Bush Pushes for Reform of Welfare : Politics: In California, the President uses the issue to draw contrast between himself and Clinton. He urges more leeway for state experiments.

President Bush on Friday intensified his bid to make a campaign issue of welfare reform, contending that his plan to grant states new flexibility in managing such programs could “help save the most endangered species in California--the taxpayer.”

At the same time, his political advisers mounted an aggressive new effort to portray the rival proposals of Democrat Bill Clinton as inefficient and too apt to rely on the federal government for answers.

With the Inland Empire as their venue, Bush campaign officials expressed hope that the appeal could help to restore the President’s sagging political fortunes by tapping into voter resentment of soaring welfare costs.

“We need to say: ‘Get a job or get off the dole,’ ” Bush said in a breakfast address to members of service organizations at the Riverside Convention Center.

In what he described as deference to his nonpolitical audience, Bush avoided direct comparisons to his rival. But the bitterness and frustration of an incumbent President trailing far behind a youthful governor in the polls were apparent as he indicated he is anxious for a direct assault on the Democrats.

“You wait two years from now--I mean two weeks from now,” Bush sputtered. “I cannot wait for our convention to roll up my sleeves and go after them and tell the American people what’s really going on.”

The Republican Convention does not begin until Aug. 17, but that self-imposed deadline seemed little more than a pretense by week’s end. Aides made it clear that Bush himself had urged that some of his campaign speeches reflect a more confrontational tone.

And even on Friday morning, as Bush offered what at first sounded like an innocent tribute to a long-suffering Olympic swimmer, the political barb soon was revealed.

“I don’t know,” Bush said of gold-medalist Pablo Morales, who triumphed this year after trying and failing twice before, “but I kind of like a guy who proves youth and inexperience are no match for maturity and determination.”

Beyond the veiled attacks, however, Bush’s focus on welfare reform reflected an effort to give his campaign a more solid policy base as it braces for a bruising fall against Clinton, who has made the linking of welfare payments to personal responsibility a centerpiece of his campaign.

In the past, Bush has declared support for reform of the nation’s $150-billion-a-year welfare system. But the White House has until now had little success in portraying his agenda as anything more than passive support for innovation by the states.

On Friday, the Administration issued a new white paper urging Congress to permit states even more leeway in finding ways to help citizens off the welfare rolls.

“Welfare deprives our economy of millions of citizens who never learned the simple values of hard work and responsibility,” Bush said in his remarks to the Rotary Club and other organizations here. “And we can’t afford that system any more.”

Pointing out that more than half of all welfare recipients receive payments for at least eight years, the Administration has already permitted five states to modify their programs to reward work and discourage welfare dependence.

The proposals issued by the White House would allow even further experimentation. Included in new legislation to be sent to Congress are proposals to allow similar stick-and-carrot incentives to be built into food stamp and housing aid programs, and a request that workfare recipients be permitted for the first time to work for salaries below the federal minimum wage.

White House aides conceded that they had little hope that Congress might approve the plan before it adjourns in the fall. But they suggested that the proposal could serve to draw new distinctions between the President and Clinton.

Clinton has proposed that welfare recipients be allowed to remain on the rolls for only two years before returning to work, a standard more rigorous than any advocated by Bush. He has also called for the federal government to impose strict guidelines that would require the states to establish job-training programs.

But Bush and his lieutenants sought Friday to portray the Clinton approach as over-regimented and unworkable.

Gail Wilensky, the White House’s top welfare expert, said Clinton is proposing “a program of government-guaranteed jobs for any and all who come in the door.” A briefing paper issued in Washington by the Bush-Quayle campaign charged that Clinton had vacillated about whether he favors innovative programs that are to be implemented in California and New Jersey with licenses granted under the Administration waiver.

And Bush himself used the contrast to further embellish a campaign theme that asks whether Clinton should be trusted and whether the Arkansas governor has faith in Americans. “I put my trust in people,” Bush said, “not in the federal government.”

The President was accompanied to the dais here by Gov. Pete Wilson, whose introduction drew audible groans from the crowd.

Wilson nevertheless plunged into his campaign rhetoric with vigor, comparing the Democratic majority in Congress to Gulf War foe Saddam Hussein.

Talking about Bush’s attempt to get congressional action on his economic proposals, Wilson said the President faces a tenacious opponent “at least as devious as Saddam Hussein and frankly more determined to stay in office--the U.S. Congress.”

Congressional Democrats are “petty tyrants who have been savaging this President at every turn,” he said.

The audience seemed more supportive of Bush, but the reception did little to ease his strategists’ glum recognition that if the election were held today, Bush would go down to an overwhelming defeat in California.

And while Bush sought to show the common touch in a visit later to a nearby job-training site, he was stymied by one small credibility gap. Having picked up the telephone to persuade a prospective employer to hire a trainee, Bush seemed to have trouble persuading the person that he indeed was the President.

“Word of honor,” Bush could be heard to say. “Tell you what, I’ll take a picture and send it to you.”