Clinton Panel Considers Welfare Reforms : Policy: Task force seeks to fulfill campaign pledge to change social support system. States may get wide latitude to find work for aid recipients.

As President Clinton prepares to make good on his campaign pledge “to end welfare as we know it,” his White House task force on the issue is proposing that states be given wide leeway to find work for welfare recipients and to require behavioral changes as a condition of receiving aid.

To implement Clinton’s campaign promise to require welfare recipients to work after two years on the rolls, the Administration is considering making block grants to states, which could use the funds either to provide public service employment or to subsidize jobs in the private sector.

In addition, the task force is examining ways to give states more freedom to link welfare payments to changes in personal behavior. One possibility, for example, would be to require unmarried teen-age mothers to live with parents or guardians as a condition for receiving their checks.

In a third major area, the task force is looking for ways to toughen the collection of child support payments from absent fathers.

The three priorities track closely with those established by Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign. As a candidate he sought to establish his credentials as a “new Democrat” by coupling promises of job training for welfare recipients with the requirement that they accept work after receiving benefits for two years.

In addition, he sought to underline this new “social contract” by supporting measures to demand greater “personal responsibility” from welfare mothers--and the absent fathers of their children.

While the ideas under discussion parallel those priorities, the task force is locked in serious debate about precisely how to implement them. The task force expects to present options to Clinton by the middle of this month and the Administration hopes to introduce legislation early next year.

Building a legislative coalition for welfare reform will be complex, however, because many liberals are skeptical of measures to toughen requirements for welfare recipients and many Republicans already have staked out positions well to Clinton’s right on the issue.

The final deliberations of the task force may anticipate some of those congressional tensions.

For example, the task force is debating how much leeway states should have in imposing behavioral requirements. Under current law, states that want to tie welfare to behavior--such as requiring welfare parents to immunize their children or mandating that teen-age mothers live with parents--must receive waivers from the Department of Health and Human Services.

As a general rule, the Administration is looking for ways to streamline that process. But because many of these requirements are controversial, officials are locked in debate over how much leeway states should be granted.

The Administration is looking at two changes in this area. It is leaning toward establishing some national standards of behavior that all states would have to meet; the requirement that a teen-age mother live with her parents would fit into this category. In a second category the task force is considering establishing a list of requirements that states could impose without receiving special federal approval.

But there will be much debate in the Administration and Congress about which requirements to place on either list--or whether the process should be simplified at all.

One key marker in the debate is whether to make it easier for states to deny additional benefits to women who have more children while they are receiving welfare.

“That’s a presidential decision,” said one senior official.

In the area of requiring work, the task force is nearing some basic decisions on how to implement the idea of requiring work after two years.

It favors providing block grants to states, which would then be allowed either to create public service jobs for welfare recipients or to subsidize private sector jobs.

Under current law, such subsidies are provided only for newly created jobs. The Administration is considering allowing states to provide such subsidies for existing jobs.

But the speed at which the work requirement can be phased in is entirely a function of how much money the Administration can find to fund it.

The fiscal pressure on the welfare reform task force illuminates the paradox of welfare reform: Almost all measures designed to move recipients out of the home and into the work force cost more than leaving them to collect their checks.