Clinton Assails GOP Plan to Cut Child Care Benefits

President Clinton accused congressional Republicans on Saturday of engaging in “pure fantasy” by aiming to move welfare recipients into jobs while denying them child care benefits.

“We don’t want more welfare mothers staying at home, living on welfare, just because they can’t find child care,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address. “Cutting child care will make it harder for parents to get off and stay off welfare.”

The President did not directly mention Republicans in his address, but his complaints against “many in Congress” were clearly directed at GOP moves to cut off child care.

“It is pure fantasy to believe we can put a welfare mother to work unless we provide child care for her children,” Clinton said. “We don’t need more latchkey kids. We certainly don’t need more neglected children.”

The welfare overhaul approved by the House in March would stop transitional benefits that now cover child care or health insurance for a limited time after a recipient finds work. The Senate is bogged down in internal disagreements among Republicans about the shape of its proposal.

The President, who taped his radio address in Chicago on Friday before flying to Florida, said he was disappointed that Republicans would not meet his July 4 deadline for delivering a welfare reform package to the White House but that he remained hopeful for a bipartisan solution.

In the Republican response, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee noted this is the Independence Day weekend and said his party is continuing their legislative revolution by working “to restore common sense to government by restraining it, reducing it and returning it to you, the American people.”

He said nothing better exemplifies the party’s plan than its effort to balance the budget.

Frist, a physician, said the Republican plan would retain and improve the Medicare program for the elderly “by eliminating the red tape and regulations that now restrict beneficiaries on the federal system.”