Child-Care Issue Dominates Debate Over Welfare Bill

A major Republican welfare plan is sparking a new dispute over child care, with Democrats arguing that a big spending hike is crucial to a goal shared by both parties: helping more low-income mothers go to work.

The flare-up over child care came Wednesday as a House committee was finishing its work on the $16.5-billion welfare plan, which is expected to pass the Republican-controlled chamber before Memorial Day.

But as the welfare bill has gained momentum in the House, a series of potentially explosive issues has turned what began as a collegial review of social policy into an increasingly polarized clash over treatment of the poor and the states’ freedom to set their own course.

“We’re dealing today with an issue that is a rather passionate issue on both sides,” said Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, urging his colleagues “to respect the views of members on both sides of the aisle.”

Throughout the day, House members jousted over how much education people should be allowed to receive while also getting aid, how many hours welfare recipients should be required to work and whether the federal government should declare poverty reduction a formal policy goal.

They reached little agreement: “We are disappointed that the majority has rejected every opportunity we presented to provide the resources necessary to make welfare reform successful--adequate child care, education and training to secure jobs needed to lift people out of poverty, and flexibility to operate the program,” said Rep. George Miller of Martinez, the senior Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee.

“These are the things that states are saying they need to make the program work, and Congress should not reform the welfare program without them.”

Republicans have depicted welfare reform, approved in 1996, as a great success, noting that the nation’s public aid rolls have fallen by more than half with little of the social disruption predicted by Democratic critics at the time. Instead, poverty rates generally have fallen, although by all accounts, many former welfare recipients continue to struggle.

“It has transformed the lives of millions of families and helped them achieve self-sufficiency,” Boehner said Wednesday, comparing the historic importance of welfare reform to civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

To achieve the next step in welfare reform, the GOP plan would impose a strict work requirement of 24 hours on many single parents who go to school or participate in other allowable activities during the remaining 16 hours of the workweek. The current, more flexible rules allow many welfare recipients to attend a year of vocational education rather than go to work.

The proposals to increase work requirements are coupled with proposals to enforce a stricter definition of work, which has prompted some state officials to complain that the administration plan would reduce state flexibility. In addition, House Republicans have declined to restore welfare funding for immigrants, which was largely taken away in 1996 and which civil rights groups have been pushing for.

“The differences did not appear to be that great when the president introduced his bill,” said Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, whose own welfare bill is the chief Democratic alternative to the White House plan. “But when you look closely at it, we have serious issues.”

Democrats argued Wednesday that proposals to demand more work of parents on welfare were the very reason that more should be spent on child care. In much of the country, public child-care programs have waiting lists, and Democrats contended that such lists would get longer if more low-income mothers were required to leave their homes for the workplace.

In California, the waiting list for publicly funded child care numbers about 200,000 and can take years, according to the California Department of Social Services.

“This is a glaring, glaring source of problems for moving the [welfare] system to its next stage,” Miller said at one point, adding: “Why don’t we just bite the bullet and do it right?”

“If we’re going to make welfare reform work ... we must take care of their children for a few hours a day longer,” said Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.).

The government’s main child-care programs total $4.8 billion, which the Bush administration would leave unchanged. Republicans have contended that the nation actually spends substantially more on child care if other programs, such as Head Start, are considered. Moreover, they say that their budget proposal to hold spending relatively steady should be viewed against a backdrop of much smaller welfare rolls than in the mid-1990s.

On a party-line vote, the Education and Workforce Committee turned down Miller’s amendment to gradually increase spending on child care by $8 billion a year. On another party-line vote it approved a GOP plan to increase child-care spending in one of the federal government’s programs to $2.3 billion, from $2.1 billion.

The Democratic criticisms of the GOP welfare proposal may resonate with the public. Six in 10 voters said that expansion of training, child care and other work supports should be the priority in the next welfare law, according to an April survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, which has been highly critical of the GOP approach.

Only 15% of those polled in the national survey agreed that tougher work requirements should be the priority.

While Republican leaders probably can muster enough votes to pass the welfare plan in the House, its prospects in the Democrat-controlled Senate are uncertain. Concerns about child-care funding, promoting marriage and increased work requirements have a constituency among that chamber’s Democrats. As a result, observers expect that any House-Senate deal will require modification.