Today the U.S. House is expected to choose between two blueprints for reauthorization of the landmark 1996 welfare reform initiative: one offered by a coalition of Democrats (including House New Democrat Coalition co-chair Rep. Ron Kind of WI) headed by Rep. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and one offered by House Republicans at the request of the Bush Administration. Both challenge the states to put more welfare recipients to work. But the House GOP proposal fails to provide the resources needed -- especially childcare -- to enable recipients to work, and also perpetuates the worst feature of the 1996 law, its discrimination against legal immigrants. On both scores, the Cardin bill, while not perfect, is superior to the Bush proposal, and merits New Democrat support in the House.

The New Democrat formula for welfare reform -- best captured in a Senate bill introduced by Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY), among others -- involves a dual bargain: "work first" for welfare recipients, and strong public supports to "make work pay" through permanent private-sector jobs that bring welfare recipients into the mainstream economy, onto the "upward mobility" ladder, and out of poverty. This bargain, the essence of the 1996 law, has worked where previous stabs at "welfare reform" failed. While welfare caseloads plummeted, earnings for single mothers rose to all-time highs, and child and overall poverty rates fell to historic lows.

But the Bush-House GOP proposal abandons this successful new social bargain. It provides states with very little in the way additional resources -- for childcare, transportation, substance abuse, and other work supports -- even as it raises work requirements. In effect, it imposes an "unfunded mandate" from Washington, which Republicans are supposedly opposed to on principle. If we want the states to put more people to work -- including, we hope, more fathers of children on welfare -- we must provide the dollars to help states reach these more ambitious goals. Work-based welfare reform "on the cheap" is not only the wrong bargain, but is likely a losing proposition.

Moreover, the President's proposal does not deal with the arbitrary denial of federal benefits to legal immigrants that made its way into the 1996 law (over the vehement objections of President Clinton). It's hard to square President Bush's indifference to this injustice with his support for the restoration of food stamp eligibility to legal immigrants in the farm bill he just signed.

The Cardin bill, by contrast, comes far closer than the President's proposal to the right balance between tougher work requirements and the resources necessary to make them successful. It would raise the work participation rate to 70 percent over the next five years, and would also increase the number of "core" work hours required of recipients from 20 per week to 24. At the same time, it very generously funds childcare and other work supports, while also restoring welfare eligibility for legal immigrants and Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income eligibility for children and pregnant women in legal immigrant families.

The best template for finishing the work of welfare reform remains the New Democrat Bayh-Carper bill in the Senate, which combines a strong emphasis on work with an affordable expansion of childcare funding, and also restores public support for legal immigrants. But the best step the House can take in that direction is to pass the Cardin bill, and reject the President's penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to welfare reform.