WASHINGTON -- Despite arm-twisting by GOP leaders, two Republican committee chairmen failed yesterday to resolve a dispute over the school lunch program that is thwarting Congress from finishing a welfare overhaul.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, said he remained unalterably opposed to folding the school lunch program into block grants to states.
Rep. William Goodling, R-Pa., the chairman of the House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, was just as insistent on keeping it in the welfare bill.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich planned to try again today to work out the impasse, which is keeping the Republicans from sending President Clinton a bill to impose limits on how long families can draw welfare checks and save $82 billion over seven years.
The sweeping plan would replace the 60-year-old federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with block grants, trim food stamp benefits and curb aid to immigrants, disabled children and drug addicts and alcoholics.
The House Republicans want to give 22 states the option of folding their school lunch money into the block grant. Goodling, a former school superintendent and principal, insists states can do a better job that way. He suggested compromises to Lugar to no avail.
Lugar, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, told reporters outside Dole's office, "I've said from the beginning that children's programs are not on the table. Children are defenseless. With food stamps, you can move from state to state if things don't work out well. Children can't move."
His aides contend it would be a major political blunder for the Republicans to jeopardize the school lunch program in any way. Democrats still make hay of the Reagan administration's attempt to define ketchup as a vegetable.
Lugar and Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., another welfare conferee, both oppose the school lunch change. Without their votes, the Republicans can't report the bill to the floor.
Clinton once praised the Senate-passed welfare bill, but the White House has indicated he would veto the conference version for cutting too deeply.
Earlier, Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., presided at a Ways and Means subcommittee hearing where state officials, experts and former welfare mothers talked about the shortcomings of the current system.
"The relentless rise in welfare among our citizens is not some inevitable condition of nature," said Shaw. Some states "have learned how to help people get off welfare."
He claimed the Republicans have met most of Clinton's objections. "He has no reason to veto this welfare bill," Shaw said.
But Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., said the Republicans "have not made even the slightest effort" to write a bipartisan bill.
The balanced-budget proposal Clinton will offer Republicans today will include roughly $49 billion in welfare savings over seven years, administration officials indicated. That's up $15 billion from an earlier proposal, but far below the GOP target.