Governors Rethink Cuts In Welfare Panel Advises Big Changes In Law As States Begin Absorbing Costs

Many of the nation’s governors now are calling for extensive changes to the new federal welfare law that had their nearly unanimous support when it was signed into law in August.

The proposed changes would restore assistance to many legal immigrants who would otherwise lose benefits under the federal law signed into law five months ago. The panel also recommended altering the five-year lifetime limit on benefits and allowing states to count as “work” a much broader range of activities.

A crack in the ranks of Republican governors is likely to please President Clinton, who has sought to ease the bill’s immigrant provisions. But it has caused considerable consternation among Republican lawmakers who fear that reopening the welfare debate now would invite a flurry of efforts to unravel the bill.

The issue promises to become a pitched battle as the National Governors’ Association, gathering today in Washington for its winter meeting, begins for the first time taking responsibility for huge social programs previously run by the federal government.

Next week, states must notify elderly, blind and disabled immigrants that they could lose benefits.

“These needs do not disappear just because the citizenship status doesn’t change,” said Elaine Ryan, director of government affairs for The American Public Welfare Association, a coalition of state welfare agencies. “Who’s going to take care of their needs? Or, do you just put grandma out in the parking lot?”

The welfare panel’s recommendations must be voted on by all the governors over the weekend. The views of the nation’s governors carry considerable weight because they played a central role in helping Washington lawmakers draft the historic welfare bill last year.

The draft policy calls for numerous changes in the welfare law, which ended the six-decade-old guarantee of aid to eligible poor Americans and replaced the federal programs with annual “block grants” to the states.

For states with large immigrant populations, the question is how to care for non-citizens denied aid under the federal bill without taking on an extraordinary fiscal burden.

“This is a life and death issue with us,” said Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, whose state is home to the third largest number of immigrants in the country.

The recommendations by the governors’ panel asks Congress to:

Overturn a ban on aid to legal immigrants who cannot become citizens because of age or disabilities.

Allow immigrants who have applied for citizenship to continue receiving benefits while they are in the process of naturalization.

Count as “work” job search and “job readiness” activities, as well as drug and alcohol treatment.

Narrow the five-year time limit on benefits to apply only to cash assistance and not child care and other forms of aid to the poor.

Give states more flexibility to use their own funds for the poor without regard to federal mandates contained in the new law.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, have signaled that they are not inclined to consider such extensive changes in the bill.

“We just need to let this thing sit now, and let it work,” said Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fla., a key author of the welfare measure. “The states are partners in the process,” but, he added, “we gave them the flexibility they asked for and now we have to sit back and see what works.”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., earlier this week expressed little sympathy for the governors’ complaints that they were inheriting a huge financial burden because of the immigrant provisions of the law.

While Lott said he would establish a task force to examine the financial burden that the bill imposes on states, he also said many states were running surpluses

“For them to come back and say, you know, ‘Give us another $14 billion,’ I’m not impressed with that.”