans. we want people to get insurance, absolutely. but to require by law with penalties both civil and in some cases criminal penalties for a product, that's too much power for the federal government. we believe there's also a constitutional issue as well. >> reporter: some 24 million people-- including undocumented immigrants, people in prison, and native americans-- would be exempt. those with incomes too low to file a tax return would not face a penalty, either. after the oral arguments ended, opponents of the law showed up in large numbers near the court to rally against the health care law. >> i'm urging the supreme court to strike down obamacare as unconstitutional violation of the federal government's limited and enumerated powers. >> reporter: supporters of the law chose today to focus on the benefits of the law for women. >> women pay over a billion dollars more a year for health insurance than men.

the new law stops discrimination based on gender and requires all plans in that market to provide maternity care. >> the mandate has never had broad public support and tomorrow the court will hear arguments on whether the rest of the law can be upheld if the mandate is struck down. for more on today's arguments, we're joined by the team covering the case for us this week marcia coyle of the "national law journal." and newshour health analyst susan dentzer, editor-in-chief of the journal "health affairs." >> ifill: marcia, new the chambers all the time trying to get an indication of how the supreme court operates. today we heard arguments pro and con. was there any clarity? >> i think there was but i can't tell you how i think the court is going to rule on this. i'd say there was a full airing of the issue. it was again a packed courtroom he arguments were much more interesting and faster paced than yesterday's arguments on the anti-injunction act and

there was really very good lawyering and i urge any viewers or listeners to listen to the audio available or read the transcript. >> ifill: i was struck by the hypotheticals that were used. talking about cars, broccoli, you name it. let's listen to some of it. in this case, an exchange between justice anthony kennedy-- who everyone is watching-- and the solicitor general donald verrilli. tr>> law of torts, our adition, our law has been that you don't have to duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. a blind man walking in front of the car, you don't have a duty to stop him-- absent some relation between you. and there's some severe moral criticisms of that rule, but that's generally the rule. and here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell individual t individual citizen that it must act and that is

different from what we have in previous cases. >> well... >> that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way. >> i don't think so, justice kennedy, because it is predicated on the participation of these individuals in the market for health care services. now, it happens to be that this is a market in which, aside from the groups that the statute excludes, virtually everybody participates. but it is a regulation of their participation in that market. >> ifill: so this was basically about the scope of federal power marcia. >> very fundmentedly scope of congress's power under the commerce clause. what mr. verrilli is trying to argue to the justices is that this is a unique market. it's not like that food market. one, people are already in the market. there are those who are going to enter at some point, we don't know when. they don't know what kind of service they're going to need and, unlike other markets, when

they do enter and need the service, they may get that service and perhaps not pay for it but others will who are insured. >> ifill: susan, we spent a lot of time talking about this bill as it became a law and there wasn't a lot of attention paid to this mandate issue. was this a big part? at the time this that this bill became a law, is that what this is hanging on, the way it is now? >> it's not all hanging on in the sense that some people have asserted this is a linchpin. but it is an important ingredient that will make the insurance reform portions work. if people are all supposed to get into the market-- healthy and sick alike-- then the advantage of that is you can spread the costs of ensuring everybody across a bigger population. a relatively small part of... number of people who are sick instead of having to pay very high prices because they're sick can pay a much more level price. the reverse is true for healthier people. they're going to pay more than if only healthy people order in

the market, but the only healthy people got health insurance we wouldn't need health insurance, right? so to make all of this work that's what the point is of the mandate. >> ifill: but the government has to be the one to force that to happen. that's this debate right now. >> and, again, under the commerce clause the government is here arguing that we have the responsibility to regulate this market, as marcia said. everybody is eventually in this market. it's not realistic to just sell people insurance when they get sick. no insurer would stay in business if they said okay now you're sick, let's sell you a policy. right? it has to be much more predictable. so the government is saying we need to be able to regulate this and we can regulate the timing of this to make it work better for everybody. >> i know this that so much of the defense of the law fell to the justices in the court, including justice ruth bader ginsburg and we can listen to this exchange between her and paul clement, a former solicitor general who is arguing against

the law today. >> when i'm sitting in my house deciding i'm not going to buy a car, i am causing the labor market in detroit to go south, i'm causing maybe somebody to lose their job and for everybody to have to pay for it under welfare. so the cost shifting that e government tries to uniquely associate with this market,'s it everywhere. and even more to the point, the rationale that they think ultimately support this is legislation that, look, it's an economic decision, once you name economic decision we aggregate the decision, there's your substantial affect on commerce. that argument works here, it works in every single industry. >> of course, we do know that there are a few people-- more in new york city than in wyoming-- who never will buy a car. but we also know here-- and we don't like to admit it-- that because we are human beings we all suffer from the risk of getting sick and we also all know that we'll iet seriously sick. and we also know that we can't

predict when and we also know that when we do there will be our fellow taxpayers through the federal government who will pay for this. >> ifill: that was, of course, justice steven breyer, not justice ruth bader ginsburg. when you're sitting in the courtroom, does that resonate in any way. >> i think it does with those who support the law, obviously, but not with mr. clement and mark carvin who also argued today against the law. they are pointing out to the justices that they don't buy the government's argument, that this is a unique market. that the cost shifting that occurs in the health care market they say, occurs in every market. and so justice breyer, justice ginsburg, justice kagan, they seemed to pick up on the government's arguments and tried to press mr. clement and mr. carvin to respond to those arguments. >> ifill: but the chief justice and justice kennedy and justice scalia and the silent justice thomas seemed to be...

>> they were much more aggress with the government. but that's almost understandable because the government is appealing a lower court decision that struck down the mandate. the government has in a sense the tougher argument to make. this is an unusual exercise of congress's power and so the government has to lay out the reasons for that power. and also the court was very interested in if this is okay you should the commerce clause, what are the limits? what stops congress from ordering... commanding that consumers or citizens purchase or do other things? >> ifill: it's also an argument in the court today about whether this is the job of the federal government, that it should be the job of the states. is there any record to show that states have been willing to step in this void that the government says exists in the health care availability? >> yes, indeed. many states have implemented insurance market reforms and one state in particular, massachusetts, also put in place an individual mandate which since it was enacted has edged

up the numbers... the percentage of people ensured in massachusetts. it's gone from 87% to close to 95% over the course of the last several years. so states have gone down this road and, indeed, mr. clement said today in the argument that states could do this if the federal mandate is invalidated states could impose that kind of mandate just the way massachusetts did. so a lot of people now are starting to say... to ask the question could this law be made to work in other ways? and so people are pointing to the examples of various states that either took the action that massachusetts did or that also put in place insurance market reforms in the absence of a mandate and see what happened then h. and there also we have a couple of examples of states that put in place so-called guaranteed issue. everybody has to be offer insurance, did not put in place

the mandate and in those states premiums went through the roof or insurers pulled out because they thought they would be driven out of business. so we see both positive and negative examples of this kind of overall regulation. >> this is why the government argues this is a national problem, this is something congress has to address. >> ifill: but the government also is now... tomorrow has to argue whether this mandate part two go away whether the law still stands. >> absolutely. that's going to be the severability argument and the challengers to the law want to see the entire law fall. the government has a more nuanced argument because it's as if the mandate is unconstitutional and it has to be severed. there are two key provisions that will have to go with it. two very popular provisions as well. >> ifill: and that's where the big argument goes tomorrow. >> as far as medicaid, that's also on that. >> ifill: okay, that's right in the afternoon. marcia coil, susan dentzer, thank you both very much. >> my pleasure >> brown: we'll have more on health care reform with a debate on the constitutionality of the law's key provision.

also coming: the uprising in syria; retooling the work force for manufacturing jobs; and americans going it alone. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: outrage over the killing of a black teenager in sanford, florida, reached the u.s. capitol today. congressional democrats held a forum on racial profiling and hate crimes. the parents of 17-year-old trayvon martin attended the forum. they thanked the panel for convening the event, but did not testify. a neighborhood watch volunteer, george zimmerman, has said he shot martin in self-defense. he has not been arrested. in sanford today, the new acting police chief defended the department. . >> we are working to provide unity and transparency of the actions in this department and in doing so we will not compromise the integrity of any investigation to bend to the bill l of the media or the public. we realize that law enforcement may be viewed as an adversary but we assure you that the sanford police department is here to protect and serve.

>> sreenivasan: the police have denied authorizing leaks that trayvon martin had been suspended from school for possession of marijuana they confirmed that zimmerman claimed martin was the aggressor. he said he had followed the youth, then turned back. then, he said, martin confronted him, punched him in the nose, and banged his head on the pavement. for the first time, the environmental protection agency called today for limiting carbon pollution from new power plants. the proposal would force new coal-fired plants to capture half of their carbon emissions. existing plants would be exempt, and so would those that begin construction within the next year. some industry groups warned the rule will raise electricity prices and kill off coal energy as a resource. environmentalists wanted the administration to go further. in cuba, pope benedict xvi called for "renewal" in the communist island nation. he also said he prayed for "those deprived of freedom." the pope spoke as he visited a shrine to the virgin mary. it was the second day of his cuban trip, the first by a pontiff since 1998. a cuban vice president responded that the country is making

economic changes. but he said flatly, "in cuba, there will not be political reform." later, the pope flew to havana. an international nuclear security summit in seoul, south korea, came to an end today. leaders from more than 50 nations called for ensuring that all nuclear material is secured within four years. they offered few specifics. president obama said the world has already made important strides in that regard, but he acknowledged there is much more to do. >> there are still too many bad actors in search of these dangerous materials and these dangerous materials are still vulnerable in too many places. it would not take much. just a handful or so of these materials to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people and that's not an exaggeration, that's the reality that we face. >> sreenivasan: on the summit sidelines, the president also sought to mend relations with a key counter-terror partner, pakistan.

he met with prime minister yousuf raza gilani, and he conceded that strains between the two countries have escalated in recent months. pakistan broke off high-level contacts after u.s. forces killed 24 pakistani troops last year in a friendly fire episode. the pakistanis have also complained about u.s. drone strikes killing civilians. the u.s. house overwhelmingly passed a jobs bill today designed to help new businesses grow. the measure would relax financial compliance rules for startups, making it easier to raise capital. silicon valley and the high tech industry backed the bill. some democrats warned looser oversight might lead to new investment scams. the bill already cleared the senate. the president is expected to sign it. there's fresh evidence that the economic recovery remains uneven. two new reports today showed home prices fell in january, for the fifth straight month, and consumer confidence was down slightly this month. and wall street pulled back some today. the dow jones industrial average lost nearly 44 points to close at 13,197. the nasdaq fell two points to close at 3120.

a jetblue flight from new york to las vegas had to land in amarillo, texas, today after the captain screamed there was a bomb on the plane. passengers said he started shouting about iraq, afghanistan and al qaeda and yelled "they're going to take us down." federal officials said the pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit and passengers tackled and restrained him. those are some of the days major stories. now back to jeff. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: and we return to today's supreme court argument and its central debate: is a mandate constitutional? for that we're joined by two legal scholars who were in the court today. walter dellinger served as solicitor general in the clinton administration. he filed a brief before the court on behalf of democrats in congress. randy barnett has helped shape the argument against the mandate and filed amicus briefs in the lower courts. he's a professor at the georgetown university law center. welcome to both of you. >> thank you. >> brown: since you were both there, what jumped out at you. >> unlike yesterday where it looked like the court was pretty unanimous on the question of

whether the anti-injunction act was going to bother phlegm hearing the merits of the case, today it looked like the court was very equally divided. i think you had four justs who were training most of their fire for example, on the government's side and not as much fire on our side. we had four justices training most of their fire on our side and not all that much on the government side and that just looked like a dwrided court rather than the court that yesterday seemed pretty much on the same page. >> brown: walter dellinger? >> i was struck by the fact that both chief justice and justice kennedy seemed to have some concerns about each side's argument. i think probably most significant was the fact that the solicitor general said there are limits that you can uphold a law which helps extend insurance coverage to 30 million americans without giving congress the authority to require purchases of people who are not in commerce because-- and i thought both the chief and justice kennedy understood this-- because people will inevitably be in the market for health care

the other side conceded that you could require insurance at the time you access your health care, the government says it's giving an incentive for people have that earlier. i think the fact that the commerce is inevitable is a distinction that got some traction with the court. >> brown: take us to the key element here. you helped shape some of these arguments. what is the key argument, the number of the argument against the constitutionality? >> well, first of all it's unprecedented, it's unlimited and it's unnecessary and the fact that it was unprecedented was borne out today. no justice-- no matter what side they were on and now counsel-- cited an example of the exercise of this kind of power in our history, that's making people buy a product or service that... from a private company. so the unprecedented nature is something justice kennedy started off with and basically said given this is a new important power aren't you,

solicitor general, under sum burden to justify that power? so with that it's uncabined in so far as.... >> brown: uncabined being a legal term. >> sorry, unlimited. i have to remember that. it's unlimited in so far as all the justice were pressing the solicitor general to explain the limits and you heard walter's description of that to some degree and so the concern about whether the limit on the power to impose mandate and justice kennedy made the argument that in some respects it's unnecessary because congress has a tax power that it could have used to solve many of these problems but it chose not to. so why should this power be exercised in this case, this new power, be discovered >> i think it's not attractive a proposition to tell chief justice roberts that the only way you can deal with the national problem of 30 million uninsured people is being having a monolithic national tax and agency solution like the new deal. one reason it's novel is that

we're using a more conservative approach that was recommended by conservatives of using the existing private market and giving people an incentive to engage in commerce. i think in some ways the most significant moment came yesterday when the solicitor general was asked "suppose you decide you don't want to comply with the mandate and buy insurance, you're just going pay the $95 penalty the first year, it never goes higher than 2.5% of your income. are you a law breaker? what if you're asking have you ever violated the law? the solicitor general said unequivocally "you can say no." in other words, this is just a relatively modest financial incentive to have insurance coverage and what struck me was everybody in the courtroom-- every justice, every advocate, every journalist-- they all have health insurance and they wouldn't dream of doing without it so the idea that pushing people through this tax incentive to have coverage seems odd. >> brown: what about that? but also you mentioned justice

kennedy. we've had a lot of focus on him and we heard him say the reference to the heavy burden of justification but later on he also suggested that people who don't carry health insurance are still engaged in the health care market which would support your side of things. >> i agree with walter. i think justice kennedy asked questions of both sides, including that question, and if that's really... if that's the predictor of where he's going to go walter ought to be happy. but one of the things i want to say in response to what walter said about the modest financial penalty, if this is recognized, if this new power to mandate economic activity is recognized as a commerce clause power there's no reason why in the future it's going to be limited to small monetary fines. it could be including imprisonment for failing to perform the mandates that congress wants to impose upon us. and that's what differentiate this is from the tax power where the only consequence of giving up a tax subsidy is financial. >> that's what it goes to all

these analogies we heard gwen referring to. every justice trying to give an example of where the limits are. >> to me the most critical question is the chief justice's he understands the government's argument that people are going to inevitably need health care but he said they're not going to need these preventative services. they don't necessarily need mammograms or cancer tests and you're forcing them in that case to use the commerce they may not obtain and i think the answer to that is that's a decision made by congress because if you funded catastrophic care without funding preventative care you create a perverse incentive that people avoid getting mammograms and you wind up having the insurance company orb the government pay for breast cancer surgery and metastasized breast cancer. so it's part of a package that makes sense to congress. >> this is probably an unanswerable provocative

question but how settled is the law? what are the justices looking at without going back to all of the judicial history. you said the case is unprecedented or the law is unprecedented. >> this is one of those very unusual cases, in fact the heller case is another one of these unusual cases that walter argued where we really have more or less a case of first impression because an economic mandate of this sort has never been used before. in fact i can prove that because if it had been you'd know the contracts the government makes you enter into or pay a penalty the i.r.s. and since you don't know of any, they don't exist. your parents didn't know of any such contracts so because it's a case of first impression there's no direct precedent that says congress may do this or may not do this. that's the reason why it takes on the coloration that it does. >> brown: do you agree? >> i think precedents are not going to govern the case in that

sense but in this case the question is whether this is simply a regulation of commerce among the states and the government can say it's not a regulation of local matters, not a regulation of local violence, not a regulation of guns in your schools it's a regulation of one seventh of the national economy. so if the burden ought to be on those who would argue that it's somehow not a regulation of commerce for congress to deal with something which is so integral and central a part of the national economy. both sides are making arguments that haven't been made before. >> brown: just briefly because you've both been before the justices. it's worth saying these questions don't help predict what the final votes are going to be for the most part? >> i don't know. you do walk out the door with a certain feeling. i think we all walked out the door yesterday thinking the court was not going to... fail to reach the merits because of the anti-injunction act. i think most people walked out the door thinking wow, this is a close case. >> sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can't. this is one where you can't tell because the chief justice and justice kennedy certainly asked hard questions of both sides so i think at the end of the day

you don't know what the outcome is going to be. >> well, i agree that. >> brown: okay, some agreement. walter dellinger, randy barnett, thank you. online we have extensive coverage of the health care reform law and you can listen to the audio of today's argument or read the transcript. we have interviews with people who traveled to washington to voice their opinions-- pro and con-- on the law. plus, a post from susan dentzer on what happens if the individual mandate is struck down or takes effect and marcia coyle's primer for tomorrow's session will be posted in the morning. that's all at www.newshour.pbs.org. >> ifill: now to syria >> ifill: now, to syria. the united nations estimates today that the death toll has reached 9,000 as the government there continues to uproot opposition forces. today president bashar assad toured the city of homs, the scene of some of the worst fighting.

john ray of independent television news reports. >> reporter: the scene was carefully crafted for state television. among the crowd a weeping man to greet president assad this was the long-time rebel stronghold of be be am. government forces have reduced much of it to ruins. for many in this city the president is no liberator, he's a murderer. >> the people that were there in be be, they are refugees in other area. they look and see this criminal who is killing innocent people, killing children also. >> reporter: not far away, opposition groups tllttles stil. it's hard to verify when these images were filmed, but the fighting is intense. this activist says he's in

central homs. then shells begin to fall all around him. shattering the narrow streets. amid this violence, news of an unlikely diplomatic break through. in china, u.n. peace envoy kofi annan announced syria has agreed to his proposals for a cease-fire and talks. >> i have received a response from the syrian government and we'll be making it public today and we hope to work with them to translate it into action. >> reporter: few believe this deal with stick. >> we start with a skeptical eye on this. this is a regime that has been involved in the murdering of many thousands of people, torture and abuse of many others. >> reporter: syria's rebels

insist they will not lay down their arms while assad remains in power. they believe the regime is merely buying time in which to crush their uprisings >> ifill: judy woodruff takes the story from there. >> woodruff: i'm joined by w andrew tabor who lived in syria and covered it for an english speaking magazine. he just met with army fighters as well as the political opposition. andrew table, good to have you back with us. >> thanks very much. >> what do you make of this announcement for from the office of kofi annan that the syrian government is agreeing to his peace proposal? >> i think it's very important to note here that president assad has agreed to many plans over the course of the last year concerning the uprising and implemented none of them so you can see in annan's statement there now an a necessity for action to follow up words and

we'll see whether president assad is interested in implementing this agreement or not. >> woodruff: it's a six-point plan. are there elements in it that you see stand a chance of surviving? >> i think the assad regime gets something out of this. they get a commitment to a political dialogue without an end goal. it says nothing about the assad regime stepping aside. so that might entice the regime into doing something but then comes the hard part. the regime commits itself to withdrawing all military forces from populated areas. immediately after that, protest will fill those spaces and it there where the dilemmas appear before bashar assad and his choices were to become clear. >> woodruff: so if you say the government goes along, the opposition is not preparedtor go along? >> apparently thus far the opposition has tentatively said that they don't reject the agreement. the opposition is divided inside of the country. i was referring to what the assad's choices were going to be

concerning how they're going to deal with this fact. there's nothing in the agreement says protesters can't express themselves. one of the points says protesters must be able to do this. >> woodruff: so at this point your expectation is what? it's unlikely assad government will do anything? >> yes. i think it's a good opportunity to test president assad. president say sad's in a bind. he's been going militarily into areas for over a year using a security seclusion. he can partially clear the areas but can't hold them. then the opposition comes back out. so perhaps president assad sees this as an opportunity with russian and chinese support to get out of this politically but his choices are far from cleared. >> woodruff: how significant is that support? up until now they have not been willing to go along with calls to him and his government to stop what they've been doing. >> the russians have significant interest inside of syria and we

shouldn't be surprised that they would like to protect them. i think it's far the alawite generals in the military with whom they have relationships are not about to reject the assad family or get him to step inside any time soon. so we're very early that process which will eventually lead to an outcome the obama administration would like to see and that's president assad leaving the country. >> woodruff: we just saw the video of assad going to homs today to the be be am neighborhood where there had been shelling, a lot of people killed, a lot of people have left, have fled. what does that say to you? >> he promised to rebuild be be am to better than it was before. it takes a lot of gal for a man who spent most of his last time destroying a complete area of the city to promise it again and also the people in that area who greeted him in the video clip most likely were trucked in or brought in by the assad regime.

most of the residents of that area are sunnis and the regime is primarily dominated by al wits. there's a tremendous amount of sectarian tension in that area so those greeting president assad were not genuine. >> woodruff: of course all we heard were the friendly greetings. >> correct. >> what about the divisions among the opposition? there's been a lot of reporting about that. what are we to make of that at this point. >> until very recently most of the talk have concerns that syrian national council which is the umbrella organization abroad of exile group which is include some groups on the ground. they have not really had... nothing has created a necessity for them to come together. there's been arguing over chairs and positions that comes in sharp contrast to the ground but in many areas of the country it's had to work better in the face of the assad regime's onslaught, particularly in the area of homs so there's a real

effort ahead of the friends of syria meeting to get the opposition together so we have lesser addresss for the syrian opposition and then we can perhaps begin to deal with them. >> woodruff: that's a meeting coming up on monday in turkey. you're actually planning to attend that. do we look for something concrete? >> well the annan process deals in many way with the symptoms of the disease but the disease itself is the assad regime's rule and its battle with its inincredibly young population. the friends of syria meeting will help line up a coalition of countries and their ability to deal with is the syrian opposition and get to assad regime to step aside in the near future that's why i think it's important. >> woodruff: so this is a group of arab countries, western countries, secretary clinton is representing the united states. >> correct. >> woodruff: this is on the same day kofi annan goes the u.n. to

report on the plan. >> right. it's going to be a very busy day and very interesting to see what president assad's choices are because if he decides to not go down the u.n. route and to implement what he says he's agreed to there's going to be this other track now and they're going to be organizing for one thing, and that's for president assad to step aside and build a new syria. that involves all those countries you mention working hand in hand not just abroad and in exile but those within syria. >> wodovk:ff andrew tabler, we thank you for joining us on this syria story. thank you. >> thank you. >> brown: next, to the job market and a question that keeps percolating: why are several hundred thousand manufacturing jobs going unfilled, even as the official unemployment rate remains above 8%? one possible answer: too many workers simply don't have the knowledge and experience to do

the skilled manufacturing required these days. ash-har quraishi of wttw chicago reports on an illinois company tackling that concern. >> reporter: even in a down economy with unemployment hovering around 10%, central illinois based foundry and machine has a problem. you have jobs you can't fill. >> correct. >> reporter: doug parsons is excel's president and c.e.o. located in illinois about 20 miles outside of peoria, excel is in the business of manufacturing aftermarket parts for open pit mining equipment, the niche manufacturing company has 50 openings, most of which are high skilled high tech manufacturing jobs. >> the ability for us to go out and find an employee with the skill set that we need and be able to plug them right into our work force just doesn't exist. >> reporter: according to the bureau of labor statistics, job

openings in manufacturing grew from 98,000 in january, 2009, to a projected 264,000 in december of 2011-- an increase of over 169%. at the same time hiring has only increased 62%. dennis vic rellly is the managing director of world business chicago, a nonprofit focused on bringing manufacturing and other high tech companies to the city. he says the gap is due in part to the changing nature of manufacturing itself which is still perceived as dirty, tedious, and back breaking. >> it's not manufacturing in the sense of what we would have witnessed maybe 20, 30 years ago. it's a lot of advanced manufacturing, meaning that these are highly automated computerized facilities and requiring a very, very skilled individual who can work in these facilities. >> this is for osha. >> reporter: experts say a shift away from traditional shop

classes, vocational training and apprenticeships has left students without a clear picture about what a career in manufacturing would look like. with automation and outsourcing to other countries the demand for less-skilled jobs in american factories has diminishes and with an aging work force looking to retire manufacturing is seeing a deficit of workers who can fill jobs that require higher technical and computer aptitudes. >> you've got a work force that's aging now, a disinterested younger generation and then you've got kind of what's left in the middle and that's not enough to fill the need. >> reporter: the problem is compounded for companies like excel that are prospering. the company has seen its sales increase from $15 to $100 million over the last nine years. in fact, they're doing well so well they're in the midst of a $15 million expansion.

with that expansion, excel foundry expects to create about 100 new jobs over the next two years but with an already exhausted pool of skilled workers, the company is looking to educational partners to manufacture a work force. at illinois central college less than 20 miles from excel students are learning the basics of welding but now the college is also in the business of train magazinists and welders for specific jobs at areas companies. companies like excel and cat piller who have found new hires, many of whom have the drive but not the skills to hit the ground running. michael sloan is the dean of agricultural and industrial technologies at i.c.c. >> it's a real basic program, just blueprint reading, traditional machining and c.n.c. operation. we can train somebody in that program in about six weeks. >> reporter: since 2005 the college has trained 400 c.n.c.-- or computer numerically controlled machine operators for

pee your a-based caterpillar and it trained its first class for excel. austin mcclanahan was one of six employees in that class. >> well, i really wasn't sure what i wanted to do when i first got out of high school and one of my teachers had mentioned this, one of my welding teachers and i came out here and applied and i got the job and i've been loving it ever since then. >> once he was hired as a c.n.c. operator excel sent him back to school to pick up the skills he needed. >> it was a lot of one on one it helped me a lot. >> this is a series of disk bus knees are in parallel with one another. >> reporter: partnership helps excel by cutting down on their employee training costs, instead of spending thousands in on-the-job instruction the college program costs excel about $650 per student. with state funding picking up the remaining $350. it's the kind of model the obama administration has endorsed. last month the president announced a new $8 billion program to bolster partnerships

between community colleges and businesses. the goal is to train two million workers for jobs in high growth and high demand industries including advanced manufacturing >> we need to give more community college it is resources they need to become community career centers, places where folks can learn the skills that local businesses are looking for right now from data management to high tech manufacturing. >> reporter: training health care workers has become a priority for chicago mayor rahm emanuel who recently pledged nearly a half billion dollars in capital investments to upgrade chicago's city college system. it's another industry dealing with a shortage of skilled workers. you have people looking for jobs you have employers looking for skilled workers and the only thing that can link them up is the educational system. >> reporter: in addition to that link sloan says there has to be interest from students. >> people are afraid to think about a manufacturing career

because they think why would i go into a career that's going to be short-lived. but that's a fallacy, that's not true. >> reporter: he says his machining classes are nearly empty despite demand for workers. >> so culinary arts, for example i have a lot of enrollment in the culinary arts whereas c.n.c. operator is one of our high-demand areas. right now we have 200 openings just within the peoria area. >> the key say some experts is a sustained effort at making manufacturing careers more attention. >> there's been attention given to manufacturing over the years but it happens in fits and starts. it hasn't been a consistent kind of long term approach that you really need if you're going to make some of the large-scale changes we're talking about. cultural changes. >> reporter: excel c.e.o. doug parsons agrees. he says the training initiative is the first step in revitalizing interests. >> i think we need to get to the

homes and educate parents who still have that stigma that it's dead end jobs, dirty, for losers. it's not. it's the future and there is this resurgence. >> reporter: it's a future austin mcclanahan buys into. he says machining has given him an opportunity to work with his hands and earn a good living. the starting salvi about $40,000 a year but more importantly he's developing a skill set in demand. >> ifill: finally tonight , a look at a major demographic change in america, the sharp increase in people who live alone. ray suarez has our conversation. >> suarez: in 18950, 22% of americans were single, four million lived alone. they accounted for 9% of all households. fast forward to today, more than

50% of american adults are single, 31 million, about one out of every seven, live alone. they make up 28% of all households. these so-called singletons are the focus of a new book by eric kleinenberg, a sos yolgs at new york university. "going solo, the extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of going alone." well, from all those numbers it's obvious something's happening. what? >> well, my view that this is the biggest social change of the last 507 or 60 years that we have failed to name or identify. it's not just that so many americans are unmarried but that people are living alone for long stretches of their lives. >> suarez: but so many people get there in different ways. >> that's right. the. >> suarez: there are people just starting out, finishing college and living on their own. people who are perhaps just divorced and perhaps didn't intend to ever live alone but find that they are. people who are widowed.

and, of course, a group of people who are living alone and liking it. with all these different roads to getting there, is there anything that we can say about this very diverse group of them? >> absolutely. one thing we can say is that people who live alone are opting to do so. now they might not aspire to be on their own but they have other choices available to them. really regardless of what age they are. so, for instance, you can go to craigslist and find roommates. most people have some family members they could live with, parents or children there are all sorts of institutional homes available to elderly people. 100 years ago, even 60 years ago that's how we would have lived but today we don't. people are opting to go alone. >> suarez: is this something that only rich society cans aspire to? when you get up to that scale, one out of every four households just one person, i was thinking of perhaps a manhattan apartment building with 150 studio

apartments in it, that's 150 refrigerators, 150 microwave ovens, 150 televisions. this isn't something every country can pull off. >> that's right. you see very little living alone in poor nations or poor neighborhoods. on the other hand, there are affluent societies where virtually no one lives alone. for instance,d is, one big difference a place liked is that s that women don't have the kind of independence they have in the united states other other countries where there's high levels of living alone so there's a cultural side to this as well as an economic one. >> suarez: has the united states adjustd? this may be something where numbers and individual choice is way out ahead of supermarkets, the way we build the places where we live, the laws we use to govern it. and it may have outpaced the arrangements we make around this part of our life. >> i think it has. i think this is a transformation that we haven't come to terms with. we haven't had a language for coming to terms with it also.

right now 28% of u.s. households are one-person households but the cities the numbers are far higher than that. atlanta, denver, minneapolis, seattle, ever is. these are places were more than 40% of all households have just one person and in manhattan where i live and washington, d.c. it's almost half of all households. cities are largely not equipped for this kind of situation and i think we have a lot of adjusting to do. >> suarez: or cities are uniquely equipped for that situation by creating a way of life where it's possible to live alone without feeling ice lated, lonely and so on. >> cities are better equipped than other us places and you're right. it's the interdependence that makes their independence possible so you can live alone in a city and not be alone for all the reasons you mentioned. at the same time especially as our society ages and the boomer generation ages alone we will find our housing is not quite up to the challenge of giving

people what they want which is a place of their phone they can't have the right partner but also connection to other people and to all kinds of care and support. we have a long ways to go there. >> suarez: well, as you mentioned, people turning 70 are going to break like a tidal wave on this society and it doesn't seem like we've thought that through very much, have we? >> i think that's right. we haven't. i should say that people who live alone, whether they're 30 or 40 or 75 are more likely than people who are married to spend time with friends and neighbors, to go out in the city and spend time in money in bars and restaurants and cafes, more likely to go to public events and more likely to volunteer in civic organizations so we shouldn't get carried away with the idea that living alone means being lice lated but there are a lot of elder people at risk of growing isolated if they don't have the right kinds of housing and at the moment we haven't invested in that.

>> suarez: in an earlier book "heat wave" you examine how old it was that very living alone among a lot of low-income elderly that led to a terrible death toll during a tragic heat wave in chicago in the 1990s. so could that be the down side of living by yourself. >> if we don't find ways to adjust but the one thing i discovered in the course of writing this book is that the very vulnerable and isolated people do represent a small minority here that for the most part people who live alone are engaged in the world in the ways we don't appreciate and i grew concerned that this language we have for talking about our bowling alone and our disconnection, the way we've grown too individualistic as a society has somehow misrecognized the ways in which we're actually connected with each other. so it's important to tell both sides of that story. >> well, implicit in a lot of the reporting you do for this book was this finding that we

aren't totally sold on the idea yet, even though 28% of our households consist of one person. >> that's right. and let's be clear this is not the case against marriage. i'm not trying to persuade anyone they should live alone but i am trying to come to terms with the fact that so many people are opting to live alone when they have other options available to them. again, they're not aspiring to it, but they're not going to settle with living with the wrong person in the way they might 50 years ago. >> suarez: we'll continue this conversation online. in the meantime, the book is "going solo." eric klineenberg, nice to talk to you. >> brown: again, the major developments of the day. this was day two for health care reform at the u.s. supreme court. the justices had sharp questions about whether the government can compel citizens to have insurance.

u.n. envoy kofi annan announced syria has agreed to a peace plan he offered. at the same time, the u.n. estimated the death toll in the syrian uprising has reached 9,000. and in cuba, pope benedict xvi called for "renewal," but the communist government insisted there would be no political reform. do you wonder how home sales are faring in your neighborhood? online, we can help you find out. hari sreenivasan explains. hari? >> sreenivasan: we've posted data for the average selling price of a home in 20 major cities. use our interactive graphic on paul solman's making sense page. and on friday afternoon, you can join a live chat about learning disabilities. find the details on our homepage. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. >> and that's the newshour for tonight. on wednesday, we'll look at day three at the court, and the politics of health care reform. i'm jeffrey brown.

>> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. we'll see you on-line, and again here tomorrow evening. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> bnsf railway. >> the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.orgou

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