Wilson Assails Congress : Government: Governor says his former colleagues are violating states’ rights by mandating programs and not providing the money to pay for them.

Gov. Pete Wilson returned to the nation’s capital Friday to “deplore, condemn and protest” what he called congressional stomping on states’ rights--its mandating of services that require state tax increases to finance.

And he also came to spread the message of welfare reform, a movement sprouting in several states.

The Republican governor--accompanied by a dozen senior advisers--is here to attend the annual winter conference of the National Governors Assn., which begins Sunday.

The Wilson contingent also will meet with President Bush’s political strategists to discuss growing GOP concerns about the President’s reelection prospects in California.

On Friday, the governor spoke at a luncheon of the National Press Club, where he repeatedly bashed his former colleagues in Congress.

An aide called it “a declaration to Washington that state and local governments are reeling from its policies”--always a popular theme for Republicans and governors.

But in this case the theme was voiced especially loudly by a former member of the institution he was attacking.

Replying to an obvious question from the audience--Why didn’t he try to do something about this alleged congressional bullying when he was a senator for eight years?--Wilson asserted: “I was outnumbered. What I say now I said then, on the floor of the Senate.”

Wilson said that 37 states--most notably California--are facing budget deficits. And he said “a very significant” share of the blame rests not with the recession, but with “built-in autopilot spending” mandated by Congress.

“Congress is the culprit,” he declared. “It’s Congress that distorts and reorders state priorities and state spending. . . . This year, just the (federally) unfunded congressional mandates will cost my state nearly $1.4 billion. . . . Medicaid mandates threaten to bankrupt the states.”

Wilson contended that “the states are bribed” with inadequate federal matching funds “to tax and spend” state money for services required by Washington. This deprives states and local governments “the ability to allocate their own resources, to spend their own money,” he said.

“Well, today the alarm is ringing in just about every state capital in the country. There’s a rebellion brewing among the governors.”

Wilson said that “perhaps the most flagrant example” of a federal mandate is a requirement that states cannot reduce welfare benefits below what families were paid in 1988 without giving up federal Medicaid funds. “That’s not a stick. It’s certainly not a carrot. It’s a bludgeon,” he said.

That is a federal law Wilson must coax Congress to change in order to implement the welfare cuts he is proposing in a November ballot initiative.

The 200 people at the press club luncheon--some reporters, but mostly newspaper executives, retired journalists, public relations officials and political operatives--showed little reaction to Wilson except for a warm applause at the end.