WASHINGTON -- House Republican leaders are preparing plans to abolish more than a hundred social programs and replace them with grants to state governments, which would then have a virtual free hand in redesigning aid to the poor, although with substantially less money than the current programs provide.
The move would sweep away more than $60 billion in federal programs that provide cash, food, job training, child care, foster care and other services.
The amount spent by the government in each category would be reduced, perhaps by as much as 20 percent, and the money would be handed over to the states with only a few broad guidelines.
The strategy, which has not yet been made public but has been the subject of meetings among Republican lawmakers in recent weeks, goes well beyond the welfare cuts already outlined in the House Republicans' campaign document, the "Contract With America." It is being pushed hardest by Republicans who will assume the chairmanship of important House committees in the new Congress.
While the move is likely to meet considerable resistance, if enacted in full it would reverse a six-decade-old trend, dating from the New Deal, in which power over social programs has been concentrating in Washington. It would leave the federal government less able to intervene in local affairs, and as a result less able to protect the neediest.
"We're looking at everything," Rep. Bill Goodling of Pennsylvania, who as the next chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee will oversee a proposal to consolidate job training programs, said in an interview. "There's no stone that will remain untouched."
The bold talk coming from the newly powerful Republicans has left President Clinton on the defensive with regard to his own vision of welfare and other social programs. In one step to regain a leadership role, he met with a bipartisan group of 10 governors yesterday and announced that he would convene a national conference on welfare policy next month.
Mr. Clinton said yesterday that the meeting would be "a first step in an honest dialogue about our country's broken welfare system and what we must do to fix it."
In a written statement, Mr. Clinton said the current welfare system "is a bad deal for the taxpayers who pay the bills and for the families who are trapped on it."
Although his aides spent 17 months drafting an elaborate welfare-overhaul bill that was introduced in Congress earlier this year, Mr. Clinton made no mention of it yesterday. Instead, he said, "Washington doesn't have all the answers."
The House Republicans' enthusiasm for their block-grant strategy is likely to meet a respectful though more cautious reception from the new Republican majority in the Senate.
The strategy was the subject of a meeting here yesterday among ranking Republicans in both houses of Congress; the Republican national chairman, Haley Barbour, and several influential Republican governors, including John Engler of Michigan and William F. Weld of Massachusetts, as well as aides to Gov. Tommy Thompson, R-Wisconsin.
A jubilant Mr. Engler left the meeting with a prediction of "a revolutionary new form of relationship between the states and the federal government."
He said most of the nation's governors would be willing to accept reductions in social program financing "in order to gain freedom and flexibility."