ASHINGTON - Vice President Al Gore plans to offer a ''responsible fatherhood'' package today, including a measure urging credit card companies to deny credit to ''dead-broke dads.''
Gore's speech at a Washington church comes the day before Bill Bradley, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, delivers a major address on child poverty. The vice president is consistently trying to preempt Bradley's speeches. Days before the former New Jersey senator unveiled an ambitious health-care plan, Gore rushed together a narrower proposal.
''This certainly suggests that the vice president agrees with our agenda,'' Bradley spokesman Eric Hauser said of the poverty proposals. ''But in the end, the depth and significance of our proposals to solve big problems is far greater than his.''
The Gore speech is expected to focus on fathers who cannot afford to pay child support. Its recommendations are aimed primarily at men on welfare and offer incentives for them to find work, said a supporter who had been briefed on the package.
In addition to the credit-card proposal, Gore aims to promote marriage by reducing the tax penalty paid by married couples. He wants to raise the standard deduction for married couples by $1,400 and allow married couples earning up to $29,000 to receive the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Meanwhile, a poll released yesterday showed Gore and Bradley in a close race in Iowa. Gore was favored by 43 percent of the voters questioned, to Bradley's 40 percent, with 17 percent undecided. The survey of 617 people was commissioned by KCCI, a Des Moines television station, and had a margin of error of 6 percentage points.
The news came as Bradley said he would participate in six face-offs with Gore from mid-December to late January. Two of the meetings would occur in Iowa, shortly before that state's first-in-the-nation caucus Jan. 24. Three others would occur in New Hampshire before the nation's first primary Feb. 1. One appearance would be on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' Dec. 19.
Gore aides said the vice president wanted more debates, and sooner. At the end of the day, however, neither campaign had blinked, and it remained murky when the two candidates who say they want to appear together will do so.
Separately, Gore yesterday won the endorsement of the 750,000-member United Steelworkers union. USW President George Becker said in Pittsburgh that he expects Gore as president to support legislation that would fight what the union sees as unfairly high levels of steel imports.
In Washington, meanwhile, Gore told a group of liberal congressmen that President Clinton will campaign on Gore's behalf.
Gore had told the Washington Post last week he considered the campaign a ''very personal quest'' and indicated that he had not decided what role Clinton would play.
Yesterday, however, the vice president made it clear in a meeting with the Congressional Progressive Caucus that Clinton would be involved in the campaign - but also that Gore needs to maintain his own identity to win.
One Democrat at the meeting, Representative James McGovern of Worcester, said Gore ''didn't try to distance himself from the president. He said what he needs to do is make a direct connection with the American people, that people will vote for him on whether they think he will be a good president.''
This weekend, 1,000 volunteers from 14 states will try to knock on 100,000 doors at homes in 42 New Hampshire towns, delivering literature for Gore.
Officials with Bradley's campaign, which has been distributing literature since July, said the Gore effort is unlikely to meet its goal. Mark Longabaugh, the New Hampshire director for Bradley, said most volunteers average 56 to 60 doors a day. That would mean 1,000 volunteers could knock on doors at about 60,000 homes, he said.
''There's no way they can do 100,000 homes even with 1,000 people,'' Longabaugh said. ''It's not physically possible.''
Material from Globe Staff writer Jill Zuckman in Manchester, N.H., was included in this report.
