First Lady Says She’s Willing to Help Fix Welfare Law

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she would be willing to take on the task of helping fix problems with the recently signed welfare reform law if her husband asks her to do so, but added that she was surprised when he recently suggested the idea during a televised interview.

“I will do whatever the president asks me to do” on welfare reform, she said during a question-and-answer session that followed a speech to several hundred Los Angeles Times and Times Mirror Co. management employees at the Biltmore Hotel.

She added that she plans to “speak out on my hope that the welfare-reform bill will be corrected in those areas where it needs correction and will be implemented effectively in ways that move people toward self-sufficiency and independence.”

In an interview last week with ABC-TV’s Barbara Walters, President Clinton raised the possibility of having his wife play a significant role in guiding changes in the new welfare law, which he signed despite considerable opposition within his administration. The remark raised some concerns among Democratic campaign strategists, who worried it might revive memories of the health care plan that the first lady guided in the administration’s first two years.

“That was quite a surprising comment from my husband,” she said. “I think he forgot we were on television. That’s the kind of conversation we air around the kitchen table: ‘Oh gee, don’t you think you should be involved in making sure welfare reform works?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know, pass the salt.’ ”

She added that she respects the decision of several administration officials who resigned in protest of the bill, but added that she believes that the president was right to sign it.

The bill contains many merits, she said, including the fact that it maintained nutritional assistance and increased child-care assistance.

“I don’t think anyone can defend the existing system,” she said, adding, however, that change must be approached “with a great dose of humility.”

Aimed at a management audience, her speech focused on corporate responsibility in a changing world, but detoured frequently into political plugs for her husband’s administration.

Without mentioning the title of her book, “It Takes a Village,” she wove her words around one of the book’s central theses--that the public, private and not-for-profit sectors share a responsibility for shaping a society that values human needs as well as narrow profit.

As an example of how the public sector can incorporate the needs of people into policy, she cited the appropriations bill her husband signed Thursday morning, with its provisions for requiring insurers to let women remain hospitalized for 48 hours after childbirth.

Seeming relaxed and at ease, the first lady joked about life in the White House, saying that she and her husband often relax by watching movies at the small theater in the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md.

“The only thing is, a lot of times, what makes him relax makes me tense up,” she said. “I cannot stand 43 assault-weapon attacks. I think it’s sort of a male-female thing.

“I sit there with my eyes shut, scrunched up. I come out with this terrible pain in my neck and my shoulders, but then occasionally we’ll watch ‘Emma’ or something. So it sort of evens up.”

Asked how she plans to spend her “post-White House years,” she referred to the members of the press in her audience. “I just see long, long hours of sleep, and vacations, with none of you and your friends around,” she said.