Democrats Propose Their Version of Welfare Reform

Congressional Democrats, attempting to wrest the welfare reform issue from Republicans, introduced a proposal Friday that would require new recipients to start preparing for employment when they apply for welfare but would not impose a time limit on benefits.

The Democratic plan differs in significant ways from the proposals advanced by House Republicans and President Clinton. It would not cut off cash benefits after two years to able-bodied recipients who fail to find jobs and its restrictions would apply only to new welfare recipients, not those already on the rolls.

One of the tougher elements of the plan would curtail assistance to new welfare applicants who refuse to take steps that could lead to employment, such as going to school, entering a training program or actively hunting for a job.

“We’re here today because the proposal that the Republicans are passing off as welfare reform--the proposal that they say will replace welfare with work--does absolutely nothing to accomplish that goal,” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

Gephardt, joined by 20 other House Democrats at a news conference called to announce the plan, criticized Republicans for using welfare reform to cut spending so that taxes can be cut and not to help poor families get jobs and become self-sufficient. Republicans have said that their plan would save $40 billion over five years.

“They’re just playing around with the process--trying to slash the budget to pay for a capital gains tax for wealthy investors and a ‘Star Wars’ defense disaster that does nothing for struggling families,” Gephardt said.

The announcement marked the first Democratic attempt to take the offensive on welfare reform since Republicans swept congressional elections last year. But even as Democrats declared the Republican bill cruel and ineffective, they admitted that their own proposals would have a chance only if Republicans are divided.

The Democratic plan would not deny benefits to teen-age mothers, immigrants, alcoholics or drug addicts, nor would it allow states to kick people off welfare rolls unless they refused to participate in training or take a job offered to them.

Republicans, whose own welfare legislation faces its first legislative hurdle next week in a House subcommittee, said that ideas from the opposition are welcome. But they made clear that they are the driving force for change.

“The Democrats have taken a walk on welfare reform,” said Rep. David Camp (R-Mich.), a veteran Republican on the subcommittee that is drafting welfare legislation. “The President left it out of his budget and he hasn’t introduced his own bill.

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“They’ve had 40 years to correct the welfare system and they have not done it,” Camp said. “They have allowed it to fester and cause untold harm to children and families.”

The House GOP plan would alter the current system fundamentally by giving states broad flexibility to run their own welfare programs, provided that they abide by certain requirements. States would be banned from using federal money to pay cash benefits to teen-age mothers under 18 or their children and from giving cash benefits to families on welfare for longer than two years.

After the two-year period, states could permit recipients to work in exchange for their benefits for an additional three years but no longer than that.

Most restrictions in the Republican plan are to the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, which now supports 5 million families at a cost to the federal government of $17 billion a year, a fraction of the overall proposed fiscal 1996 budget of $1.6 trillion.

Currently every American who qualifies for that program is guaranteed access because of its “entitlement status.” Republicans would change that, however, giving states block grants based on 1994 funding levels and dropping any federal requirement for guaranteed assistance.

While some Democrats oppose ending entitlement status, they did not reach consensus on that point. Gephardt called the issue irrelevant.

Republicans said they are amazed that both the White House and congressional Democrats appear unwilling to fight to keep the entitlement status of AFDC and other programs, a concept that was central to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s when the welfare system was born.

The Republican plan also would make most legal immigrants ineligible for dozens of federal programs and exclude alcoholics and drug addicts and many disabled children from the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides cash assistance.

Some House Republicans already have expressed disagreement with certain elements of the GOP plan, especially the denial of cash benefits to teen-age mothers, but it is not clear that they oppose the measures strongly enough to cast party discipline aside and vote against them. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) conceded that Democrats are unlikely to derail the House Republican proposals. “If the Republicans have unity, they won’t care whether we swallow them or not,” Miller said.