House Gop Retreats From Limits On Medicare, Welfare

Seeking to ensure they can pass budget-balancing legislation next week, House Republicans retreated Friday from earlier decisions limiting aid for low-income Medicare beneficiaries and paying some welfare recipients less than the minimum wage when they get jobs.

In addition, President Clinton issued his first veto threat Friday against the budget bill, saying he would reject it if it retains language halting welfare benefits for legal immigrants who become disabled in the future. GOP leaders bowed, saying they would change the provision when a conference panel of House-Senate bargainers meets to craft a compromise.

In a letter Friday to House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, Clinton wrote that he considered keeping disabled immigrants on welfare rolls to be “of paramount importance.”

“I will be unable to sign legislation that does not” include such language, he wrote.

Earlier versions of all three measures had been approved during the last two weeks by House committees, but had drawn objections from the White House and from Democrats.

In yet another accommodation aimed at securing votes, House leaders tentatively agreed to preserve the current 5.4-cent-per-gallon fuel tax exemption for ethanol, the corn-based gasoline additive, said Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa.

Nussle and other farm-state lawmakers had rebelled after the Ways and Means Committee voted last week to kill the subsidy. But he said Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, had tentatively agreed to retain the subsidy at least through 2000.

House leaders plan floor votes next week on a budget-cutting bill and a tax measure.

Kasich and other Republicans said House GOP leaders had agreed to spend about $1.5 billion to help many low-income elderly people pay monthly Medicare premiums.

The House Commerce Committee had approved just $600 million for that purpose last week - $900 million less than was called for in the budget deal between Clinton and congressional leaders.

House leaders and administration officials also agreed welfare recipients placed in public-sector jobs would be paid the full minimum wage.

Legislation approved by the House Ways and Means Committee last week would have allowed those workers to be paid less than the minimum.