Welfare Recipients, Experts Criticize the System : Aid: Witnesses tell an Administration panel of rules that frustrate attempts to enter the working world.

WASHINGTON —  The nation’s crippled welfare system was assailed Thursday by impoverished women who have struggled for years to become self-sufficient, and by policy-makers and specialists frustrated that the government has failed to help people trying to make the transition to jobs and independence.

Their testimony, at times painful and grim, came during a second round of hearings by the Administration’s working group on welfare reform. The panel is in the early stages of efforts to reform the system in keeping with the President’s campaign promise “to end welfare as we know it” without raising costs.

“We struggle with (the question of) how do we turn around the system,” said David Ellwood, a co-chairman of the working group. “My fear is that because it’s so hard, we will never do anything.” But Clinton’s assertion that he is a “new Democrat” depends in part on his ability to present a program that can move people from welfare rolls to the workplace.

Although the Administration’s proposals for changing the system are not expected until late this year or early 1994, there is little uncertainty about the President’s goals and some of his preferred strategies, including setting a two-year time limit for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and other benefits, Administration officials said.

To make welfare into a transitional system instead of permanent relief, the Administration plans to stress education and job training and to help single mothers get the child care they need to participate in such programs.

At Thursday’s session, Sheila Weir, a single mother from Richmond, Va., described how the rules of the current system have prevented her from earning a college degree and getting training as a paralegal.

Weir, 38, who has two daughters, said that when she told her welfare case worker she had signed up for classes to get her degree, he encouraged her to withdraw from the classes and stressed that she had no chance of getting child care.

“Independence is not a welcome attribute,” she said. “If you work, you lose. If you even think about working, the rug will be pulled right from beneath your wobbly feet.”

Weir said she was concerned about proposals for a two-year time limit on benefits because many of the people receiving assistance do not have the education or job skills necessary to make it in the job market.

“Many of these people are starting with nothing,” she said. “It’s going to take a lot longer than two years for them to get from point A to point B.”

Bruce Reed, deputy assistant to the President for domestic policy and a co-chairman of the working group, said the Administration is considering several plans to enforce child-support laws, which he said could be the most important step toward “lifting single parents with children out of poverty.” The welfare money that now goes to such parents could then be used for job training.

Some speakers said they feared that the President has set expectations that cannot be met.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s non-voting delegate in Congress, told Administration officials that a two-year time limit is dangerous because jobs are scarce in a changing economy that faces cutbacks in defense spending.