Wilson Aims Double-Barrel on Clinton, Dole for Welfare : Politics: Governor blasts President for not offering a reform plan. And he blasts his GOP rival for offering a compromise.

California Gov. Pete Wilson blistered President Clinton on Wednesday for reneging on his promise to remake the nation’s welfare system, but he leveled even harsher criticism against the welfare reform efforts of rival Republican presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas.

The speech marked the clear opening of a new offensive in Wilson’s presidential quest--a gloves-off attack on Dole, whom Wilson views as the main obstacle between him and the nomination. Dole’s aides shot back at Wilson in similarly harsh language, calling him “one of the most liberal Republicans ever to seek national office.”

Wilson designed his speech, delivered at the conservative Heritage Foundation here, as an effort to draw stark differences between the California governor and the “hostile guardians of the status quo” in Washington.

Dole’s welfare reform plan--a proposed compromise between Clinton’s plan and a more conservative plan passed by the House--dictates unacceptable terms to the states and is little better than the existing system, Wilson said. More broadly, he attacked Dole for stalling progress of the House Republicans’ “contract with America,” calling the Senate the “graveyard” for the contract’s provisions on welfare, the budget, tax cuts and crime.

In a sarcastic comment recalling Dole’s June speech accusing Hollywood of degrading the popular culture and undermining public values, Wilson said: “If Sen. Dole is truly concerned about a crisis of values in America--and I’m sure he is--he should not content himself simply with talking about the perverse values that are being promoted by our popular culture. He should do something about the perverse values that are being promoted by the federal welfare system, because it is a far more pernicious and far more pervasive influence.”

In a written response, Dole’s campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield replied: “Pete Wilson has precious little credibility to attack Bob Dole on welfare or anything else. This is a politician who began his campaign for President the same way Bill Clinton did: Breaking his pledge to serve out a full term as governor. Now he’s continuing his Clinton impersonation by tailoring his facts to fit his polls.”

Wilson’s speech might have been harsher, according to Dan Schnur, Wilson’s campaign spokesman. The “really strident” anti-Dole language had been edited out of the speech because it was “too early” in the campaign, he said.

Wilson plans to make Senate inaction on the tenets of the House-passed contract a central theme of his fall campaigning, Schnur said, and Dole, the Senate majority leader, clearly has been cast as the villain.

“It’s up to him to decide what course the campaign will take,” Schnur said of Dole. “If you have the United States Senate bog down, as it appears to be doing, on welfare, the budget and taxes, then the whole session in Congress will turn into one long campaign commercial for Pete Wilson. The more they bog down, the more it helps Wilson, because it shows the contrast as they sit around bickering, compared to a candidate who makes things happen.”

Wilson is not the only candidate mining that vein. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) has also been attacking Dole on Senate inaction in general, and welfare in specific. Dole, Gramm charged, is “in the process of compromising away the mandate of the 1994 election.” The Senate’s long debate on welfare is “about Bob Dole’s compromise on welfare reform,” he said.

In his Heritage Foundation speech, Wilson bragged that he had reduced California welfare payments by 20%, saving state taxpayers $9 billion. But he complained that further efforts to revamp the state’s welfare program have been thwarted by the Clinton Administration, which has not acted on California requests to reduce welfare payments and to deny benefits to women who have additional children while on welfare.

Wilson reminded the audience that Clinton had failed to follow through on his presidential campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it,” which has deepened the public’s “contempt for Washington and for false promises.”

“Every day that Bill Clinton sits in the Oval office, he is not ending welfare as we know it, he is extending welfare, and he knows it,” Wilson said.

But Wilson saved his bitterest language for Dole, who he claimed has stalled the Republican agenda and held the states hostage to “the caprice of Clinton Administration welfare bureaucrats.”

“And worse yet,” Wilson added, “the compromises that are being cut in the Senate raise serious doubts as to whether the Senate Republican leader really understands the mandate that voters gave us last November to make dramatic change.”

He cited a provision in the Dole welfare bill that sets minimum levels of state spending on welfare grants, which he compared to a current rule that costs California $3 million a week.

Striking the pose of an oppressed state official confronting the remote and unresponsive federal government--represented by both Clinton and Dole--Wilson complained: “What business has Washington telling the states what level of cash grant they can afford? . . . We are not colonies of the federal government.”

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.

* CLINTON TIES WILSON: A poll of Orange County voters found strong support for President versus governor. A26