GOP Leader Vows Fight on Immigrant Aid

A leading House Republican said Sunday that the GOP-led Congress would fight any attempt by the Clinton administration to restore federal assistance to legal immigrants.

“The word is out that it is easy to come to America and go on welfare,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas) said on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.” “That’s not what America is all about. And we were elected to protect the taxpayers from this kind of abuse.”

Archer and other congressional Republican leaders also sent President Clinton a letter Sunday urging him to propose a massive tax-simplification plan by May 1. They complained that the tax code “has grown so horribly complex that many Americans despair that only someone with advanced degrees can even hope to figure it out.”

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But a White House spokesman said some steps making it easier to file taxes have already been taken, and that Clinton would instead press for enactment of his budget plan, which makes room for some small tax cuts on the way to a balanced budget by the year 2002.

Clinton’s fiscal 1998 budget calls for restoring welfare benefits, Medicaid and food stamps to disabled legal immigrants. Administration officials believe that this group was hurt more than any other by last year’s overhaul of the nation’s welfare system.

The administration’s budget proposal provides $9.7 billion to maintain about 350,000 of the 500,000 immigrants who are slated to lose their benefits in August and September.

California has about 40% of the nation’s legal immigrants and stands to gain the most from any such changes in the new law.

Republicans have already made it clear that they will resist any moves to tinker with the welfare reform legislation, although they have left open the possibility of providing some kind of relief through a block grant or other special funding to those states most deeply affected by the measure.

The law would end all benefits for legal immigrants, including food stamps; supplemental security income, which aids low-income individuals who are disabled, blind or elderly; and Medicaid, which pays physician and hospital costs for the poor and is known in California as Medi-Cal.

In their letter asking Clinton to draft a tax-simplification plan by May 1, Archer and other leading Republicans complained of the “abysmal quality” of enforcement of the tax laws. They blamed not the Internal Revenue Service but the tax code.

“It’s not just the IRS,” Archer said. “It’s the system that’s got to be changed, and we hope that he’ll [Clinton] accommodate that.”

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Besides Archer, also signing the letter were House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.).

A White House spokesman, noting regulations that make it easier for taxpayers to file Form 1040 electronically or by telephone, said: “The administration has already taken a number of steps to simplify the tax system. . . . Now the president’s top priorities are to find a way to balance the budget while providing tax relief for average Americans.”