WASHINGTON -- Looking to cut welfare spending by $43 billion over five years, a House panel has approved a measure that would remove 338,000 drug addicts, alcoholics and children from a Social Security program for disabled poor people.
Racing to beat a deadline in their "Contract with America" campaign manifesto, Republicans on the Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources brushed aside Democratic objections yesterday and rolled $13 billion in disability cuts into a bill that hands over to the states some 50 federal welfare programs.
The measure now goes to the full Ways and Means Committee, which is expected to ratify the subcommittee's action.
In addition to the disability cuts, the bill would end federal control over the main welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It would deny welfare to unwed mothers under age 18, cut off checks to everyone else after five years and eliminate noncitizens from eligibility for most forms of welfare.
But in the case of the cuts to the disability program -- known as Supplemental Security Income -- the savings may be illusory because thousands of those targeted by the cut-off suffer from other disabilities that may get them back on the rolls.
Democrats, moreover, charge that the cuts will trigger billions in added expenses for taxpayers at the local level by effectively dumping welfare recipients into already strained state institutions and programs.
The SSI program pays out $25 billion a year in monthly support checks to 6.3 million poor people whom Social Security has judged to be too old, ill, disabled or addicted to work. But those who suffer from multiple disabilities are often awarded checks by the agency on the basis of only one disorder.
Thus, any attempt to cut off a broad category of disabled people -- which the Republicans want to do with drug abusers and able-bodied children diagnosed with questionable behavioral disorders -- is destined to hit many who suffer from other ailments.
"What are we going to tell these people? 'Don't panic?' " demanded Rep. Harold E. Ford of Tennessee, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee. "Well, they are panicking."
Democrats argued without success that any person facing the loss of a check should be individually evaluated -- and that those who lose their cash payments should continue to get free health care under Medicaid to keep them from becoming a burden on state hospitals.
Republicans countered that the evaluations could take months to complete, forcing taxpayers to continue shouldering the cost of fraud and waste in the SSI program. Instead, they plan to provide $15.4 billion annually in block grants to states for five years and an average of $1 billion a year to help children who lose their SSI cash benefits.
But Democrats say that the money won't be enough, and that Republican plans to let states spend the money any way they see fit will mean that many disabled people and poor families who turn to the states for help will not find it.
"This particular population comes from the poorest communities the country," Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat, said of the 120,000 addicts and alcoholics marked for removal. "They also come with very heavy medical expenses."
Further, studies by the Social Security Administration and the Congressional Budget Office show that the vast majority of them will get back on the rolls within a year after their checks are stopped because they suffer from other disabilities. As many as eight out of 10 addicts fit that description, the studies show.
But Ronald Haskins, director of the subcommittee's Republican staff, said that taxpayers want action: "The problem is that it is not a taxpayer responsibility to subsidize addicts and alcoholics."
The Republican bill, he said, calls for $380 million of the disability savings to be spent on drug-treatment grants to the states -- a figure that Democrats said will not be enough to make up for a treatment shortage that has beset the SSI program for 20 years.
The bill also calls for dropping 218,000 children who collect up to $458 a month for behavioral and psychological disorders. The measure is aimed at stopping parents from "gaming" the system by coaching their children to fake the hard-to-disprove disorders, said the committee chairman, Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Florida Republican. Most of the remaining 680,000 children on the rolls would lose cash benefits but would continue to be eligible for Medicaid and whatever other services the states choose to provide with federal block grant funds.
If the legislation is enacted, only the nation's most severely disabled children will qualify for cash payments -- as few as 6 percent of those now on SSI.
But Democrats argued that among those to be cut off would be some who are genuinely disabled and who will suffer without the cash until they can requalify.
"We're talking here about the most vulnerable people in America. We're talking about handicapped children," said Rep. Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat.
Ending three days of debate, Mr. Shaw told Democrats: "Your party for 40 years has jealously surrounded and guarded a bankrupt system that has done nothing but perpetuate poverty in this country. We are the ones who are going forward and trying to break the cycle."
FIRST 100 DAYS
Republicans promised action on major bills during the first 100 days of the GOP-controlled Congress.
On Day 43:
* The House yesterday opened debate on a bill to cut U.S. support for U.N. peacekeeping, prohibit placing U.S. forces under foreign command and step up efforts to create a national missile defense system. A final vote could come today. The administration threatens a veto.
* Raising the stakes for House Republicans, Speaker Newt Gingrich said the GOP will produce a plan to reduce deficits until the budget balances by 2002. Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, previously promised moving toward that goal, but said additional savings would have to be found in future years to achieve it.
* Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said he wants to cut federal spending on farm programs by nearly 30 percent over the next five years. Subsidies would take sharp cuts.