CLINTON ASKS DOLE TO SEND HIM WELFARE BILL BEFORE LEAVING SENATE.

Byline: Vanessa Gallman Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

President Clinton challenged Bob Dole on Thursday to pass a welfare plan before he leaves the Senate next month and promised to sign one now being pushed by Republicans - if extraneous issues aren't included.

Clinton praised congressional Republicans for moving in his direction on welfare by eliminating some ``extreme proposals'' in a revised bill, and he urged that welfare be dealt with now to take it out of presidential politics.

``Now, amidst all this election-year rhetoric and posturing and gnashing of teeth, if you look beneath the rhetoric,'' he said, ``the Republicans are moving toward the position I have advocated all along, and I'm encouraged by that.

``Pass this plan through the Congress before you retire on June the 11th, and I will sign it,'' Clinton said rhetorically to Dole during a Milwaukee news conference with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. ``Let's put it behind us.''

Dole had no immediate response to Clinton's challenge, but other Republicans viewed the president's offer with considerable skepticism, noting that Clinton has twice vetoed GOP welfare bills.

``We have learned that welfare reform is something Bill Clinton loves to talk about but doesn't want to do anything about,'' said Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee, which launched TV ads attacking Clinton on welfare.

But Clinton insisted that the revised Republican welfare bill, submitted Wednesday, largely has his stamp after two years of nudging and vetoes.

The bill includes a number of features demanded by the president. It explicitly retains federal programs to provide food stamps and school lunches. It also retains federal control of child protection and adoption programs as part of a welfare overhaul. It has more child-care money than even Clinton included in his budget plan.

But Republicans also attached a plan to give states control of Medicaid - something Clinton said again Thursday he would veto.

``My attitude is let's let her rip,'' Clinton said. ``If this is the plan, let's don't pollute it with a lot of poison pills.''

The welfare issue has become one of the more contentious of the presidential campaign, with Clinton arguing that he has lived up to his earlier campaign promise to overhaul welfare and Dole claiming Clinton is trying to take credit for GOP ideas.

On Tuesday, Dole criticized Clinton for his welfare vetoes and underlined his own support for several provisions in the GOP bill, including state rather than federal control over welfare, a lifetime five-year limit on benefits and a requirement that recipients work after two years. He also proposed to allow states to test recipients for drugs.

In the past month, Clinton has said he supported provisions that require teen welfare mothers to live with an adult and stay in school. He also said he liked the concept of a Wisconsin proposal that would end welfare, put people to work and provide child-care and health benefits.