Welfare Reform Planners in Deadlock : Policy: Clinton to get blueprint today. Left in doubt are key issues, including financing and how much recipients will have to give up.

The team responsible for drafting the Administration’s blueprint for welfare reform will present its conclusions to President Clinton today, but despite months of deliberation the group remains seriously divided over how to finance the plan and how tough to be on some recipients.

Although the task force has been unable to resolve a range of specific questions on how to implement Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it,” officials insisted that these differences are relatively minor compared with the open chasm of disagreement over how to pay for the plan--which may cost as much as $6 billion annually by 1999.

“There are some thorny issues left, but they do tend to be second order,” said one senior White House official. “There tends to be overall agreement on structure and direction (of reform). Financing will be the trickiest.”

The policy question of whether the government can punish welfare recipients who refuse to meet the new plan’s work requirements and other rules without hurting their children also will be difficult to resolve.

Despite early warnings from some reform advocates that liberals in the Administration would dilute the reform effort, the task force has shaped a plan that broadly follows Clinton’s campaign promises to require work, intensify efforts to collect child support and expand access to job training and day care.

Still, the issues on which the group has deadlocked--including whether part-time jobs will be accepted as satisfying the work requirement and whether states can withhold additional benefits when welfare recipients have more children--illuminate the continuing divisions within Democratic ranks on this polarizing issue.

And the extended struggle inside the Administration over the knotty questions about financing reform and preserving a safety net for children may look mild compared to the stormy greeting that the proposal is likely to get when it is finally released to Congress--probably at the end of April or the beginning of May.

“This could be a little bomb for the Administration,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento). “We’re not going to rubber stamp it. They do feel they have a consensus on (Capitol) Hill. But we’re not anywhere near that.”

Under the working group’s approach, which initially would target younger recipients, work would be required after two years on the welfare rolls and failure to work would result in lost income.

The government also would intensify its efforts to establish paternity and collect child support for children born out of wedlock. And as part of a renewed effort to discourage such births, women under 18 would be prohibited from using welfare funds to establish their own households.

Within that framework, the President must resolve a range of specific disputes.

One such division is over how to treat welfare recipients who take jobs as required but are paid wages so low that they remain in poverty. Should such workers receive supplemental welfare grants to augment what they earn in the private sector?

There is also a question about how to treat recipients who accept the minimum-wage jobs in the public sector that the plan would create but are not given enough hours of work by the states to match their welfare grants. Some advocate supplemental grants for these workers, too.

Bruce Reed, a domestic policy adviser to the President and a co-chairman of the welfare reform task force, is among those who “oppose the idea of welfare becoming a long-term income subsidy because it belies the two-years-and-out promise,” one task force member said.

The Administration is also still wrestling with how to structure exemptions to the work requirement and extensions for the two-year time limit and how far to go in an effort to discourage out-of-wedlock births.

The issue of whether the federal government should give states blanket approval to deny additional benefits to people who have children while already on welfare was so clearly a divisive issue that senior task force officials almost immediately decided to reserve it for the President to resolve.

Outside of the Administration, the potential for dispute is even wider.

Although 89 liberal representatives criticized the two-year time limit in a letter to the White House last fall, it appears many of them can be won over on this issue, but only if the plan provides a safety net for children and adults trying to play by the rules.

Some members of Congress have complained that senior task force officials have not adequately addressed their concerns.

“What happens if a woman is not disabled and has a three-year-old kid who is not disabled, but she does not show up to work?” Matsui asked. “Do we take the child away from her and let her wander the streets? They have not answered this. That’s why I’m a little surprised they’re going to the President already.”

The plan to phase in the program starting with people born after 1972 was broadly embraced by the Administration.

But some members of Congress believe that older recipients who may have less expensive child care needs and some work experience should be offered the same help that those targeted at the outset will be offered.

The most bruising battles, however, are almost certain to come over financing.

Because welfare is an entitlement program, federal budget rules severely limit the Administration’s options: To fund the plan it can either raise taxes or cut other entitlement programs. It cannot simply expand federal spending.

With the exception of a proposed gambling tax, the options under consideration lean heavily toward cuts. Advocates for the poor have already mounted intense campaigns against several of the ideas, such as scaling back access to social welfare benefits for legal immigrants who are not yet citizens.

“None of the choices are good,” said one member of the task force.