The House this week will again take up reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform law, which was granted a brief extension last year when the Senate failed to act on new legislation. The Bush Administration wants the House to move quickly on a Republican version of the bill in hopes that a similar version can be pushed through a Republican-controlled Senate.

As you might expect with all the haste, the House bill is a retread of the same flawed Administration plan that was rubberstamped on pretty much a party-line vote last year. Its positive feature is that it maintains a strong emphasis on the importance of work and increases pressure on the states to move more recipients into work. But it utterly fails to back up these mandates with sufficient resources for cash-starved states to finish the job of reform.

For example, the President's proposal provides no additional money for childcare -- even though lack of child care is the number-one obstacle faced by welfare moms looking for work. The childcare gap is getting worse. The federal government's own studies show that fewer than one in five low-income parents who are eligible for childcare help now receive it. And some states, facing huge budget shortfalls, are cutting back on childcare assistance.

Aside from child care, the President's proposal provides no funding for "transitional jobs," the heavily supported employment positions, often part-time, that have proven critical in helping so-called "hard to employ" welfare recipients successfully obtain and keep a job.

Instead of supporting and rewarding work, the President's proposal spends $300 million a year to fund vague "marriage promotion" initiatives. It's still unclear what kind of programs this money will support, although it's very clear where the money won't be going. Despite the President's avowed commitment to "strengthening families," the Administration's plan provides neither funding nor flexibility to states to pursue proven strategies for promoting family stability, such as preventing teenage pregnancy or improving the employment prospects of low-income men, many of whom have children on welfare. According to research by Georgetown University's Paul Offner and others, unemployment rates among poor black men are as much as 30 percent higher than those of similarly situated whites -- a problem that contributes to continued dependence on government by the children of these men.

The President's claims to "compassionate conservatism" ring most hollow when it comes to legal immigrants. Bush's proposal perpetuates an injustice imbedded by Republicans in the 1996 law, which is to strip legal immigrants of their right to receive federal benefits, including Medicaid. Despite the uncertain economic environment, working, taxpaying legal immigrants are arbitrarily denied the safety net of TANF.

Though it's not perfect from our point of view, the substitute bill being offered in the House by Reps. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and House New Democrat Coalition co-chair Ron Kind (D-WI) is far superior to the Administration proposal on all the critical resource issues.

Throughout the welfare reform reauthorization debate, New Democrats should support alternatives that continue to make private sector work the object of welfare reform, but that also provide the tools to make welfare reform work.