A Republican plan to revamp the welfare system would deny aid to 5 million children now on the rolls without providing nearly enough money to care for them in orphanages and foster homes, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said Thursday.
Shalala called the GOP's welfare overhaul a "cruel hoax whose human consequences would fall on children and whose financial consequences would fall on state taxpayers and private charities."Her comments are the latest attempt by the Clinton administration to discredit the proposed reforms, which Republican leaders have promised to take to the House floor for a vote by early spring.
The White House has yet to reveal its own strategy for welfare reform in 1995, although it has scheduled a bipartisan summit meeting in January with governors and lawmakers to find common ground on the issue.
House Republicans are pushing legislation to discourage teenage pregnancy and illegitimate births by denying cash welfare and housing benefits to teenagers who have children out of wedlock.
States could use the savings to promote adoptions and establish orphanages for children whose families could no longer afford to support them.
But the analysis released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services suggested that states would receive only enough money to establish group homes for less than 1 percent of children who would be dropped from the rolls of Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
HHS estimated that at least half of the 10 million children who receive AFDC would be denied benefits but that federal funds would be available to create fewer than 9,000 places in orphanages.