WASHINGTON INSIGHT

WELFARE SCARE: Fearing that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) will use a parliamentary procedure to avoid a full-scale debate on reforming welfare, 40 Democratic senators have asked Dole not to attach the Senate’s welfare plan to the budget reconciliation bill. Folding that bill into the massive budget measure would rob the nation of the open debate it deserves on the sweeping GOP effort to dramatically overhaul the welfare system, the Democrats argued in a letter to Dole. “The Senate will likely have to spend much of its time on reconciliation debating taxes, Medicare and Medicaid and budget process reforms, which will leave little time for substantive debate on welfare policy,” the senators said. The tactic would also prevent Democrats from using a filibuster to block welfare legislation, because budget reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered.

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TARDY CHIEF: President Clinton has never been known as being punctual, but he outdid himself Monday night in San Francisco when he showed up nearly two hours late for a dinner in his honor hosted by developer, philanthropist and major Democratic donor Walter Shorenstein. Clinton aides blamed his tardiness on meetings with United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Polish President Lech Walesa, who were in San Francisco to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the U.N. But those sessions ended six hours before the dinner. The real reason Clinton kept Shorenstein and his guests waiting: a golf game with San Francisco 49ers star receiver Jerry Rice and ex-49ers quarterback Steve Bono.

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UNDYNAMIC DUO: Christian Coalition honcho Ralph E. Reed is still seeking a title for his forthcoming book about the impact of the 1994 midterm elections, but he already has a zinger as the heading for his first chapter: “Bill Clinton, the American Gorbachev.” Conservative strategist Reed claims that Clinton did for American liberalism what Soviet Premier Mikhail S. Gorbachev did for Russian communism. “He promised to save it by updating it and reforming it, and instead, he has presided over its demise.”

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THE SAFE CHOICE: Having made an unwanted splash when he chose a controversial home-state political ally to be House historian six months ago, Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has made a less provocative choice to staff a newly reorganized historian’s office. John J. Kornacki, executive director of the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Research Center, will be director of a new Legislative Resource Center, which will combine the operations of the House historian, the House library and other congressional information functions. Kornacki has no past links to Gingrich, in marked contrast to Gingrich’s first controversial choice--Christina Jeffrey, a political supporter and teacher from his district. Gingrich fired Jeffrey in January after word leaked out that she had once made incendiary comments criticizing a school course on the Holocaust.

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REALITY CHECK: Harold M. Ickes, the deputy White House chief of staff and acting campaign manager for Clinton’s reelection effort, appears to be suffering from serious delusions. The other day he asserted, with a straight face, that the presidential campaign “doesn’t start until the Republicans pick their nominee,” meaning sometime next spring. This astonishing statement came in a two-week period in which Clinton appeared with Gingrich in New Hampshire, held three $1-million fund-raising dinners, staged a campaign-style rally on a Portland, Ore., college campus and began running political advertisements on TV.