Gramm, 11 Colleagues Propose More Conservative Welfare Plan

Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican presidential hopeful, and 11 conservative colleagues Thursday denounced their leadership’s welfare reform plan and offered their own tougher blueprint for overhauling the safety net for the poor.

The Gramm proposal resembles legislation passed by House Republicans this spring but would change the status quo even more by transferring additional anti-poverty programs from federal to state control and by forbidding states to pay any benefits to households where the mother had failed to establish paternity of the children.

By offering a welfare plan that is much more conservative than the one Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) helped pass in the Senate Finance Committee two months ago, Gramm was again stressing the difference between his political style and that of Dole.

“Our goal is to stand up for what our party believes in,” Gramm said.

The Republican Party, Gramm said, “committed to the American people that, if they gave us control of our government, we would dramatically reform welfare.”

“We don’t believe that the Finance Committee bill lives up to that commitment,” he added.

The Finance Committee bill would give states vast authority over cash benefits for poor families but unlike the House and Gramm plans, it would not set strict state requirements aimed at reducing out-of-wedlock births. Both of those measures would forbid states to provide cash benefits to mothers younger than 18, give cash bonuses to states that reduced their ratios of out-of-wedlock births and prevent states from increasing benefits for families on welfare who had more children.

The Finance Committee bill initially was expected to be debated on the Senate floor in June but Republican infighting over out-of-wedlock birth provisions and the formula for distributing funds among the states proved so intense that the leadership has yet to forge a consensus.

To prevent an embarrassing public intra-Republican battle, Dole has delayed the floor debate but has said that he intends to keep the Senate in session in August until it passes welfare reform legislation.