Differences Abound At Welfare Summit Packwood: Role Of States In Reforming System Big Sticking Point
President Clinton hosted a bipartisan summit on welfare reform Saturday in which participants said they are on common ground on some issues but remain miles apart on others.
Following a five-hour, closed meeting at Blair House among about 30 administration officials, members of Congress and state governors, participants said they had agreed the nation’s welfare system needs to be overhauled.
But there was disagreement over just how to do it and who should bear the primary responsibility for the system - the federal government or individual states - participants said.
Most agreed that welfare programs are best run out of Washington. “We’ve got to shift more responsibilities back to the citizens of this country,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address.
“Was there consensus? There was surface,” said Sen. Robert Packwood, R-Ore., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “As you watched the different parties, it was like watching great fencers parry and thrust. I didn’t hear a ‘touche’ today but watching them go back and forth, you could see the differences in philosophy that were gently glossed over today.”
The biggest sticking point, Packwood said, is how much power states will have in revamping welfare. House Republicans have been negotiating with their party’s governors on a plan that would eliminate hundreds of anti-poverty programs and give states the money in block grants to run their own welfare programs.
But several Republicans and Democrats in Congress have expressed reservations about turning over welfare to the states without national standards or guidelines.
Several governors, said Gov. John Engler, R-Mich., believe “the feds ought to stay out of it.”
“Issues we are struggling with and will continue to struggle with is how, if more flexibility is given to the states … we determine how much money states get year after year,” said House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo. “A second issue is what are the standards that we would ask these states to adhere to.”
The House Republicans’ “Contract With America” proposes denying cash welfare payments to unwed mothers under 18. Other recipients could stay on welfare for five years, but states could sever them from the rolls after two years.
Clinton’s welfare plan would place a two-year limit on cash benefits and offer education, training and job placement to help recipients find work.
In his weekly radio address, Clinton expressed concern about the Republican plan. “We should require work and responsibility, but we shouldn’t cut off people just because they’re poor or young or unmarried,” he said. “I don’t believe we should punish people because they happen to be poor or because of past mistakes.”