GOP Bill to Rein In Food Stamps Clears House Panel : Welfare: The proposal requires recipients to work and holds spending at current level. Clinton blasts plan as ‘too tough on children.’

A House committee early today approved restraints in the $27-billion food stamp program, part of a GOP welfare reform package President Clinton assailed Tuesday as “too tough on children and too weak on work and responsibility.”

The food stamp revisions, passed with a vote of 26 to 18 after a marathon 14-hour debate, are the last major element of the GOP welfare reform effort to receive committee consideration. They would for the first time require able-bodied recipients 18 to 50 years old to work or lose their benefits after 90 days. The bill now goes to the floor of the House for a full vote.

The measure also would reduce food stamp spending over five years by more than $16 billion by denying food stamps to legal immigrants and by imposing restraints on growth.

The House Agriculture Committee vote came after the Republican-dominated panel repelled Democratic amendments that would have softened the work requirement.

The work requirement was needed, said Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), a member of the committee, because some recipients “would rather rely on benefits than pursue modest employment.”

“The jobs are there, but there are people who don’t want to take certain levels of jobs,” Foley said.

“This is just a safety net--not a trampoline. You can’t play on it for years.” Requiring food stamp recipients to work at least 20 hours will become an incentive for people to get jobs and “pull their own weight,” he said.

A Clinton Administration analysis of the proposal estimates that 2 million people would lose food stamps in 1996 if the new work requirements and eligibility restrictions are put in place.

Clinton’s remarks Tuesday were his broadest yet on the GOP proposal. He said the plan fails to provide an adequate combination of job training and placement and child care to help poor families move from welfare to work.

“When people just get cut off without going to work, you know where they’re likely to end up, don’t you? On your doorstep,” Clinton said in a speech before the National Assn. of Counties. “That’s not welfare reform; that’s just shifting the problem.”

The Administration also estimates that the cuts would save $25 billion over five years, some $9 billion more than the Republicans estimate.

Republicans stressed that the cuts would not actually reduce spending but instead would reduce the size of expected increases in funding for food stamps.

“We’re not doing the program in by any means,” said Rep. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.).

But some liberal analysts warned that the proposed food stamp changes are the most serious strike in the GOP’s assault on the safety net for the poor.

“It could result in severe destitution and hardship and increased homelessness” for millions of Americans, said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Food stamps have received less attention than other pieces of the GOP welfare reform package because the Republican leadership agreed only 10 days ago on its final strategy and withheld key details until this week.

Democrats on the Agriculture panel criticized Republicans for hurrying the legislation to keep to the timeline imposed by their “contract with America.”

Racing to meet the 100-day deadline under the 10-point agenda “is causing us to make some terrifically bad decisions” that will have ramifications both for people and the federal budget, said Rep. Charles W. Stenholm (D-Tex.).

Rep. Karen L. Thurman (D-Fla.) said that she is concerned particularly about a provision to let states deny food stamps to families cut off from welfare, although Republicans have repeatedly said that food stamps would remain.

“My concern today is that that safety net is being taken away as well,” Thurman said in an interview. “We’re talking about children here. Fifty-two percent of food stamps go to children in poverty.”

GOP welfare proposals would transfer authority over much of the safety net for poor families and children from the federal government to the states, and would make cash welfare a temporary benefit by requiring work after two years and limiting cash assistance to five years for most families.

If enacted, teen-age mothers would be denied cash aid in an attempt to discourage out-of-wedlock births, and legal immigrants would become ineligible for an array of benefits, from cash assistance to school lunches.

According to estimates by the Administration and the Congressional Budget Office, the total package would cut about $60 billion over five years from federal assistance for poor families.

In his remarks, Clinton specifically criticized the GOP provision that would deny cash benefits to unwed mothers younger than 18.

“I just believe it’s wrong to cut people off because they’re young and they made a mistake,” Clinton said. “I think it’s wrong to make small children pay the price for their parents’ mistakes.”

He also warned that by failing to require states to prepare welfare recipients for work before cutting their welfare checks, the GOP plan could leave America with “a bigger welfare problem” in five years than it has now.

He also urged Republicans to toughen their child support enforcement provisions by mandating that states deny driver’s and professional licenses to people who refuse to pay child support--a penalty that the GOP bill encourages but does not require.

“We’ve got to send a loud signal: No parent in America has a right to walk away from the responsibility to raise their children.”

Saying he wants to keep the “atmosphere working” for cooperation, Clinton refused to identify any specific changes in welfare reform that would be guaranteed to draw his veto. But he added: “Is it possible that they could pass a bill that I would veto? You bet it is.”

Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein and Kelly Owen contributed to this story.