Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509180087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
In his weekly radio address, Clinton said the Senate had incorporated ``critical elements'' of his own approach to welfare into its plan.
He also applauded the Senate for showing ``wisdom and courage'' when it rejected measures favored by conservatives that would have denied additional benefits to women who have more children while on the welfare rolls and would have denied cash benefits to teen-agers who have children out of wedlock.
Versions of those elements remain in the version passed March 24 by the House, which has generally been far more conservative in its approach to welfare. Clinton has threatened to veto the House version.
After praising the compromise reached in the Senate last week, the president said, ``We must not let it fall apart when the House and Senate meet to resolve their differences.''
Clinton's remarks Saturday were his first public assessment of the Senate measure, which emerged after 95 hours of debate, 38 votes and hours of negotiations.
The bill is expected to be passed Tuesday with significant Democratic support. It would dismantle an array of anti-poverty programs and instead give the states limited lump-sum payments, known as block grants.
It seeks to save $70 billion in welfare spending over seven years and would require that 50 percent of parents receiving welfare benefits be working by the year 2000. It would also impose a five-year limit on drawing welfare benefits.
The president's comments Saturday set him apart from the liberal wing of his party, whose members said they could not support a bill that would abolish the longstanding entitlement to assistance for poor families.
``If this administration wants to go down in history as one that abandoned, eagerly abandoned, the national commitment to dependent children, so be it,'' Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y, said last week. ``I would not want to be associated with such an enterprise, and I shall not be.''
But Clinton defined himself in 1992 as a New Democrat with such signature stands as his pledge to ``end welfare as we know it.''
And whether the most stalwart Democrats approve of his stands or not, Clinton, looking toward 1996, has clearly adopted a two-track strategy of co-opting or defusing traditional Republican campaign issues, like welfare, while keeping his Democratic definition by highlighting such stands as his threat Friday to veto the Republican plan to save money on Medicare.
Clinton stopped short of calling the Senate bill a measure he could sign, and his aides said they would still like to see some improvements. But Clinton made his approval seem implicit when he said, ``We'll be working hard to build on the bipartisan progress we've made this week.''
The president has been looking for areas of agreement with the Republican Congress. ``If we can find common ground on the issue of welfare reform,'' he said Saturday, ``surely we can find it in our efforts to solve our other problems.'' He added, ``Let's do welfare reform, then let's do the budget and do it right.''
The Republican response to Clinton's radio address was delivered by Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader and the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. ``Once the Senate passes our plan this coming Tuesday,'' Dole said, ``We will get together and we'll resolve the few differences there are, and I hope President Clinton will sign the bill.''
The speaker listed his party's goals for the next 60 days as ``balancing the budget, cutting taxes, replacing our failed welfare system with one that works, protecting, preserving and strengthening Medicare.''
After Republicans won control of Congress last November, Clinton, his aides say, began reassessing the mood of the country and became determined to return to the centrist themes on which he ran successfully in 1992. In the spring and early summer, he started staking out ground where Republicans traditionally have a campaign edge.
In July the president sought to dilute the potency of school prayer as a Republican issue by declaring that the First Amendment ``does not convert our schools into religion-free zones'' and ordering the government to distribute national guidelines on the wide degree of religious expression allowed in schools.
He has taken his own stand on media violence by supporting computer V-chips that can be used by parents to block television shows they find objectionable.
By unveiling his own proposal to erase the federal deficit in June, Clinton can say as he stumps the country that ``in this great debate to balance the budget, I am on the side of balancing the budget.''
And if a welfare measure that he can sign emerges from a House-Senate conference, Clinton would be able to say he had made good on his pledge to ``end welfare as we know it.''
On the other hand, Clinton has come out strongly in support of education spending, Medicare spending and environmental protection, areas in which polls consistently show the public to be in step with the Democrats and leery of the direction taken by the Republican Congress.
by CNB