House Approves Welfare Overhaul Bill but Other Social Measures Stall in Senate

The House on Friday completed congressional approval of one of the largest overhauls of the welfare system in the last half-century, but other social legislation was caught in a partisan election-year snarl in the Senate.

With President Reagan signaling his readiness to sign the welfare measure, House Republicans and Democrats joined forces to pass it by a vote of 347 to 53. The Senate approved the bill Thursday 96 to 1.

The welfare bill breezed through the House with little opposition, despite the long history of unsuccessful congressional efforts to rectify flaws in the basic federal relief program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

Rather than focusing on the level of benefits for welfare recipients, the new bill is directed at getting more recipients into the work force. It allocates $3.34 billion over the next five years, primarily for education and training that would lead to full-time jobs for welfare parents.

In addition, medical coverage and child care benefits would be provided for one year to ease the transition for those who move from welfare rolls to payrolls. Another provision would require states to deduct child support payments from paychecks of absentee fathers, even if they were not in arrears.

“Welfare will now be something we can be proud of, rather than ashamed of,” said Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly (D-Conn.).

The most controversial provision, which would not take effect until 1994, would require one parent in two-parent welfare families to do 16 hours of unpaid community work. An exception would be granted to parents under age 25 who choose to complete their high school education.

Conservatives and liberals on both sides of the aisle in the House found something to like in the welfare bill, a compromise that emerged only Monday from months of difficult Senate-House negotiations.

But in the Senate, partisan differences, exacerbated by the election campaign, kept the Democrats’ social legislation tied in knots with no end in sight.

Sharp political differences remained on Democratic proposals to require employers to grant unpaid leave to new parents and seriously ill workers, as well as a companion measure that would authorize $2.5 billion for a new federal-state child care program.

Party Lines

The Senate voted 52 to 42, mainly along party lines, to reject a Republican move to postpone a vote on the so-called “family agenda.” Democrats plan to make a last-ditch attempt to cut off debate on the social legislation Monday. Sponsors said that failure to get the required 60 votes would doom both bills, as the GOP leaders apparently hoped to do.

Republican leaders have criticized the social measures as costly and unwarranted intrusions on private business.

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas, in seeking to scuttle the parental leave and child care bills, said the American people want to see the Congress take action on drugs now above everything else. As for the so-called family agenda put forward by the Democrats, he said: “They are part of the national debate . . . these are issues we ought to look at in 1989.”

Senate Democratic leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, however, rejected that approach, saying there was time to consider the drug legislation next week. If the Democrats prevail next week on cutting off debate on the social legislation, they hope to combine those measures with a third bill to crack down on child pornography and obscene materials--a bill that sailed through the Senate by a 97-0 vote.

“Now is the time to act on these pro-family issues,” Byrd said. “What is more important?”

He pledged that the Senate would get a chance to vote on the anti-drug bill and another bill that makes changes in the tax law of 1986 before adjournment.