GOP Picks a Budget Fight With Welfare Legislation

House Republicans embarked on a collision course Wednesday with the White House over welfare policy, deciding that terms under which legal immigrants could receive public assistance should be changed and asserting that “workfare” participants are not subject to federal wage and workplace protections.

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.), who is drafting welfare legislation under the bipartisan budget agreement, said that the changes he seeks would be kinder to the 400,000 elderly--but not disabled--legal immigrants who receive supplemental security income. Those benefits would be disrupted under the balanced-budget deal endorsed last month by the White House and congressional leaders.

Shaw’s alternative proposal would keep benefits flowing to all 700,000 elderly and disabled immigrants on the SSI rolls. But it would depart from the budget deal by denying SSI benefits to legal noncitizens who become disabled or 65 years old after Aug. 22, 1996, the day Clinton signed the welfare reform bill into law.

In addition, it would remove legal immigrants from the SSI rolls if those who sponsored their entry into the country earn more than 150% of the federal poverty level--about $19,500 a year for a family of three.

Lawmakers said that they do not know how many recipients the new requirement would cut from the rolls.

But immigration advocates estimated that it might threaten payments to as many as half of the elderly and disabled noncitizens now receiving SSI.

California is home to about 40% of the legal immigrants on the nation’s SSI rolls.

So Shaw’s proposal, if enacted into law over likely opposition from the Clinton administration, would have a profound effect on the state’s economy and its immigrant community.

“SSI has become a pension plan for Third World countries,” said Shaw. “That is not what we envisioned for our country,” he added.

Asked what legal immigrants should do if they become disabled in the future, Shaw said: “I guess they can go home if they don’t like what they have here.”

The Shaw proposal also would require the Immigration and Naturalization Service to draw up legal documents in which incoming legal immigrants swear that they will not become public charges as long as they are noncitizens.

Signing the document would make the immigrants subject to deportation if they do receive welfare for more than 12 months in their first three years in the United States.

Shaw called the pledge “just full disclosure” and added that it would signal to incoming immigrants that, while they may take advantage of the nation’s economic opportunities, they should not be permitted to rely on the generosity of its taxpayers unless they take the step of becoming citizens.

In another proposal that would reverse administration policy, Shaw’s draft bill would tell states that they are not required to pay welfare recipients working in state-sponsored community service jobs the federal minimum wage, which currently is $4.75 an hour but will rise to $5.15 an hour on Sept. 1.

Rather, states could pay workers the equivalent of the minimum wage by including the value of cash payments, food stamps, Medicaid, child care and public housing.

Shaw on Wednesday portrayed the shifts as slight departures from the balanced-budget agreement struck with the administration last month, saying that the package is “in the spirit” of the accord. But, he acknowledged, “we’re going to disagree on some points.”

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Shaw’s proposal will guide the GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee when it moves to draft a 1998 budget reconciliation bill Friday. The committee’s ranking Democrat signaled that Shaw’s proposals will meet stiff opposition from Democratic members.

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said that the Shaw package “violates the budget agreement purely and simply” in its provisions pertaining to legal immigrants. “It also violates American standards” of fairness, he added.

“This is going to not only break the budget agreement but break the backs of hundreds of thousands of elderly people,” Levin told reporters.

Levin also denounced the draft bill’s “workfare” provisions that would absolve states of any minimum-wage requirements for community service jobs.

“You’re going to tell people moving from welfare to work, ‘We don’t value your work and we don’t value you,’ ” said Levin.