House approves GOP plan for stricter welfare reform rules

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WASHINGTON – The House approved a Republican welfare reform bill Thursday that would require more single mothers to work and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to promote marriage.

Nearly identical to a plan put forth by President Bush, the GOP legislation passed by a 230-192 vote, largely along party lines.

It would renew a 1996 welfare overhaul that allowed states to impose tough new rules and helped spark a massive reduction in welfare rolls. Democratic Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine voted against the bill. Fellow Democrat Tom Allen did not vote because he was back home in Portland, Maine, for his father’s funeral today.

Members of both parties declared the 1996 overhaul a success, even as they differed sharply on what steps are needed to further help the poorest Americans.

The bill puts strict limits on the amount of time most welfare recipients can spend in education and training programs, requires states to put more of its welfare recipients to work and requires that each person work more hours.

It limits people to five years of benefits over their lifetimes and continues to ban legal immigrants from aid programs. It provides $16.5 billion a year for states to run their programs and offers a modest increase in child care spending.

Republicans said the key to success was putting people to work.

“A check in the mail every month won’t teach responsibility. It won’t build confidence,” said Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio.

Studies find that most people who have left welfare are working, earning more than they got from the government but not enough to escape poverty.

Democrats said simply getting someone off welfare is not good enough and argued that education, training and access to child care are key to helping people earn a decent wage.

“Too many people are drowning in a sea of poverty,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. “Welfare-to-work should not merely toss the poorest Americans a life preserver to help them float along.”

Maine’s Michaud supported a rejected Democratic alternative that he said would have allowed more state flexibility and helped people find better jobs.

The Republican bill that passed would “leave Maine with a $56 million unfunded mandate over five years,” Michaud said. “Just as bad, right now, a Maine family of three receiving the maximum benefit only reaches 39 percent of the federal poverty level.”

The bill, he said, “doesn’t give any new resources to change that. Instead, it simply asks states and welfare recipients to meet new goals, without giving them a real chance to achieve them.”

Mary Henderson, executive director of Maine Equal Justice, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for low-income people in Maine, said the legislation’s proposals were unrealistic.

Henderson said a study conducted by the Maine Center for Economic Policy in 2000 found that half the state’s welfare recipients had health care problems that limited their ability to work.

“The average person in the United States does not work 40 hours a week,” she said. “In a population where half of them have significant health problems – and in Maine where many of them have transportation problems – that leaves the children out in the cold.”

Henderson said the funding already is inadequate and that the new legislation does not provide enough money for the requirements it sets, especially for child care.

The maximum federal grant for a three-person family in Maine is only $485 per month, she said.

“That’s not enough to pay the rent, never mind to pay utilities or oil or children’s school supplies,” Henderson said.

The House bill includes up to $300 million per year for experiments promoting marriage. It also extends a $50 million program promoting abstinence from sex until marriage, which bans any discussion of contraception.

Both programs have attracted strong opposition, with opponents saying neither has been proven effective. Some worry the marriage program could push people into bad marriages.

But House Democrats voiced few complaints about them Thursday, focusing instead on the central issues of welfare.

Since peaking in 1994, the number of families receiving monthly welfare checks has fallen by nearly 60 percent, thanks in large part to the roaring economy. The Bush administration said Thursday that the national total continued to fall through September, albeit by a tiny amount.

At the same time, the rolls are rising in more than half the states. And data released this week found that after several years on the rise, the portion of poor children with working parents fell in 2001.

The GOP bill was nearly identical to the welfare bill approved by the House last year. The Senate bill did not make it to a vote because Sen. Olympia Snowe and a few other Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, which must approve the legislation, opposed the measure.

Snowe’s spokesman, Dave Lackey, said the senator would still oppose any similar measure this year and would back legislation similar to the bipartisan bill she supported last year that “builds on the successes of welfare reform and focuses on self-sufficiency.”

Even though Democrats no longer control the chamber, rules there give them more power than the House minority enjoys, and the Senate welfare bill is expected to differ in significant ways.

The 1996 law expired last fall and has been extended several times to give Congress more time to act.

Republicans moved their bill directly to the House floor, skipping committee debate, where Democrats could have offered a variety of amendments. Democrats complained that the procedure choked off real debate but there was little they could do to stop it.

The House considered – and defeated – two Democratic alternatives to the Republican bill.

The first, sponsored by Rep. Ben Cardin, D-Md., was a moderate bill that increased money for child care, allowed more education and training and restored benefits to legal immigrants. That lost by a 225-197 vote.

The second – defeated 300-124 – was a more liberal measure, offered in memory of the late Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii. It would have provided even more money for child care and more money for states to run their basic programs. It would have allow states to continue benefits for people longer than five years if they are complying with welfare rules.

The Bush administration praised the House action.

“The House is showing leadership in helping Americans climb out of poverty,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Senate as we take the next bold step in welfare reform.”

The president said the legislation would “promote strong families and healthy families, while freeing states to seek innovative ways to improve services to those who are transitioning from the welfare rolls to the work force.”

Rhiannon Varmette of Boston University Washington News Service contributed to this report.