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House to examine governors' new plans

WASHINGTON -- House Republican leaders yesterday said they would summon key legislators back from their winter break to take up a welfare-reform measure drafted by the nation's governors this week, raising the possibility that Congress will pass another welfare bill this year.

Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said yesterday he expected the House to pass welfare legislation "certainly sometime in early March. I would say probably 80 to 90 percent" of the National Governors' Association plan will be passed by the House. The situation in the Senate was more problematic.

Many senators were upbeat but wanted to see the details. "If all the governors ... are for it," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). "It's something we've got to pay attention to." Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.), a moderate Republican, said there was a "heavy tilt in favor of it."

However, conservatives Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) registered strong opposition because it didn't address what they believe to be the central task of welfare reform -- curbing out-of-wedlock births.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) predicted the president would veto a bill based on the governors' proposal if it did emerge from Congress. He said that the proposal is nothing more than the welfare-reform bill that President Clinton vetoed last month "with a few special programs sprinkled on."

The National Governors' Association endorsed a welfare plan at their annual meeting Tuesday that provides new funds for child care, performance bonuses and provisions to help the states move welfare recipients into jobs.

Like the vetoed bill, it breaks with 60 years of federal policy by wiping out the federal guarantee of coverage to all who are eligible and also cuts off benefits after five years.

The governors' action obliges Clinton to make a politically difficult choice between the Democratic governors who have endorsed a proposal and powerful advocates like the Children's Defense Fund and Sen. Moynihan, who strongly oppose basic elements of the new proposal.

Marion Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund and a longtime Clinton friend, charged that the governors' plan "would leave many more children poorer, hungrier, sicker and at greater risk of abuse and neglect."

The White House was noncommittal. "In some respects the governors' approach is better than the Senate bill, in some cases it's worse than the ... bill that the president vetoed," spokesperson Mike McCurry said.

Democrats involved in drafting the governors' plan said they thought they could get the Republicans to compromise on issues of major concern to Clinton and that ultimately they were involved in a grand bargain that encompassed welfare and an overhaul of the Medicaid program.

The question of eliminating the federal entitlement to benefits was set aside because "there has been for some time a willingness to accept a cash-assistance block grant as long as there was reasonable contingency, and the ability states to access it in an emergency," said Gov. Thomas R. Carper (D--Del.).

Keeping in touch with the White House, Carper said, he attempted to fix the president's problems with the vetoed bill. More money was added for child care and a contingency fund. The work requirements changed. Requirements that states had to deny aid to families who had additional children while they were on welfare were dropped.

When the issue of an entitlement to benefits came up, said Gov. Tommy Thompson (R--Wis.), chairman of the NGA, "We thought the president would sign a block grant, and we were able to convince the Democrats."

Gov. Roy Romer (D--Col.), busy negotiating the NGA's breakthrough Medicaid plan -- which did retain a federal guarantee of coverage -- said, "It was midnight, we were still in the writing process. I was not able to focus on welfare."

"I thought there was probably a tradeoff we had to make," Romer said. "I went with it because we were kind of approaching this as a package -- Medicaid, welfare, job training."

Gov. Howard Dean (D--Ver.) who had raised a last-minute storm over Republican plans to allow states to turn the school-lunch program into a block grant, felt he couldn't vote no on the welfare bill after Republicans had caved in to his demands to preserve the program intact.

"I voted for it. I am not backing away from it," said Dean. "But it's clear the Republicans got the upper hand on welfare and the Democrats got the upper hand on Medicaid."