Welfare Bill Opponents Turn Up Heat Gingrich Aide Believes Clinton Will Sign Any Reform Bill Committee Comes Up With

As House and Senate negotiators moved Friday to complete work quickly on a welfare bill they hope to send to the White House next week, opponents of the measure stepped up pressure on President Clinton and members of Congress to reject the legislation, saying it would increase poverty and hunger among American children.

Social service organizations, advocates for the poor and religious groups said they had flooded the president and Congress with telephone calls and letters, and plan to protest at the White House and the Capitol Monday.

And six Democratic senators held a news conference to urge Clinton to veto the bill, citing an Urban Institute report this week that estimated the bill would increase the number of children in poverty by 1.1 million.

“This legislation is not reform,” said Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill. “Reform would put people to work. Reform would give people hope. Reform would give people the ability to care for their children. This bill is simply a Draconian attempt to separate Americans one from another, again, and leave the poor to their own devices.”

The legislation would end the federal guarantee of benefits to eligible poor Americans, require welfare recipients to work and limit assistance to five years. It would also reduce spending by about $60 billion over six years, much of it in cuts to food stamps and by denying benefits to legal immigrants who have not become citizens.

Republicans said they hope to schedule a final vote in the House Wednesday and in the Senate Thursday.

The White House remained silent on whether Clinton would veto the bill, saying it was watching the work of the conference committee to see what emerged as a final measure.

Responding to the Urban Institute report, presidential spokesman Michael McCurry said, “There are different ways of measuring what the poverty impacts are.” The administration has argued that strict measures of income do not capture the positive effect of growing up in a household where parents are working.

Also, the provisions in the bill that pose the greatest risk to children, McCurry said, are also those opposed by the president. Clinton has objected to the provisions affecting non-citizens and cuts in the food stamp program.

While the White House has urged more changes in the bill and said Clinton would veto an unacceptable bill, presidential aides have been largely upbeat about the progress of the legislation.

And at least some on Capitol Hill have interpreted that as a signal that Clinton, who has been criticized by Republicans for his earlier vetoes, would sign any bill that reached him this year.

Jack Howard, an aide to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., wrote in a memo to his boss this week that Republicans “do not need to bend over backwards to get the White House to sign the bill. … I believe the White House will sign just about anything we send them. So we should make them eat as much as we can.” The memo to Gingrich was reported first in Congress Daily.

In their public statements, GOP leaders have said they are listening to the concerns of the White House, but are not willing to go beyond what was in either the House or Senate bills in order to secure the president’s signature.