Compromise Sought on Welfare Bill : Reagan Veto Threat Spurs Senate Work on Jobs Proposal

Bowing to President Reagan’s veto pressure, chief Democratic sponsors of a welfare bill began bargaining with conservative foes Monday on a compromise package that would strengthen requirements that welfare recipients seek work.

“We’re making progress,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) told reporters after an hourlong discussion with a group of Republican senators. Another session is scheduled for today.

Reagan announced Friday that he intends to veto the bill unless it forces able-bodied welfare recipients to take jobs.

“There’s a 50-50 chance we’ll make a deal on most of these points and get the support of the President,” said Sen. William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.), one of the bill’s three opponents in April when the Finance Committee approved it, 17 to 3.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), chief sponsor of the bill, said the outlook is “promising” for a compromise on the “workfare” issue that would be acceptable to the Administration.

The bill, the first attempt in decades to make fundamental changes in the 53-year-old program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, is co-sponsored by 64 senators, a comfortable majority in the 100-member Senate. The House already has passed a more sweeping version of welfare reform.

The full Senate began debating the bill while negotiations on its contents were taking place in the office of Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas. Joseph R. Wright Jr., deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, represented the White House in the meeting.

Armstrong said that, although the Administration wants a work requirement for able-bodied adults who receive welfare benefits, it had not come up with a specific plan. “The principle is this: If you’re going to give a lot of benefits to people, it’s not unreasonable for them to give some work in return,” Armstrong said after the meeting.

The bill as approved by the Finance Committee would provide education and training for welfare recipients, and Armstrong said that one of the options under consideration would require recipients to work before, during or after their schooling.

Public-Service Jobs

Bentsen told reporters that the work requirement might be waived for welfare recipients under 22 years of age. Others, he said, might have to take public-service jobs in their communities to qualify for benefits.

States would have to require a certain percentage of qualified AFDC recipients to participate in the workfare program, and Bentsen said the rate might start at 10% or 15% and gradually increase to 20% or 25%. Still unsettled, Armstrong said, is the level of pay that must be offered welfare recipients.

Armstrong said senators were also debating how many welfare recipients would have to take part in the workfare program. While the Finance Committee bill would not require states to achieve any participation rate, the Administration would like to establish a federal requirement somewhere between 15% and 75%, he said.

Another major issue, Armstrong said, concerns welfare payments to families with unemployed fathers. Such benefits are unavailable in 24 states, and the Finance Committee bill would require these states to provide benefits for at least six months a year. The Administration opposes any federal requirement that such payments be made.

Moynihan has described the bill as fundamentally redirecting the welfare program to place more emphasis on responsibility of welfare mothers to work and absentee fathers to pay for the offspring they have abandoned.

As approved by the Finance Committee, the measure would require states to make stepped-up efforts to establish paternity and authorize automatic deduction of child-support payments from fathers’ paychecks.

Job-finding efforts would be focused on the 50% of welfare mothers who have been on the rolls the longest, with the least chance to be employed. The bill would encourage continued education for unmarried teen-age mothers, considered most likely to become long-term welfare cases.

The bill approved by the House last December would also put greater emphasis on work, training and responsibility of absentee fathers. In contrast with the Senate committee bill, however, the House version would raise welfare benefits significantly and cost about twice as much over the next five years.