NATION/WORLD
The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 12, 1996 - 5A
2 Clinton aides resign in
protest of welfare bill
Move illustrates
divisions in adminis-
tration
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Two high-
ranking officials at the Department
of Health and Human Services
resigned yesterday in protest over
President Clinton's decision to sign
the welfare bill, an unusually public
move that underscores the deep divi-
sions within the administration over
the legislation.
Peter Edelman, acting assistant sec-
retary for planning and evaluation, and
Mary Jo Bane, assistant secretary for
children and families, submitted their
letters of resignation yesterday, both cit-
ing the welfare measure as the reason
for their leaving.
The resignations were notable not
only because they represented open dis-
content with a president among his own
appointees, but because of the promi-
nence of the two officials involved.
Edelman and his wife, Children's
Defense Fund president Marian Wright
Edelman, have had a close personal
friendship with Bill and Hillary
Rodham Clinton. And Bane has long
been one of the country's leading acad-
emics on welfare issues, as the author
of books and research that have influ-
enced thinking and policy-making on
the subject.
Both were part of a brain trust on
welfare policy overseen by HHS
Secretary Donna Shalala, who was
among several Clinton advisers said to
have been protesting behind the scenes
when the president was debating
whether to sign the legislation last
month.
Conservatives and liberals agreed
yesterday that the resignations were
unlikely to have much impact on the
presidential campaign, but they
nonetheless saw the moves as evidence
of Clinton's lingering disaffection
among liberals.
The left has been generally vocal in
its anger over the welfare bill and dis-
appointed in the president's more-cen-
trist stance on issues from affirmative
action and gay marriage to reducing the
size of government.
The welfare legislation, which
becomes effective Oct. 1, ends the six-
decade-old guarantee of assistance to
eligible poor Americans, turns control
of welfare programs over to the states
and reduces future federal spending on
these programs by $54 billion over the
next six years.
"I have devoted the last 30-plus years
to doing whatever I could to help in
reducing poverty in American," wrote
Edelman. "I believe the recently enact-
ed welfare bill goes in the opposite
direction."
Bane, whose office is in charge of
implementing the new law, said her
"deep concerns about the welfare bill
... have led me to conclude that I can-
not continue to serve."
Neither Edelman nor Bane would
comment beyond their prepared state-
ments, and it was unclear why they
waited for more than a month after
Clinton announced his intention to
sign the bill to offer their resigna-
tions.
The departure of Edelman and Bane
follows by a month the resignation of
another top HHS official, Wendell
Primus, deputy assistant secretary for
policy and evaluation, who also left in
protest over the welfare bill.
Such public protests are rare in
American governement. Although sev-
eral State Department officials resigned
to show their displeasure with the
Clinton administration's earlier policy
on Bosnia, there have been no similar
actions over domestic policy.
Edelman, Bane and Primus, along
with David Ellwood, who resigned his
assistant secretary post at HHS a year
ago, were central players in formulating
the administration's welfare policy.
In the line of duty AP PHOTO
Milwaukee police officers comfort each other yesterday after the funeral of fellow Officer Wendolyn Odell Tanney in
Milwaukee. Tanney was shot and killed Saturday while pursuing a thief.
f to exact prce for
inactio over Gingnch
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
Republican-led House ethics commit-
e probe of Newt Gingrich appears
estined to outlast his first two-year
term as speaker, and Democrats are try-
ing to exact a political price for the
inaction.
After persistently accusing commit-
tee Republicans of stalling the 20-
month investigation, Democrats are
intensifying attacks on individual law-
makers, calling on one GOP member to
resign from the panel and condemning
thers in their districts.
Democrats are linking their assaults
to the GOP refusal to make public an
outside counsel's report submitted last
'month.
James Cole's document was
described by committee members as a
summary of evidence on whether
Gingrich complied with tax laws when
raising money for his unconventionally
financed college course.
To increase the pressure, Democrats
re likely to force a vote on the House
Probers
ay blow
'myupo empt
jet as Study
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Investigators are
considering blowing up an empty
Boeing 747 jumbojet to study the dam-
age in the hope it would help them to
.analyze the wreckage recovered from
rans World Airlines Flight 800, which
exploded mysteriously off the Long
Island coast July 17, according to
sources involved in the case.
The deliberate destruction of a
jumbo jet is one of several new
approaches discussed yesterday during
a meeting of senior crash investigators
and their staff at a hangar in Calverton,
N.Y., where sections of the plane are
cng analyzed and reassembled on a
craffolding.
Those who attended the I 1/2-hour
briefing expressed concern that should
the 8-week-old inquiry continue to
yield a dearth of physical evidence, it
would be impossible to figure out why
the 747 cracked up and plunged into
the ocean unless more innovative steps
are taken.
Even then, they said, pinpointing
what happened to Flight 800 would
*main a tough task.
A controlled explosion of another
747 would take place on the ground
and most likely near the center fuel
tank of the aircraft, the sources said.
floor to make Cole's report public -
and are considering other tactics, such
as linking formal adjournment to action
on the ethics case.
Wicker said. "We're fully expecting
... partisan salvos in the next three
weeks."
The ethics committee of five
"It's the same
tactics going on
for two years,"
said House
Minority Whip
David Bonior
of Michigan,
who is leading
the Democratic
effort.
The minority
Dem oc rats
shouldn't
expect GOP
support, said
duck, delay and stall
Republicans and
/It's the same
duck, delay and
stall tactics going
on for two years."
- David Bonior
House Minority Whip
five Democrats has
often sputtered
in partisan
deadlock in the
Gingrich case,
although past
committees
have broken
through such
divisiveness to
decide difficult
c a s e s.
Democratic
Speaker Jim
Wright resigned
committee charged
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Rep. Roger Wicker of Mississippi,
who was freshman Republican class
president last year.
"The committee should proceed in
the normal course of events and not
be governed by the date of the elec-
tion or the date of final adjournment,"
in 19$9 after the
him with rules violations.
Gingrich, who filed the complaint
against Wright, demanded that the
outside counsel's report in that case
be made public, and the committee
complied.
a
or a weekly update
of U-Club events
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