GOP Welfare Cuts Would Slice Safety Net, Report Says : Reform: Millions would be left poor, homeless and hungry under plan, center says. Republicans criticize study for exaggerating impact, defend their bill.

The welfare reform plan drafted by House Republicans would reduce assistance to the poor by $57 billion over four years and deny benefits to half the families and children that receive aid under current law, according to a detailed analysis by a Washington-based advocacy group.

The report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which opposes the proposed GOP benefit cuts, said that the welfare plan endorsed by Republican House members would represent an unprecedented reduction in the social safety net established by Congress over several decades.

“The bill would make deep cuts in vital programs without helping welfare recipients earn their way out of poverty,” said Isaac Shapiro, a senior analyst at the center, a respected liberal Washington institution. “Increases in poverty, homelessness and hunger for millions of children most certainly would result and states would likely be saddled with significant added costs as they face the destitution created by these harsh policies.”

The report represented the first major attack on the Republican plan to overhaul the welfare state, which is part of the House GOP’s “contract with America.” Its findings will be key ammunition for moderates and liberals as they fight to derail the initiative.

Given the huge chasm between the approaches to welfare reform favored by the President and the new Republican congressional leadership and the high priority both give it, the welfare debate is likely to be a defining issue for the upcoming congressional session.

Republicans criticized the report for exaggerating the impact of the bill and defended their proposal as a necessary measure to combat out-of-wedlock births and force parents to take financial responsibility for their children.

“This is not any cold-hearted policy, this is the way you make a work program effective--you raise the stakes,” said a Republican congressional staff member familiar with the proposal. “Policy without consequences is the Democratic approach to welfare reform. Policy with consequences is the approach Republicans are going to take.”

One example of how the center’s report is misleading, the GOP aide said, is that the report accurately states that 5 million children would lose benefits. But it leaves out, the aide said, that it would take eight years for that many to be cut off and, by that time, their families would have been given $60,000 in public assistance over five years.

Acknowledging that jettisoning so many children is “a risky” approach, the staff member stressed that no reform effort without serious consequences would inspire the dramatic behavioral changes that Republicans hope to accomplish.

The draft bill would permit states to cut cash benefits to all welfare recipients after two years without providing jobs, deny benefits to children whose paternity had not been established and permanently refuse benefits to teen-age mothers who had babies out of wedlock and their children.

The Clinton proposal, in contrast, would limit welfare benefits to two years but would offer government-subsidized jobs to those who could not find work in the private sector.

The Republican bill also would end “entitlement” status for food stamps, Aid to Families With Dependent Children and other programs that assist the poor. This would alter a key feature of the safety net under which such programs expand during recessions when unemployment and poverty rise, the report said.

The bill also would remove the safety net for immigrants who are not yet citizens, making them ineligible for about 60 programs.

Although the Republican plan would not offer government subsidized jobs for recipients who have exhausted their benefits, it would require some recipients to work 35 hours per week to be eligible for AFDC checks. Considering that the average AFDC payment for a family of three is $366 a month, the report states, the Republicans would be forcing the average recipient to work for $2.42 per hour.

Republicans countered that the compensation would exceed the minimum wage if the value of food stamps and Medicaid is added.

But Shapiro said that following such logic would mean that companies which supplement their employees’ health insurance should be permitted to pay them less than minimum wage.

“Even if you added in food stamps, you would be earning under the minimum wage in most states,” Shapiro said.