Religious Groups Attack GOP Welfare, Medicaid Plans : Reform: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish organizations, in joint statement, call for veto of ‘unholy’ legislation. They say it destroys safety net.

Leaders of major Protestant, Catholic and Jewish organizations condemned Republican welfare and Medicaid reform proposals Wednesday as “unholy” and beseeched President Clinton to veto the legislation.

“Unholy legislation that destroys the safety net must not be signed into law by President Clinton,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “The very soul of our nation is at risk.”

Although the leaders said their organizations represent more than 150 million Americans, their position by no means suggests that religious organizations are unanimously aligned against the reforms. The Christian Coalition and conservative Christian groups, for example, have heartily supported the Republican welfare reform effort and favor the tougher House version over the somewhat milder Senate plan.

Nonetheless, the opposition will add to pressures on Clinton, who had indicated he would sign legislation similar to the Senate welfare measure. The idea of reforming welfare is popular with the public, and Clinton can fulfill his 1992 campaign pledge to “end welfare as we know it” by signing rather than vetoing the final legislation.

Yet sources said this week that the President is re-evaluating his position on the legislation--especially after a leading advocate for children strongly urged him over the weekend to veto it.

Republican welfare and Medicaid reform measures, versions of which have won approval in the House and the Senate, would end the federal guarantee of assistance to all eligible poor families with children and transfer control over the programs to the states, which would receive lump-sum block grants from the federal government.

Wednesday’s announcement comes at a pivotal point in the legislative process: House and Senate negotiators are working to reconcile differences between the welfare and Medicare reform plans approved by each chamber.

Supporters of the Republican welfare reforms dismissed the joint statement. “You can find religious leaders to come down on both sides of this issue,” said Rep. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), the main author of the House welfare bill. “I can’t think of any legislation that’s holy, unless you go back to the Ten Commandments.

“We approached the whole idea of welfare reform with the desire to help poor people,” he said. “There is no crueler welfare program around than the existing one: It pays people not to succeed, not to marry, not to work.”

The President has said repeatedly that he would veto the welfare measure passed by the House, though he had largely embraced the Senate version. The Senate plan provides more money for child care, requires states to continue using certain levels of their own funds and does not deny benefits to teen-age mothers.

But the White House is still stinging from an open letter to the President from Marian Wright Edelman, a longtime close friend of the President and his wife, Hillary, that called the President’s decision whether to sign GOP welfare reform “a defining moral litmus test’ for his presidency. The letter was published in the Washington Post on Saturday.

The White House has also taken heat for not releasing a preliminary analysis by the Administration of the Senate welfare reform plan. The analysis, which was disclosed by The Times, showed that 1.1 million more children would be pushed into poverty under the Senate measure.

The religious leaders said they “exhort Americans of all faiths to make your voices heard. . . . the President . . . must not sign any legislation that hurts children or ends our nation’s safety net for children.”

The statement was signed by:

* The Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, which represents 49 million Protestants in mainstream churches, including Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, the United Church of Christ and the historic black churches, among others.

* Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, who is the main liaison to the Catholic Charities from all Roman Catholic bishops in the United States and one of the most prominent Catholic bishops on social issues.

* Bishop John Hurst Adams, founder of the Congress of National Black Churches, which represents most African American congregations.

* Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, a leading conservative Jewish rabbi at Temple Israel on Long Island, N.Y.

* Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the largest segment of American Jews.

The leaders said they felt compelled to weigh into the debate because they understand that the President is under considerable pressure to sign a welfare reform bill.

“Our role as a religious community is to apply the moral insights to inform important decisions, and that’s what this statement is all about,” Saperstein said. “On a moral basis, what we all agree with is that those who are vulnerable and weak in society are entitled to protection and government plays an indispensable role in ensuring that protection.”

Campbell said that when such an influential group of religious leaders unite behind a powerful message “members of Congress and the President listen.”

“This is a President who cares deeply about religious issues. You can appeal to him on moral ground.

“We believe this bill will have drastic consequences for the children and the older people of this country,” she added.

Tony Coelho, a Democratic strategist and informal Clinton adviser, said in an interview earlier this week that the National Council of Catholic Bishops’ concern about the welfare bill had been a key factor in Clinton’s recent second thoughts about the measure.

Meanwhile, a key adjunct of the bishops issued a report decrying poverty in America as “a social and moral scandal” and calling for government as well as private action to combat it.

The group--the Campaign for Human Development--is the nation’s largest private funder of self-help projects for the poor. Its report, titled “The Cries of the Poor are Still With Us,” noted that more than 35 million people--about one in seven Americans--live in poverty.

“Despite the Census Bureau’s recent findings that the number of Americans living in poverty actually decreased last year, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen not only economically but socially as well,” said Father Joseph R. Hacala, executive director of the group.

“What we’re seeing in society right now is a pass-the-buck attitude concerning whose responsibility it is to help the poor,” Hacala said.

Times staff writers Paul Richter in Washington and Larry Stammer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.