Changes on Welfare Plank

August 27, 1996

THE DAILY FED

Changes on Welfare Plank

he Democratic Party has released its platform--but it's not quite the same document that was approved by the party's Platform Committee last month.

Major revisions have been made to the welfare plank, which originally included harsh criticism of a Republican welfare reform bill that President Clinton later signed.

The original plank, written less than a week before Clinton's July 31 announcement that he would sign the welfare bill, called for passage of bipartisan legislation that would exclude provisions criticized by Democrats.

''Unfortunately, the plan proposed by Sen. [Robert] Dole and Speaker [Newt] Gingrich was weak on work and tough on children. That is the wrong approach,'' the original draft said. But the revised version casts the legislation in a much different light. ''Because of the President's leadership and with the support of a majority of the Democrats in Congress, national welfare reform is going to make work and responsibility the law of the land,'' it says. In fact, top Democratic congressional leaders strongly opposed the bill.

Democratic National Commmittee communications director David Eichenbaum said the revisions to the plank were only logical because the original document was written before Congress added several provisions to the bill that were supported by Democrats.

''The President was able to change the bill,'' Eichenbaum said. ''After the President's pressure, requested changes were made. You had a different bill.''

Eichenbaum said he didn't know when or by whom the revised welfare language was written, and Platform Committee officials could not be reached for comment on the document, which was distributed to reporters Sunday in Chicago without any notice that it had been revised.

The rewritten plank concedes that the welfare legislation ''is far from perfect'' and says that provisions that ''go too far and have nothing to do with welfare reform'' should be fixed--mainly deep cuts in benefits for legal immigrants and in nutrition programs for children.

But it says that the bill will protect children, enforce tough work requirements and crack down on so-called deadbeat parents--three of the main provisions that many Democrats said were too weak and cited as their reasons for opposing it.

The revised version of the welfare plank says: ''The new welfare plan gives Americans an historic chance: to break the cycle of dependency for millions of Americans and give them a real chance for an independent future.'' And, the document says, ''It reflects the principles the President has insisted upon since he started the process that led to welfare reform.''