WASHINGTON, May 21 - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is drawing fire from her traditional liberal allies as a result of the position she has staked out in the debate over revamping the nation's welfare laws.
It's a pretty stunning development, and it's had an outsized impact on the debate nationally because of who she is. She is perceived as a progressive Democrat, and so she is giving cover to other Democrats to do the wrong thing.
Deepak Bhargava National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support Scores of protesters displayed their anger outside her house here in the Embassy Row neighborhood today, unhappy with her decision to back President Bush's drive to enact new work requirements that they say will ultimately harm welfare recipients.
"Senator Clinton needs to understand that the stakes in this debate are very high and that she will be held accountable for her actions," said Deepak Bhargava, the executive director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition of advocacy groups representing low-income communities.
Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat, has joined a group of moderate and conservative Democratic senators in supporting a bill to increase the work requirement for welfare recipients to 37 hours a week, a significant increase over the current 30 hours. Mr. Bush would require 40 hours.
In an interview this afternoon, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that she had initially been reluctant to back the new work requirements. But she said she decided to support them after the bill's two main Senate sponsors, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, agreed to tie them to $8 billion in child care funding.
Mrs. Clinton and her aides also noted that she had secured more money for Medicaid, immigrants' benefits, and education and training for welfare recipients. In addition, Mrs. Clinton noted that the Senate bill maintained limited exemptions from work requirements for mothers of children under 6.
A longer workweek, her critics argue, would force states to abandon existing job-training and placement programs in favor of unpaid workfare assignments for legions of welfare recipients.
The advocates argue that in places like New York City, workfare has not helped substantial numbers of people move from government dependency into permanent jobs. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg last week proposed shifting some of the city's welfare policies toward providing more job training for those leaving the welfare rolls.
Mr. Bhargava and other advocates for the poor say that perhaps the most troubling implication of Mrs. Clinton's position is the message it sends to other Democrats. "It's a pretty stunning development, and it's had an outsized impact on the debate nationally because of who she is," he said. "She is perceived as a progressive Democrat, and so she is giving cover to other Democrats to do the wrong thing."
The other Democratic senators supporting the bill include John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, Zell Miller of Georgia and John B. Breaux of Louisiana.
Mrs. Clinton pointed out that the Senate bill was far better than one that the Republican-led House had advanced at Mr. Bush's urging. The House bill imposes a work requirement of 40 hours a week, and does not provide nearly as much money for child care. "It's a vast improvement," she said. "It's not even comparable."
The situation Mrs. Clinton faces is reminiscent of the balancing act that her husband, Bill Clinton, struggled with in 1996, when the left wing pleaded with him to preserve the nation's welfare program while the right urged him to dismantle it.
In the end, President Clinton upset his traditional liberal supporters by backing a measure that overhauled the program by, among other things, ending the federal guarantee of cash assistance for the poor.
Now, Mrs. Clinton finds herself in the cross hairs of an array of advocacy groups for the poor, including Families United for Racial and Economic Equality and Community Voices Heard, both based in New York.
"This is the first time that Hillary Clinton has been attacked by the left," said Eric Hauser, an advocate for the poor here. "She has been a heroine to the progressive left for her entire career. Now, the progressive left is enraged, and rightly so."
Politically, Mrs. Clinton's position has puzzled some advocates for the poor, who note that she represents a largely Democratic state where there would be little fallout if she took a stand against the tighter restrictions.
"New York is not Arkansas," Mr. Bhargava said. "You just can't get away with this in New York. People feel too strongly about this and are too well organized to let you off the hook."
Some critics also expressed doubt that Democrats would be able to get all the money they want in negotiations with House Republicans. And Bertha Lewis, the executive director of New York Acorn, an advocacy group for the poor, noted that even Orrin G. Hatch, the conservative Republican senator from Utah, had supported a bipartisan measure that would keep the work requirement at its current level of 30 hours a week.
"When you are right of Orrin Hatch, what is that about?" she said. "That's not good. She is right of Orrin Hatch. That's where our consternation comes in."