What the Bill Would Do

Provisions in the Republican welfare bill considered by the House on Thursday:

* Basic program: Renews block grants to states to run assistance programs at $16.5billion per year.

* Work requirements: Requires states to have 50% of their welfare recipients in “work activities” for 40 hours per week immediately, climbing to 70% by 2007.

Requires that 24 of the 40 hours be spent in a regular job or a community service position created by government; the other 16 hours could be spent doing other activities designated by states.

Allows states to put people in education, training, drug treatment or other programs full time for three or four months every two years.

* Child care: Increases funding for child-care subsidies by $2 billion over five years. The program now gets $4.8 billion each year.

* Promoting marriage: Provides $100 million per year for competitive grants for programs promoting healthy marriages. Provides another $100 million for states, which would have to be equally matched by states, for similar programs.

* Time limits: Maintains the five-year lifetime limit.

* Abstinence-only sex education: Continues state grants, at $50 million per year, to promote abstinence from sex until marriage. Programs cannot discuss benefits of birth control.

* State experiments: Allows states to ask permission to change rules on a variety of programs. A last-minute change insisted upon by members of the Appropriations Committee would bar moving money between programs, removing much of the flexibility the “super waiver” was meant to achieve.