GOP Leaders Agree on Welfare Details

Republican leaders Tuesday settled several final details on their welfare reform legislation, making compromises between House and Senate provisions but none that seem likely to lift President Clinton’s threat of a veto.

The fate of the bill remains uncertain because Clinton and his aides have sent conflicting signals in recent weeks about whether he would veto the bill. In announcing the agreement reached by House and Senate Republicans, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-Tex.) challenged Clinton to sign it.

“Either he [Clinton] can be the new Democrat he claims to be and sign this welfare bill, or he can be the last defender of the failed welfare state and veto this historic legislation,” Archer declared. “The choice is his.”

At least one remaining issue, a dispute over school lunches, still stands in the way of completing the bill. But on several other issues, hard-line House members and their more moderate Senate counterparts were able to resolve differences by leaving key decisions up to individual states.

For example, House-Senate negotiators settled on a provision that would give states authority to decide whether to provide welfare benefits to unwed teen-age mothers. House Republicans had sought to prohibit states from doing so, while Senate Republicans were prepared to allow such benefits to continue.

Similarly, negotiators decided to keep a so-called family cap--a provision that denies larger welfare benefits to families that have more children while on welfare. At the same time, however, the compromise provides an exception for states whose legislatures vote to allow larger checks.

Conservatives argue that the compromise meets their demands because they expect few, if any, states to explicitly vote to allow families on welfare to get larger checks for more children. Some Republican governors, however, had opposed being ordered by Washington to adopt the family cap, and the compromise language could mollify their concerns.

Legislators in both houses favored new work requirements for welfare recipients, and such rules were adopted by the negotiators. States also would receive financial incentives if they reduce rates of out-of-wedlock births.

“We must stop rewarding destructive behavior like children having babies outside of marriage and families on welfare having more children they can’t afford,” Archer said.

A dispute over food stamps ended in a similar compromise. States would have the option of remaining in the federal food stamp program, reflecting the Senate position, or receiving federal funds through a block grant and establishing programs of their own. As expected, legislators also agreed to send states money in the form of large grants to cover welfare payments, child care and other needs that federal bureaucrats no longer would supervise.

House-Senate negotiators agreed on $17 billion in funding for child care over seven years, a compromise figure that was above what the House had sought, and $16.3 billion per year for cash welfare from 1996 to 2000.

On the remaining school lunch issue, House Republicans wish to shift authority over the program to the states, financing the program with a block grant from Washington. Members of the Senate, however, have sought to retain federal controls.

Another unresolved issue was whether Republicans would include the welfare reform bill in the huge balanced-budget legislation that is also being prepared.