2 New Welfare Bills Signal Heated Debate : Legislation: Measures on aid cut to unwed mothers under 21 and end to time limits on benefits show how divisive Congress is on reform.

Presaging just how far the looming battle over welfare reform could go, House Republicans on Thursday proposed eliminating all benefits to unwed mothers under 21, while the only member of Congress who was a welfare mother proposed overhauling the system without the popular notion of time limits on benefits.

The proposals, introduced as separate bills in the House, are far more extreme than anything in President Clinton’s forthcoming blueprint for reform and are unlikely to become law.

But the two new offerings, and another bill scheduled for introduction in the Senate today, signal how little common ground exists in Congress on the sensitive issue of welfare reform and how intractable the coming fight could be. They bring to six the number of competing reform plans now under consideration on Capitol Hill.

While all sides endorse the President’s promise to “end welfare as we know it,” they have dramatically different notions of how a new system should work and what ideals it should embody.

“All this clearly indicates that there is certainly no consensus,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), a key member of the Ways and Means subcommittee that will consider welfare reform.

The Administration has spent more than a year crafting its welfare reform plan, which would require recipients of Aid for Families With Dependent Children born after 1971 to go to work after two years on the rolls--with the help of government-paid job training and placement programs.

The White House is still putting the final touches on the $9.5-billion plan and hopes it will be introduced in Congress before Memorial Day.

But members of Congress said the competing legislation should serve as warnings to the Administration that legislators are far from poised simply to accept the Clinton proposal. Many predicted lengthy legislative deliberations that could delay action into 1995, even though the President has asked for passage of a welfare reform bill this year.

“We knew the job was dangerous when we took it on,” said Avis LaVelle, a spokeswoman for the Administration’s welfare reform team.

The bill, introduced Thursday by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) and Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), signals that the President’s pledge of “two years and out” will be a key area of contention.

“There was a general feeling that time limits were already agreed to and I don’t think that’s necessarily so,” Matsui said.

Woolsey, who collected welfare payments for three years as a newly divorced mother 25 years ago, said her bill reflects her personal experience. It focuses on the collection of child support payments and places responsibility for the task in the hands of the Internal Revenue Service.

If such a system were in place after her divorce, she said, she would not have needed AFDC. Her measure also proposes spending increases for a variety of education and training programs and would make it easier for two-parent families to qualify for AFDC--a change that the Administration philosophically supports but is unlikely to include in its proposals because of the expense.

“I am the only member of the House of Representatives who has ever been a single working mother on welfare,” Woolsey said. “My experience is valuable to this debate.”

By joining with a Republican, Woolsey strengthened her case against time limits.

“What would you do with the children? Dump them on the street? This is a compassionate country,” Regula said.

The Republican bill, sponsored by Rep. James M. Talent (R-Mo.), concentrates on deterring out-of-wedlock births, a problem that he blames for many of the nation’s social ills. His legislation, which has the support of 28 Republicans, initially would discontinue welfare benefits for unmarried mothers under 21 and include mothers under 25 by 1997.

The premise behind the measure is that the millions of children born each year to poor, unwed mothers are a direct result of a welfare system that pays them more for having children than they could earn at a job or by getting married.

A third bill, expected to be introduced today by Sens. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), would give money to states to enable them to design their own welfare systems aimed at getting people off programs and into jobs. The federal government would monitor those efforts.