GOP Leaders Attack Clinton Over Welfare

House Republican leaders, while charging President Clinton with exploiting welfare reform for his own political ends, nevertheless offered Sunday to work with him on the issue because “the American people are demanding it.”

The Republicans, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, told the president in a letter that “there is still a long way to go before your actions match your words.”

Their letter came a day after Clinton, in his weekly radio address, praised Wisconsin’s Republican governor for engineering a revolutionary welfare-to-work program that, the president said, could be a model for national legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, is scheduled to visit Wisconsin on Tuesday to deliver a major policy address on welfare reform. Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson is reported to be on Dole’s list of possible running mates.

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Dole, on a campaign trip this weekend, quipped to reporters aboard his plane: “We go to the states, like we go up to Wisconsin, to talk about welfare and then Clinton announces he may give Wisconsin a waiver. If we go to enough states, we may straighten out the country.” Newsweek magazine reports in its latest issue that Dole is expected to propose mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.

The Wisconsin plan, which will take effect only if the Health and Human Services Department waives federal regulations, would limit assistance to welfare recipients to five years and provide no guarantee that families will receive aid thereafter. Able recipients would be required to work, at state-created jobs if no others can be found.

Clinton, who has signed waivers for 38 other states to try welfare reform experiments, said this plan was better than two bills passed by the GOP-controlled Congress. He vetoed both measures. Wisconsin’s plan would provide child and health care for the families of those required to work, the president stressed, while the measures he vetoed did not.

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Gingrich and Armey said, however, that Clinton’s plan in his 1997 budget “does little to encourage families to support themselves . . . and perpetuates the misguided practice of providing welfare to noncitizens.”

They conceded that, as in the Wisconsin plan, the White House has proposed a five-year limit on cash welfare benefits. But Clinton’s plan contains “so many exceptions [that] few families would ever be affected,” they said.

A White House spokesman said the president has always insisted that welfare reform include “provisions for work by the recipients as well as family responsibility.”

The GOP leaders concluded on a positive note: “We remain hopeful that this year will be the final year of our nation’s failed welfare system. . . . We look forward to taking action on national welfare reform this year and hope to have your support.”