Gop’s Welfare Plan

Key elements of the Republicans’ five-year welfare overhaul plan, which would save $66 billion over five years:

Aid to immigrants: Bars most legal immigrants from receiving food stamps, non-emergency health care, Supplemental Security Income, cash assistance to dependent families and certain social services. Exceptions include refugees, the very elderly, veterans and active-duty military, their spouses and children.

Child care: Consolidates nine federal child care programs in a block grant to the states. Spending would be capped at the current level of $1.94 billion per year.

School meals: Combines school lunch and breakfast programs into a block grant to the states.

Family nutrition: Combines funding for several programs, including the Women, Infants and Children feeding program, into a block grant to the states.

Food stamps: Holds automatic increases in benefits to 2 percent a year. Requires able-bodied people to work. Allows states to take over the program if there is a statewide system for delivering benefits electronically.

Cash welfare: Replaces Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a block grant to the states. Ends the guarantee of cash aid to women and children who qualify, cuts off benefits after five years and does not allow unmarried parents under age 18 to receive cash assistance. Gives no additional benefits to women who have additional children on welfare. Funding set at current levels of $15.3 billion annually.

Foster care: Establishes a block grant to the states to prevent child abuse and neglect and provide care for children removed from their homes.

Supplemental Security Income: Bans disability payments to drug addicts and alcoholics, cuts cash payments to some children with behavioral or mental disabilities, replaces cash with medical benefits for other disabled children and allows only the most severely disabled children to continue to receive cash.

Child support: Establishes state and national registries of child support orders and provides for new hiring to help track parents who refuse to pay.