Welfare: `Second Chance, Not Way Of Life' -- Clinton Promises Governors He'll Push For Overhaul

WASHINGTON - President Clinton pledged yesterday to work for reform that ensures welfare is "a second chance, not a way of life."

Clinton's address to the National Governors Association allowed the president to shift public attention from such incendiary issues as homosexuals in the military toward more politically friendly territory, such as his economic proposals and health-care reform.

Clinton was scheduled to meet at the White House today with a delegation of congressional leaders to discuss campaign-finance reform, another issue he identified as a priority during the campaign.

The president laid the groundwork for that yesterday when he traveled to Capitol Hill and discussed campaign-finance reform in a meeting with the congressional leadership that also focused on his economic plans and the family and medical leave bill.

Clinton's speech on welfare largely restated the broad themes and specific proposals he outlined during the campaign. Clinton would expand job training and education programs for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and increase the earned-income tax credit to supplement the incomes of the working poor.

Most recipients would be limited to two years of eligibility in the AFDC program, which has grown from 3.5 million families in 1976 and 3.7 million in 1988 to 4.7 million last year. After the two years, they would be required to take jobs either in the private or public sectors.

"No one likes the welfare system as it currently exists, least of all the people who are on it," Clinton said. "The taxpayers, the social-service employees themselves don't think much of it, either. Most people on welfare are yearning for another alternative, aching for the chance to move from dependence to dignity. And we owe it to them to give them that chance. . . .

"I believe two years after a training program is completed, you have to ask people to take a job, ultimately, either in the private sector or in public service," Clinton said yesterday.

During the campaign, Clinton estimated that his program would cost $4 billion for the welfare reform proposals and $2 billion for the earned-income tax credit.

However, Bruce Reed, deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, told reporters yesterday that those numbers are "not necessarily what's going to be included in the president's budget" next month.

Also yesterday, the Clinton administration and congressional leaders denied reports that the White House had decided on a $31 billion jobs and economic recovery package that would include both new federal spending and tax incentives for business investment.

The Clinton White House has decided to propose a short-term jobs package as part of its overall economic program. The White House seems to be struggling with how to balance its objectives of boosting the economy and creating new jobs with the conflicting goals of controlling federal spending and curbing the deficit.

Last week, officials said the economic stimulus package would contain $15 billion to $25 billion in new spending on public works, job training, child health and nutrition, and small tax cuts for business.

Clinton said he would name within 10 days a White House task force composed of officials from the various government agencies involved in welfare, education and job training. Reed said the group would examine such issues as the sanctions for those who fail to comply with the training and work requirements and the duration of the community-service work requirement.

The governors in turn appointed their own bipartisan task force to work with the president on welfare reform.

"Most of the things he said I appreciate and applaud, especially if he expedites waivers (that allow states to experiment) in the meantime," said Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican.

Michigan Gov. John Engler, also Republican, said he was "very excited" about Clinton's attaching a high priority to welfare reform, and said there was broad bipartisan support among the governors for mandatory participation of welfare recipients in job training and other programs designed to get people off the jobless rolls.

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, a group of House Ways and Means Committee Republicans drafted legislation proposing that low-income parents who are not incapacitated or caring for disabled persons be given two years of education, training and work experience after they go on welfare.

Then they would be required to participate for up to three years in actual work programs such as subsidized private employment or community work-experience programs in order to continue getting welfare benefits.

If they still had no regular job after the three years were up, the state could drop them from the cash welfare rolls, although they would continue to be eligible for food stamps, Medicaid and some other benefits.

Heritage Foundation welfare analyst Robert Rector called Clinton's comments "a very dramatic departure from Democratic proposals of the past" and "slightly to the right of things that Ronald Reagan said during the 1980s." ---------------------------

CLINTON'S PLAN FOR WELFARE

-- A two-year education and training program leading to a job. The president said there must be "a time-certain beyond which people don't draw a check for doing nothing when they can do something." Those who get a job, he said, should be guaranteed health-care and child-care services, the cost of which currently dissuade many welfare recipients from seeking jobs.

-- Earned income tax credits should be expanded to ensure that full-time workers escape poverty.

-- Tougher enforcement of child support through a national data bank to track "deadbeat parents;" greater efforts to establish paternity at hospital during birth, and using the IRS to collect payments in seriously delinquent cases.

-- Reform experiments at the state level. "My view is that we ought to give you more elbow room to experiment," Clinton told the nation's governors, promising to allow waivers for states from federal regulation even for experiments with which he did not agree. Baltimore Sun