Dole Calls for Stricter Laws on Statutory Rape

FOND DU LAC, Wis. —  Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole urged states Tuesday to toughen statutory rape laws to decrease teen pregnancy and said the federal government should give states the freedom to require drug testing for welfare recipients.

But in another example of the continued difficulty Dole has had in finding ways to draw sharp distinctions with President Clinton, White House officials quickly responded that they already have begun authorizing states to perform drug tests if they wish.

Dole’s proposal, most of which repeated the Republican welfare reform plan that passed Congress late last year but was vetoed by Clinton, was rolled out during a major speech on welfare reform here in Wisconsin, which has one of the nation’s broadest welfare overhaul plans.

“Four years ago, candidate Clinton came to Wisconsin and promised to ‘end welfare as we know it,’ ” Dole said, speaking to some 200 local business leaders at a luncheon. “As we have seen time and time again, however, the words of candidate Clinton bear no relation to the actions of President Clinton.”

Dole, who received warm applause from a friendly audience, pledged that if elected he would send to Congress early next year a plan to set a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits and give states broad flexibility to design their own programs. “We don’t need four more years of broken promises,” Dole said. “We need a president who will sign a genuine welfare reform package.”

Before his speech Dole met with some former welfare recipients who are now working at Brenner Tank Inc., which manufactures stainless steel storage tanks.

Sitting at a wooden picnic table, he and the former welfare recipients talked and ate ham and cheese sandwiches. One lunch partner, Lisa Miesner, bragged about how great she felt after completing her first pay period at Brenner “when my check said Brenner Tank and not State of Wisconsin.”

Dole and Clinton have been jockeying aggressively for the front position on welfare reform over recent weeks. In his Saturday radio address, Clinton preempted Dole’s campaign event and received headlines by praising Wisconsin’s radical plan to dismantle the 60-year-old system of cash assistance for the poor and replace it with a program that requires everyone to work.

Two weeks earlier, Clinton announced a four-part initiative to crack down on teenage pregnancy by ensuring that teenage mothers finish school and stay at home.

Dole’s speech was an effort to differentiate himself from Clinton on the issue and stake clearly his claim to the political high ground.

He blamed Clinton for continuing the welfare system that has created an “epidemic of violence” and a “plague of illegitimacy.”

“If some enemy of our country wanted to undermine the fabric of American society, it could not inflict anything upon us worse than the welfare system we have inflicted on ourselves,” Dole said.

But Dole has been hampered in his attempt to offer new ideas on welfare reform because he is committed to giving states authority over their own welfare programs. Because of that, the most he could do in his speech was to urge states to take action.

He called on governors to “enforce the statutory rape laws you already have on your books. Make them stronger where they ought to be stronger.” Advocates of increased enforcement of statutory rape laws point to studies indicating that in as many as half of the pregnancies of girls 17 and younger, the men are older than 20. In many cases the relationships are exploitative, they argue.

“Solving the welfare problem must include ending the epidemic of sexual predators,” Dole said.

On drug testing, some Dole advisors had debated a tougher proposal that would have required states to test welfare recipients for drugs. Although several news organizations had reported that Dole would accept that proposal, he did not do so and aides said Tuesday he never intended to.

Instead, Dole simply suggested that states should “have the right to require drug testing.”

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 10% of all adult welfare recipients are somewhat impaired by drug use and another 5% are significantly impaired.

Already one state, South Carolina, has received federal permission to test welfare recipients for drugs, although the state’s Republican governor complained Tuesday that the administration had put restrictions on the state’s testing program. A similar proposal from Kansas is under consideration.

White House officials were quick to point to those states as proof that they were already doing what Dole advocates.

“Generally, when [drug testing] is a part of a state’s comprehensive welfare reform effort, when it’s integrated with health care delivery to make sure that there’s treatment available to those who have been diagnosed as drug addicts, we have favored providing that as an element of welfare reform,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

The welfare reform legislation the administration sent to Congress in April does not explicitly authorize states to conduct random drug testing. But officials said the provisions requiring states to enter into personal responsibility contracts with recipients gives local authorities the freedom to impose such testing if they wish.

In addition, Bruce Reed, a senior White House advisor on domestic policy, noted that Clinton last year also endorsed a five-year lifetime limit on benefits for welfare recipients. That once-explosive idea, which was not included in Clinton’s original 1994 welfare reform plan, has become so mainstream that “it has been included in every major welfare proposal in this Congress,” Reed said.

In his speech, Dole painted Clinton as inconsistent for praising Wisconsin’s welfare overhaul in his radio address Saturday, only to have administration officials later say that the state still must negotiate with the administration to get permission to go ahead.

“It’s another attempt to have it both ways,” Dole said. “The White House is backpedaling again.”

Repeating an idea aired earlier in the week by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, Dole joked that Clinton’s statements are “like the tornadoes in the movie ‘Twister’--it looks like a lot is happening but in reality it’s all just special effects.”

White House officials reject that claim as well as Dole’s broader assertion that Clinton had abandoned his 1992 promise to “end welfare as we know it” by rejecting Republican bills.

While Dole argued that Clinton had vetoed the bills to protect “the status quo,” Reed maintained that Clinton rejected the bills because they cut other social programs and failed to provide funding for job training and child care necessary “to move people from welfare to work.”

Times political writer Ronald Brownstein in Washington contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Two Welfare Plans

Here are some comparisons between the “Wisconsin Works” welfare program and the Republican-backed welfare reform bill vetoed by President Clinton in January:

WISCONSIN PROGRAM

1. Abolishes Aid to Families With Dependent Children. Requires 40-hour week in work-related activities in exchange for state aid (cash, food stamps and other assistance).

2. Helps applicants find wage-subsidized private sector or community service jobs.

3. Benefits end after five years.

4. Requires teenage parents to complete high school and live in homes supervised by an adult.

5. Requires sliding scale co-payments for health care and child care in most cases.

VETOED GOP PROGRAM

1. Would replace AFDC with block grants that states can use to provide cash assistance, child care and other benefits to the poor.

2. Would require adult recipients to attend school or get a job within two years of receiving benefits.

3. Cash benefits would end after five years in most cases.

4. Unwed teen parent would have to live at home and attend school to be eligible for cash benefit.

5. Would allow for “family caps” that limit higher cash payments to mothers who have additional children while on welfare.

6. Would cut food stamp spending.

7. Would tighten Supplemental Security Income for children with disability by narrowing, for instance, the definition of “disabled.”