Senators Drafting Milder Welfare Reforms : Congress: House bill’s more punitive features are rejected. Cash wouldn’t be denied to teen-age mothers, legal immigrants could still be get aid.

A proposed Senate welfare bill, being drafted with the guidance of Republican governors, rejects several of the more punitive measures in legislation passed by the House, including a provision denying cash assistance to teen-age mothers, officials involved in the deliberations said Tuesday.

The Senate draft differs greatly from the package adopted by the House last month. Although not yet officially adopted by the Senate Finance Committee, which eventually will send the legislation to the full Senate, the draft would not require states to deny cash benefits to mothers younger than 18, would not restrict states from increasing aid for families on welfare who have additional babies, would retain legal immigrants’ eligibility for an array of programs and would change the food stamp program from a federal to a state responsibility.

However, like the House version, the Senate draft would change welfare from a federally run program with benefits guaranteed to each qualifying American to a system funded by lump-sum block grants to the states, which would have vast flexibility to determine eligibility and set rules.

State officials participating in the development of the Senate measure said they believe the Finance Committee is not considering other proposals, but stressed that it has not voted on any elements of the plan. The Senate is expected to vote on the overhaul of the welfare system later this year.

“There are not two separate processes going on,” said Gerald Miller, Michigan’s welfare director and the lead representative for the governors on the day-to-day negotiations with Congress on a welfare reform package. “But there is no final agreement.”

Current negotiations between the governors and the Senate are similar to earlier deliberations between the governors and the House, which set the contours of the House package.

But many of the GOP governors believed that the legislation passed by the House was too harsh and imposed too many requirements on states. They have sought removal in the Senate version of provisions that they do not like. Sponsors of the House bill, however, have said that major provisions of their legislation should not be changed because they are crucial for reversing what the lawmakers see as the current system’s perverse incentives for teen-agers to have babies and mothers on welfare to have additional babies.

Clinton Administration officials said that the President is likely to find the Senate plan more palatable than the House version.

“That would get rid of some of our objections--the very punitive strings in the House bill. There are still a number of objections that we would have. The fundamental problem (with the House bill) is that, if states are really going to move people from welfare to work, they are going to need more resources.”

The governors’ significant influence on federal welfare reform is a result of last November’s elections, which gave Republicans control of the House, Senate and a majority of statehouses.

“The Republican Senate leadership and the governors like having these majorities all around,” said Gerald Whitburn, secretary of health and human services in Massachusetts and one of the key state officials involved in the dialogue with the Senate. “There’s a genuine determination to work together.”

“It’s a partnership,” Whitburn added.

Miller, Whitburn and their governors have met several times personally with the Senate staff drafting the proposal but much of the tinkering on the draft has taken place through conference calls and fax machines.