Snowe aims for middle ground as Senate considers welfare reform

WASHINGTON – Responding to President Bush’s call for tough new welfare reforms, Sen. Olympia Snowe is pushing a set of guidelines that backers hope will stake out the middle ground for legislation and garner robust support from lawmakers of all political persuasions in the Senate.

The plan embraces some of the president’s goals, but it also seeks higher increases in spending on child care and vocational training. It also aims to protect the flexibility of states as they work to meet the goal of guiding welfare recipients into the workplace.

“America’s social safety net must not only be a cushion during difficult times, but also a springboard to better times through self-sufficiency,” Snowe told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday to unveil the program.

The Maine Republican joined five other senators to tout their plan. As influential members of the Senate Finance Committee, all will play a central role in crafting legislation to renew the historic 1996 welfare reforms.

While Snowe credited changes to welfare made six years ago for reducing the nation’s welfare rolls to their lowest point on record, she said that more work remains to be done.

“We can safely say, so far, so good, … [but] reform remains unfinished business,” Snowe told reporters, noting that 5 million people still live on welfare rather than hold jobs.

The senators referred to their effort as “tripartisan” because they include Democrats, Republicans and the Senate’s one independent, Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Other members of the group are: Sens. John Breaux, D-La., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

Several of the senators said they anticipate taking center stage in the coming Senate debate and that they will be looking to gain the needed political momentum to battle with more conservative measures now moving through the House.

That House legislation closely follows the president’s agenda and aims to adopt stricter work requirements for single parents, which some critics predict will hamper the flexibility of state programs.

“Frankly, getting to the next step in welfare reform is going to be more difficult,” Snowe said. “You can’t have a one-size-fits-all program.”

Central to the proposed principles backed by Snowe is the push for more child care assistance, which the group believes is a necessity in helping the heads of families move into the workplace.

Snowe already has introduced bipartisan legislation to boost child care funding for low-income families, but the senators said on Thursday that they are unsure what amount of money will be needed until a study by the Congressional Budget Office is completed.

“We will support whatever amount is sufficient and whatever it takes to get the job done,” Breaux pledged.

On Wednesday, House Republicans rejected a Democratic bid to increase child care funding by $8 billion while crafting welfare legislation, but they did approve a GOP plan to beef up spending on child care from a present $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion.

In outlining their objectives, the senators sided with the president’s proposal to require that states have 70 percent of their families at work by 2007, but they urged that states have more latitude in deciding what defines work. They also requested that any money set aside to promote marriage, as the White House has endorsed, also be available for teen pregnancy prevention.

Moreover, the senators proposed that people be required to pursue work-related activities for a weekly minimum of 30 hours instead of the 40 proposed by Bush.

Other goals the group hopes to see met include:

. Permitting states the option to give welfare recipients vocational education for up to two years as an alternative to a stricter work requirement.

. Allowing legal immigrants access to welfare programs.

. Accepting job searching as a form of work.

. Giving states credit for people who leave welfare and find jobs instead of simply leaving welfare.

. Requiring states to write a self-sufficiency plan for every family receiving welfare, a Bush proposal.