GOP Rejects Welfare Reform Changes : Congress: Democrats had sought to provide guarantees for recipients, children. The Republican proposal still gives states broad leeway.

Congressional Republicans Monday voted down Democratic attempts to require more welfare recipients to find jobs and to force states to provide them with child care and training or education as a House subcommittee took the first action on the sweeping GOP welfare reform proposal.

With several of their amendments, Democrats attempted to write into the measure guarantees for welfare recipients and their children. One would have ensured child care benefits. Another specified that states owed recipients job training or education. But each time, Republicans repelled the motions.

“This new majority is trying to get away from the entitlement approach,” Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.) said, explaining why he would not support an amendment forcing states to ensure that welfare parents who are forced to work have child care.

Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) stressed that providing such care is a family’s responsibility, not the government’s.

The GOP proposal, unveiled last week, would give states broad leeway, allowing them to create their own programs to reform their own welfare systems as long as they abided by certain prohibitions. Welfare funds would no longer be determined based on the number of qualified recipients, but would be frozen at 1994 funding levels--$15.3 billion. California would receive almost 23% of that money.

For the first time, the Clinton Administration suggested Monday that the GOP plan would not meet the President’s declared intention to “end welfare as we know it.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala in a letter called the work requirements in the GOP plan “even weaker than in those in current law.”

The Republican plan stipulates that 20% of welfare recipients must be in work programs by 2003 and that states cut off cash benefits to families after they have been on the rolls five years. The President’s plan, which he introduced to Congress last year, focused only on the youngest recipients, those under 25, and would have required that most of them hold jobs within two years.

Shalala’s letter went on to criticize a provision of the GOP plan that would require states to deny cash benefits to unwed mothers under 18 and to their children. “This provision appears to punish children for their entire childhood--18 years--for the mistakes of their parents,” the letter said. Despite her strong objections, the letter does not mention the possibility of a presidential veto.

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.) lashed back at the Administration during the debate, saying it was intolerable for Democrats to argue that states cannot be trusted to require work or care for children. Democrats missed their chance in the years before the Republicans took control of Congress, he said. “I begged Democrats to address welfare.” he said.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agreed that the GOP proposal falls short in its requirement for recipients to take jobs.

Democrats criticized the Republican plan for failing to ensure that states offer recipients education, training, job placement, child care and other assistance to help them move into the work force. Some Republicans, on the other hand, argued that recipients should be forced into jobs sooner and not be allowed to rely on public assistance for up to five years.

Democrats also pointed out that states could pay benefits to teen mothers and their children or to people who had been on the rolls for more than five years, as long as they used state money.

“It’s a sham,” said Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.). He also drew a comparison between the current measure and the bill introduced as part of the “contract with America” that would have required 50% of recipients to be working by 2003. The current GOP target of 20% of that year shows how Republicans have backtracked from what many believe should be the main goal of welfare reform.

Some Republicans agreed.

“I don’t think this bill goes far enough,” said John Ensign (R-Nev.), adding that he was one of the freshmen who campaigned on the promise: “We’re going to require welfare recipients to work.”

He proposed an amendment, later approved, that would penalize states by reducing their annual grant by up to 3% if they failed to meet work requirement.