February 18, 1995

By calling for huge cuts in Medicaid and social service programs, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's plan to reduce city spending by $1.3 billion is likely to lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the health care industry, the segment of the New York City economy that has been the strongest source of job growth for more than a decade. In an interview, David R. Rubenstein, assistant director of the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget, estimated that Medicaid cuts alone would lead to job reductions of 10,000 to 30,000 at hospitals, nursing homes, mental health clinics and other medical centers, and remove $1 billion a year in wages.

Colin Ferguson was convicted of murder tonight in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings that killed 6 people and wounded 19 others. The verdict, which came shortly after 9:15 P.M., was greeted enthusiastically by relatives of shooting victims and by survivors of the massacre who filled most of the seats in the Nassau County courtroom.

House Republicans today unveiled a bill that would scrap the national school lunch program and a separate Federal program that feeds pregnant women and preschool children, in favor of lump-sum grants to the states. But senior Republicans are balking at Speaker Newt Gingrich's plan to do the same with food stamps. The bill, drafted by Republican members of the House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, would give states vast new discretion to design their own food programs in place of the school lunch program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC.

Many who saw Mr. Ferguson defend himself felt little satisfaction in his conviction. News analysis, page 26. Victims of the shooting pleaded for stricter gun control, rather than condemning Mr. Ferguson. Page 26.

Not since John F. Kennedy has a sitting senator run a successful Presidential campaign. One can make the case, in fact, that the very qualities that make an effective senator -- like the ability to compromise -- are a hindrance in the modern campaign. Primary voters tend to like their meat red and their ideological positions undiluted. None of this, however, has prevented the quadrennial outbreak of Presidential ambition in the United States Senate, where it is sometimes said that every senator, sooner or later, looks into the mirror and sees a President. It has happened, in recent months, to Senators Bob Dole and Phil Gramm, Richard G. Lugar and Arlen Specter.