WASHINGTON -- More than 200,000 children would lose their federal disability payments and health care under sweeping Republican welfare proposals that a House subcommittee is expected to approve next week, congressional aides say.
The plan would also eliminate cash payments -- as much as $458 a month -- for most children added to the rolls in the future, though it would preserve the grants for 700,000 current beneficiaries who would remain on the rolls.
Under the proposal, only the most severely disabled children would receive cash payments. Others would receive services from the states to cope with their disabilities, along with the health care all beneficiaries receive through Medicaid.
The proposed immediate cutoff of thousands of children was a move pressed by Rep. Jim McCrery, the Louisiana Republican who is drafting the changes in the children's disability program.
Mr. McCrery has tried to write a policy that preserves benefits for the genuinely disabled while tightening eligibility requirements for grants to children with marginal mental or behavioral problems. Parents have rushed to take advantage of the rules, causing the rolls to triple to 900,000 in five years.
But critics say his plan would throw thousands of genuinely disabled children from the rolls.
On Thursday, Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee that deals with welfare law, said the standards for children's eligibility would be tightened by modifying existing federal rules, in effect overturning a 1990 Supreme Court decision, Sullivan vs. Zebley.
But the Florida Republican did not say whether children now on the rolls would be dropped. That emerged yesterday when aides to Mr. McCrery disclosed that 218,000 who were awarded benefits based on the Zebley case would be dropped from the rolls.
The Zebley Supreme Court decision required the Social Security Administration to treat child applicants as it does adults.
If an applicant's condition was not on Social Security's list of disabling physical or mental conditions, the agency was required to do a subjective assessment of the child's ability to engage in "age-appropriate behavior."
Under the GOP legislation, those children judged under the subjective standard automatically would be dropped from the rolls. But parents could reapply if they thought their child qualified under stricter medical criteria being proposed.
The children receive cash payments and Medicaid eligibility through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) welfare program for the aged, blind and disabled. A series in The Sun last month outlined serious problems in SSI aid for children, aliens, drug addicts and alcoholics.
The rapidly growing $25 billion program sends monthly checks to 6.3 million people. The Clinton administration expects its costs to rise 63 percent, to $41 billion, in five years.
Mr. Shaw also said Thursday that the bill would cut 120,000 addicts and alcoholics from the SSI rolls.
Aides said yesterday, however, that the Republican proposal would do nothing about another 52,000 addicts and alcoholics who get disability payments through the Social Security retirement trust fund. And there are no plans to curtail their benefits, said a Ways and Means Committee aide.
That's because many members of Congress believe that, unlike SSI recipients, the trust fund recipients have earned their benefits by paying Social Security taxes.
In addition to ending benefits for addicts and sharply curtailing them for children, the Republicans would kick about 400,000 legal aliens off the SSI rolls as part of their plan to deny welfare benefits to non-citizens.
The welfare proposal is part of last fall's GOP campaign promise called the "Contract With America," a series of 10 legislative initiatives that House Republicans have promised to bring to a vote by mid-April.
Once the House finishes with the welfare measure, it goes to the Senate where some of its most controversial features, including denial of benefits to aliens and teen-age mothers, face an uncertain future.
The House GOP welfare plan, if adopted, would end the 6-decade-old New Deal concept of welfare "entitlements" that allow anyone who qualifies for benefits to get them, no matter the cost to the government.
Although Republicans had proposed last fall to limit spending on SSI and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the plan now under discussion would end AFDC as an entitlement program and limit its spending.
Unlike AFDC, the House Republican proposal would continue SSI as an entitlement program open to anyone who qualifies for its benefits.
The Republicans propose to scrap AFDC, which serves 14 million women and children, along with nearly 50 other programs.
In their place, the federal government would send $15.3 billion a year for five years to the states -- the amount it now spends on these programs -- and give them wide latitude to use the money for cash assistance and other programs for children's care and welfare.
The states, which now pay more than $10 billion of the $23 billion cost of AFDC, would not be required to maintain their current level of spending.
The Republicans would allow welfare recipients to collect benefits for only five years, and would require every recipient to be in a "work program" after two years on the rolls.
With the Ways and Means human resources subcommittee planning to vote, section by section, on the bill next week, Democrats stepped up their criticism yesterday, focusing on what they considered inadequate job requirements in the bill.
"The Republican proposal offers only a token nod toward work," said Rep. George Miller of California, who described a Democratic alternative that would require any welfare recipient to be in a job or a training program from the first day on the rolls.
THE REPUBLICAN PROPOSALS
* Drop from SSI rolls more than 200,000 children who were awarded checks of up to $458 a month through a 1990 Supreme Court decision.
* End cash payments for most children added to the SSI rolls in the future.
* Stiffen eligibility requirements for children applying for SSI.
* Drop 120,000 addicts and alcoholics who would be ineligible for SSI benefits if they kicked their habits, but allow another 52,000 addicts and alcoholics who collect from a different program to stay on the rolls.
A5 * Remove 400,000 legal aliens from the SSI rolls.