Senate Takes Up Welfare as Both Sides Press Proposals : Legislation: Democrats move to soften the blow of benefit cuts. Republicans target out-of-wedlock births and violators of work requirements.

WASHINGTON —  As the Senate began debate Monday on legislation that would shift control of the welfare system to the states, Democrats pushed to soften proposed benefit cuts and conservative Republicans pressed for tougher provisions to discourage illegitimacy and punish recipients who refuse to work.

The sweeping GOP welfare plan, if enacted as written, would cancel the 60-year federal guarantee of cash assistance to poor mothers, give states authority to design their own programs and cut federal welfare spending 10% over seven years by an average of $10 billion a year.

Welfare recipients would be required for the first time to work after two years on the rolls and their eligibility would be limited to five years during their lifetimes.

The House already has passed a welfare reform package that calls for even bigger changes and Democrats view the Senate debate as their last chance to limit the scope of the revisions. President Clinton, who ran for office on a promise to dismantle the current welfare system, has given no indication that he would block the proposal if it reached his desk.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Monday that Clinton is “a long ways away from a veto” threat.

Clinton is working with Democrats, however, to persuade the Senate to add more funding for child care for welfare recipients forced to work and to require states to continue contributing their own money to their welfare programs. As written, states could simply take the federal money and use it for nearly any kind of welfare program.

On the Republican side, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s principal challenger for the GOP presidential nomination, and other conservative Republicans are fighting to toughen the GOP package. They want to add provisions that would require states to deny cash benefits to teen-age mothers and prevent them from increasing assistance when families on welfare have additional babies.

“I’m being hit by the White House on one side and my friend from Texas on the other,” Dole complained in a speech on the Senate floor. Noting that only 33 GOP senators are signed up in support of the measure, the Kansan said: “I can’t stand up here and say this is going to pass” without changes.

Making gestures of accommodation to both sides, Dole agreed to tighten the work requirement to appease the right and offered to negotiate with lawmakers from the left to provide more money for day care.

“We know there’s a problem with child care and we’re working on it,” Dole said in response to a question from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The first amendments to the legislation are expected to come to a vote today.

In passionate floor speeches, conservatives argued that the measure could fail in its objective of ending the cycle of poverty in America if it is not made more strict, while Democrats warned of dire consequences to children if the legislation is not made more compassionate.

“The failure to deal with this problem means the end of America as we know it,” Gramm said in a speech.

But Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) told reporters that the measure “leaves 9 million children at risk of starvation, of deprivation, of being in fear of greater homelessness and hunger in our country.”

Later, in an emotional floor speech, Moseley-Braun said: “Let’s assume for a moment some child’s parents don’t meet the rules and get thrown off. What happens to the child? The children are left with no safety net whatsoever.”

Democrats also accused Dole and Gramm of playing presidential politics with the security of millions of children.

Dole’s compromise with conservatives on work requirements brought the Senate in line with the House in mandating that states dock the welfare checks of recipients who have been on welfare for two years and are assigned to a state-subsidized job but fail to work all of their required hours.

“In effect, the conservative language says, no work, no welfare,” Gramm said. “I hope that, having been convinced that a conservative approach to welfare reform is superior, Sen. Dole will now move to modify other parts of his legislation.”

At the top of Gramm’s wish list are amendments to deny benefits to teen-age mothers. Dole said that he opposes such provisions.

“Our bill recognizes that the states are better able than the federal government to determine what programs will best reduce illegitimacy,” Dole said.

The Dole measure would require mothers younger than 18 to remain in school and live with their parents or other adults if they are to receive government support. Clinton also favors those provisions.

Dole took issue with criticism from Clinton and Democrats who argued that the GOP plan would start a “race to the bottom” as states curtail their own spending on welfare and create ever tougher requirements that push more people off welfare rolls.

Under the Dole measure, states would be given lump-sum grants and broad leeway over their welfare programs, while simultaneously being allowed to halt their own contributions to the system.

“Returning power to the states is something that makes President Clinton nervous,” Dole said. “Which governor does he think does not care about those in need? Which state Legislature can’t be trusted with the welfare of their people? The truth is that our states can be trusted with these things. Federal control just hasn’t worked.”

Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), who is managing floor debate as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that there is no justification for retaining a federal welfare system that all sides agree has failed the poor and the taxpayers.

The competing reforms proposed by Democrats, Packwood said, represent nothing more than tinkering. “How do we have any reason to assume that after 60 years of toying and tinkering with the system that the federal government will do any better if we tweak it here, twist it there and hope that this beast will fly,” Packwood said.

Packwood conceded that the legislation provides no guarantees that states will fix the system. “But I think we can say, we can guarantee, it cannot work any worse than it’s now working,” he said.

The Democratic alternative measure, which the President supports, would continue the federal guarantee of cash benefits to all eligible families and provide more money for job training and child care for welfare recipients.