CAMPAIGN '96: WHERE'S THE BEEF?

HE SAYS BOB DOLE HAS GOT "NO ideas." And Pat Buchanan has got the "wrong" ones. But walking the path of hubris that led Gary Hart off a cliff in 1988, Lamar Alexander insists he alone has the "new ideas" a new millennium deserves. So goes the sound bite. But Alexander's signature proposals don't always live up to their billing. Many have been kicked around for years, dropped as unwise, shirk the tough calls or come with so few details that they raise more questions than they answer.

Take Alexander's biggest idea, captured in his refrain that Americans need to "expect less from Washington and more from ourselves." While it sounds like an apt theme for the '90s, the problem is that Alexander applies it mainly to needy Americans who don't vote Republican. He has a radical plan to phase out the federal safety net over five years, for example, and pass the buck to local charities. Yet Alexander leaves much larger entitlements that go to the better-off Americans, including Medicare and Social Security, untouched.

His welfare proposal largely resurrects Ronald Reagan's controversial (and unenacted) "new federalism," putting $50 billion yearly in food stamps, nutrition programs and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) under state discretion, while the Federal Government pays state Medicaid costs. To help local charities pick up any slack, Alexander would offer a $500 tax credit for every American to give to the group of their choice. The idea is to rekindle the personal involvement that G.O.P. virtuecrats like William Bennett say made for more "effective compassion" before Uncle Sam got in the way.

Is any of this sensible? There's little doubt that it's time to sort out the confusion between federal and state duties. And by "marrying liberal ends with conservative means," as Urban Institute scholar Isabel Sawhill says a tax credit tries to do, we may be able to "get past our current impasse and find common ground." The real question is whether the social safety net is the right thing to devolve, as opposed to more dubiously "national" tasks like bridge building and job training.

Critics of devolution argue that these safety nets were federalized in the 1960s and '70s because states had failed to provide a floor of support for the neediest. Good intentions aside, the political realities in state capitols haven't changed much since. afdc benefit levels, which are set by the states, have fallen on average 47% in real terms since 1970. There's reason to fear that these trends would worsen if states had to foot the whole bill. Under today's system of federal matching grants, for example, Mississippi thinks twice about cutting a dollar from welfare because it then loses up to four dollars from the Federal Government. Without this incentive, experts foresee a benefit-stripping "race to the bottom," fueled by states' desire to be stingier than their neighbors to avoid attracting new dependents.