Even Republicans Split In Debate Over Welfare Clinton, Demos Hope For Role In Hearings

Fresh from a meeting with congressional leaders last week, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Tommy G. Thompson swept his arms from left to right, gesturing to show the dramatic shift that has taken place in the debate over how to rebuild America’s welfare system.

“We made a light year of advance in the last three months,” Thompson said. “I never thought I would see the day.”

As Congress opens its hearings on welfare reform this morning, the discussion has moved far beyond the changes proposed by President Clinton last June, driven by the Republican electoral victory and a bipartisan recognition of the popularity of the issue.

The contentious fight that lies ahead is over deeply held beliefs about the role of government and its treatment of the nation’s disadvantaged population. Congressional Republicans want not only to cut costs, but create policies that discourage welfare dependence and attack what they see as a national crisis - the increase in out-of-wedlock births. Republicans, however, do not agree on the best way to accomplish this.

Governors like Thompson argue that they know best how to accomplish these goals and that Washington should turn over the money to them with few strings attached. And on the sidelines are the people who began this debate, President Clinton and the Democrats, who are struggling to secure a role in the process.

Whatever the outcome, the debate that begins before a House Ways and Means human resources subcommittee is itself historic, a wholesale rethinking of four decades of social policy. Prompted by growing welfare rolls and increasing costs, elected leaders across the political spectrum agree on the need to change what they say is a deeply flawed program.

“We ended welfare as we know it in 1988, but six to seven years later it is clear that we did not really change the system,” said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, referring to passage of the Family Support Act, the last round of welfare reform. Welfare, he said, “remains a cruel hoax that hurts its own beneficiaries.”

But the Republican proposals before the committee are stirring enormous controversy. If conservatives are celebrating the competition in Washington to offer more and more revolutionary plans, liberals are wincing at the prospect of families pushed off the welfare rolls.