WASHINGTON -- In a fierce reaction to a measure that would drop hundreds of thousands of people from federal welfare rolls, House Democrats yesterday dismissed Republican welfare reform proposals as something out of "fiscal fantasy land."
"Beneath all the tough talk, the Republican proposal does absolutely nothing to reform welfare," said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, at a Capitol Hill news conference.
As for the GOP proposal to roll some 50 welfare programs -- including the main one, Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- into block grants to the states, Mr. Gephardt said: "The Republicans just want to change the logos on the checks, cross their fingers and hope the problem goes away."
Rep. Harold E. Ford of Tennessee was even more vehement, accusing the GOP majority on a House Ways and Means subcommittee of approving a measure Wednesday that he likened to conducting "a campaign of hate against the kids of this country."
Mr. Ford, the ranking Democrat on the panel, was referring to it's endorsement of a plan to drop some 338,000 people from a Social Security program for the disabled poor -- among them drug addicts, alcoholics and 218,000 children.
"Mr. Ford is just reading the same speech as yesterday," said Scott Brenner, a spokesman for Florida Republican E. Clay Shaw Jr., chairman of the subcommittee. "Mr. Shaw is trying to change a system that doesn't work after $5 trillion and 30 years."
The cuts and reforms are being pressed by the Republican majority as a part of its "Contract with America." The Republicans propose trimming the rolls across the board.
The GOP plan also would deny AFDC benefits to minor mothers of illegitimate children, impose a time limit on benefits and require work. These actions would be carried out by the states, which would receive in block grants a portion of the funds previously doled out by the federal government.
Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly of Connecticut, also a Democratic member of the subcommittee, said she was "deeply disturbed" by the outcome of Wednesday's vote. She expressed outrage that many children born out of wedlock would be denied benefits. "Child support," she said, "is needed in any welfare reform."
The Democratic counterattack was intended to persuade the public that the Republican program was mean-spirited, that it would result in the states losing millions of dollars in federal funds, and that it would undercut efforts in states that already have undertaken welfare reform on their own.
The governors of two of those states -- Missouri's Mel Carnahan, chairman of the Democratic Governors' Association, and Delaware's Thomas R. Carper -- were at the news conference.
Mr. Carper released an analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that estimated that, under the GOP's block grant program, the states would lose about $18 billion in federal funds over the next five years. According to his chart, Maryland would lose $225 million. Delaware's loss would be $29 million.
The governor also said that block grant funding would not take recessions, disasters, population growth or other factors into account when setting the amount each state would receive.
Mr. Brenner conceded that the states would lose money under the block grant program because funds apportioned would be frozen at 1994 levels. But he was not prepared to agree with the figures Mr. Carper offered.
Another major complaint by Democrats was the "host of restrictive mandates" that they said would accompany the Republican block grant proposals.
As conceived by the authors of the "Contract with America," the idea behind welfare reform was to give the money to the states and let them decide, within reason, how to run their own welfare programs.
That idea has changed, Mr. Carper said. "It would have us swap one set of mandates for another -- liberal, soft-headed mandates for Republican hard-hearted mandates."