MRS Hillary Rodham Clinton's offer to play a "formal role" in the President's attempts to reform the welfare system has drawn a cool response from Republicans.
The proposal has revived memories of Mrs Clinton's ill-fated attempt to mastermind the reform of the country's health-care policy during President Clinton's first term. Even the White House spokesman, Mr Mike McCurry seemed taken by surprise by Mrs Clinton's suggestion, in an interview with Time magazine.
Mr McCurry, who was accompanying the Clintons on their Asian trip, told reporters that he was "not aware that there's any formal role planned... other than that she will continue a lifetime of work on behalf of children in America."
Republican governors and Congress members meeting to discuss strategy for the second Presidential term reacted more strongly.
The Governor of Wisconsin, Mr Tommy Thompson, said, "We've finally got the chance to move people off welfare, and we don't really need the tender loving care of Hillary Clinton to mess it up."
The chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Mr Robert Livingston, said: "Hillary's announced that she's going to try to change welfare. Well, that's not going anywhere these next two years. That might satisfy the lefties, but if she thinks it will happen, she's dreaming."
In the interview, Mrs Clinton said that she wanted to travel around and talk to people about what is happening in welfare reform. "I intend to speak out about it and write about it."
She said she would explore "if there's a formal role that would make sense in terms of reporting to the President, kind of like I did on the Gulf War disease issue."
President Clinton himself suggested a role for the First Lady in welfare reform in a television interview last September, but later retreated from this position when pressed for more details.
The President aroused criticism from liberal Democrats when he signed a Republican-drafted Bill on welfare reform last August which handed over responsibility for helping poor mothers and their children to the states.
But he also promised that in his second term he would try to change those parts of the Bill which would worsen the position of children and immigrants.
Mrs Clinton has also made headlines on her overseas trip for objecting to the guest list at a reception organised for her in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that she was "so dissatisfied" with a guest list made up mainly of conservative people invited by Mrs Janette Howard, the wife of the prime minister, that she added to the list and caused at least two people to crash the party.
The newspaper reported that Mrs Clinton appeared to be "unimpressed that Mrs Howard had stacked what was supposed to be a gathering of elite women working in areas such as child rights, health and discrimination with conservative politicians and wives."
One of those Mrs Clinton insisted should attend although not invited, Mr Peter Botsman, a public health advocate, said that "Hillary's people" told him that she had an "important speech to make and she wanted an audience who would appreciate it."