Let them eat values.

• Position: Republican welfare reform - Editorial

Things can't get much worse than the House Republicans' welfare plan. In the "Personal Responsibility Act," the new House leaders declare that no one--no matter how desperate--is legally entitled to aid from the Government.

In particular, the bill excludes non-citizens (even if they're in this country legally), children whose paternity hasn't been officially established, and the children of unmarried teenaged mothers from programs that alleviate hunger, homelessness, and disease.

States will be required to spend the money "saved" in this way to set up orphanages, group homes, and programs that exhort women to stop having babies out of wedlock. Instead of food and shelter, the hungry and homeless will get seminars on morality.

For the first time, the Federal Government would also cap spending on Supplemental Security Income for the elderly and disabled, as well as housing assistance and AFDC. When the money runs out, it would be up to the states to decide whether to reduce benefits or simply turn people away.

Among the programs the Republican plan would repeal are the Food Stamp Act of 1977, the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the National School Lunch Act of 1946, and the Emergency Food Assistance Act of 1983. Medicaid, child immunizations, school lunch and breakfast programs, maternal and child health care, and a number of other programs would no longer be available to millions of poor people who fall into the excluded groups.

The madness and savagery of this effort should be self-evident. It will cause an enormous amount of suffering for no reason at all. The argument that the Republicans' plan will save money is particularly repellent since the programs they propose to cut--while essential to the survival of millions of poor Americans, mainly women and children--represent only 3 percent of the Federal budget.

Furthermore, the Personal Responsibility Act does nothing to address the economic crisis facing a growing number of families in this country. Instead, it singles out for neglect the most vulnerable members of our society--most of them children. Nothing could be more destructive.

Yet, according to The New York Times, the Personal Responsibility Act has a better chance of passing than any of its myriad welfare-reform competiors in Congress. When it comes to welfare, bigotry and opportunism vanquish the facts.

Welfare is a hot-button issue, Mickey Kaus declares in a recent cover story on the elections in The New Republic, because of the (mistaken) perception that mostly African-American, inner-city residents receive it: "Welfare may or may not have caused this underclass, but welfare is clearly what sustains it. And the underclass, in turn, drives the crime problem, the race problem, the 'urban crisis,' and the general sense of social decay ('twelve-year-olds having babies, fifteen-year-olds killing each other')."

This hodgepodge of stereotypes demands that we starve the poor. On the crassest political level, Kraus thinks this is a good idea. "Clinton's political advisers seem to believe that the only way to win over the struggling middle class is to deliver tangible benefits--tax cuts, job training, health insurance," Kaus writes. "But another way to appeal to the struggling, underpaid workers is to honor their work--by dishonoring the non-work of those who stay on the dole."

The lesson of the nasty House Republican welfare plan, according to Kaus and other self-described New Democrats, is that President Clinton must push the idea that he, too, is tough on blacks, single mothers, and poor people. With a straight face, Kaus suggests, "Clinton must compromise," as if he hasn't compromised enough already. Indeed, Clinton's decision in the 1992 Presidential campaign to pledge "an end to welfare as we know it" was a compromise that led naturally to the draconian Republican alternative--ending welfare without any of the job-training and other forms of support Clinton promised would ease the transition.

Clinton's original proposals were not nearly as damaging as the plans now on the table in Congress and in a number of states.

But by cashing in on anti-welfare sentiment in his own campaign, Clinton helped clear the way for the poor-house-and-orphanage era.

Winking at evil is the New Democrats' style. And it appears that, even in the face of this drastic new measure, they are going to keep it up. "We dont' really know, after all, how many welfare recipients are simply incapable of working. We don't know the extent to which cutting...