House and Senate Conferees Approve Welfare Overhaul

WASHINGTON â€”  Congressional negotiators agreed Tuesday on the final version of a historic measure to overhaul the nation’s welfare system and key Democratic senators signaled that President Clinton is likely to sign the bill into law.

The House scheduled a vote today on the sweeping legislation and the Senate probably will vote Thursday. Both chambers are expected to pass the measure easily.

The bill would end the 61-year-old federal guarantee of cash assistance to every poor family with children. Instead, the federal government would give each state an annual cash grant. The states, operating within broad federal guidelines, could design their own programs for getting welfare recipients into jobs.

The bill also would cut back eligibility for food stamps and deny benefits under most federal welfare programs to legal immigrants.

Although Clinton has announced no decision, he told reporters that “it’s getting better and better and I hope that we can work it out. . . . We just need to keep the kids in mind. . . . The children need to come out ahead.�

Within the White House, two camps battled over whether the president should sign the bill, according to administration officials who asked not to be identified.

Clinton’s political advisors argued that, with his bid for reelection less than five months away, he should. Others, particularly some of his more liberal advisors and those with close ties to Congress, urged a veto.

Republicans challenged Clinton, who vetoed two earlier versions of welfare reform, to accept this one.

“In the end, they’ll sign it--with ink or blood,� Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told reporters. “It’s the right thing to do for America.�

And even about 30 House Democrats wrote Clinton a letter urging him to sign the package and, in a reference to a 1992 Clinton campaign promise, “end welfare as we know it.�

As approved by congressional negotiators working from separate House-passed and Senate-passed versions of welfare reform, the bill would save about $55 billion over six years compared with projected spending under existing programs. Most of the savings would come from denying welfare benefits to legal immigrants and tightening eligibility for food stamps.

One of the last contentious issues before the negotiators involved a requirement that able-bodied adults without dependent children be required to work to qualify for food stamps.

The House wanted to limit food stamp eligibility for nonworking adults without dependent children to three months in a lifetime, while the Senate preferred a much more generous four months a year. The negotiators agreed that eligibility would be limited to three months in any three-year period, with an additional three months for those laid off their jobs.

Many administration officials regard this measure as so tough that it would leave these individuals with no safety net.

But overall, administration officials said, they view the conference committee’s decisions favorably.

The most important development in the conference, as far as the administration was concerned, was a decision to drop a clause that would have allowed the states to run their own food stamp programs and receive a fixed federal grant to pay for them. The administration argued that the proposal would have destroyed a program that prevents millions of Americans from going hungry.

The negotiators agreed instead to continue guaranteeing food stamps to every eligible American--the opposite of their approach to Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the main cash welfare program for families with children.

“As we go through welfare reform . . . we didn’t want anybody to be in the position of falling through the slats and going hungry,� House Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said at a press conference.

The negotiators agreed, at Democrats’ insistence, to specify that states could use their federal social services grants to provide poor families that no longer qualify for AFDC with vouchers that they could use to buy such items as diapers and other baby goods.

At the same time, however, the negotiators agreed to reduce funding for the so-called Title XX social services grants, which the states use for a wide variety of programs from “meals on wheels� programs to child care, by 15%.

The administration publicly pointed to this as a victory. But one administration official who ardently opposes the bill said that it was nothing more than a “fig leaf for the White House� to pretend that the measure had been improved to protect children.

In another move viewed positively by the administration, negotiators dropped a provision in the House bill that would have allowed states to spend less of their own money on welfare programs if they managed to get half of their recipients to work by 2002.

They also opted for the softer Senate version of a provision that would give the states the option of cutting off Medicaid benefits to legal immigrants. The House version would have automatically denied such assistance to most legal immigrants.

And, in a last-minute change, negotiators dropped a plan to forbid states from increasing welfare checks when parents on welfare have additional children. This so-called family cap faced a procedural challenge in the Senate, which probably would have stricken it from the bill. The Administration does not oppose the family cap in principle but wants states to decide whether to impose it.

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Highlights of Welfare Reform Bill

The welfare reform bill that faces final votes this week in the House and Senate would:

* Replace Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the federal-state cash aid program, with a lump grant to states, which then could design their own programs to push recipients from welfare to work.

* Limit eligibility for federal cash assistance to five years in a lifetime, with the states allowed to exempt 20% of their caseloads.

* Require that recipients start working within two years after applying for welfare.

* Tighten rules for supplemental security income so that “maladaptive behavior� no longer qualifies children for disability aid.

* Tighten child support enforcement by requiring that welfare applicants cooperate in establishing the paternity of their children and that states develop automated systems for tracking parents.

* Eliminate eligibility for SSI, food stamps and most other federal benefits for most legal immigrants and give states the option of declaring legal immigrants ineligible for Medicaid.

* Allow illegal immigrant children to receive federally subsidized school lunches only if they are eligible for free public school.

* Require that able-bodied adults ages 18 to 50 with no dependent children may receive food stamps for only three months in any three-year period unless they work at least 20 hours a week (six months for laid-off adults, provided they spend the additional three months looking for work).

Source: House Ways and Means Committee