From: lang@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (F. L. Lang, NASA/GSFC, (301)286-4424)
Subject: Who Pays for Children?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Keywords:  Absent parents, IRS enforcement
Organization: NASA/GSFC-Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 13:25:00 GMT


Dear alt.dads-rights (and, hopefully, alt.child-support) readers: 

The following appeared on the Letters to the Editor page of the Washington Post
today, July 27, 1992.  Any typos are mine.  I am one of the exceptions to the
generalization in the first part of the column (note the flawless transition to
the stereotypical deadbeat dad in midstream); my future-ex has opted not to
work in order to avoid her (Consent!) Court-Ordered contribution toward my
primary physical care of our children.  I don't get alt.child-support at my
site, so if someone would kindly put it there if it doesn't make it, I'd
appreciate it -- that's an even better forum for this discussion.  If you don't
post responses to alt.dads-rights, I'd also welcome direct e-mail. 

I don't support the use of the IRS as a child-support enforcement agency.  I
tend toward the Jeffersonian "that government is best that governs least"
doctrine in my personal philosophy, though the part about making it a federal
crime for able parents to not pay support does hold a certain fascination to me
:-).  On the other hand, I don't particularly support the no-fault divorce
laws, which make it too easy for one party to say "I divorce thee, I divorce
thee, I divorce thee" and walk off with all of the goodies.  Because of the
historical court bias towards the mother in disputed custody cases, I have had
to fight tooth and nail to preserve my children's right to see both parents,
and I have done so in spite of the meddling of my wife's housemate.  I also do
not follow the logical connection in the column between the guaranteed child
support and reduction in welfare costs.  If some deadbeat parent sees this
guarantee, that parent could just as easily say, "Ah... my child will be taken
care of," and disappear. 

'Nuff said -- I have a job to do to earn my keep.  Here's the column -- share
and enjoy. 

                                                                - Rick

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*        Rick Lang         *             \input flame_ignore.tex             *
* lang@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov *          \input standard_disclaimer.tex         *
*     Custodial Parent     *  What do you get when you multiply six by nine? *
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                            Who Pays for Children?

The non-support of children has become a national epidemic.  A fourth of U.S. 
children now live with a single parent, and an estimated 60 percent will spend 
at least part of their childhood in a single-parent home.  In nearly half such 
cases the absent parent, generally the father, won't pay support.  More than 40 
percent of women raising children on their own have never been awarded child 
support, and only about a quarter get the full amounts to which they are 
entitled.

This splitting apart of the family as a financial unit is a major reason why a 
fifth of the children in the country are poor today, and an eighth are on 
welfare.  The recurrent question is how, besides making welfare payments, the 
government should respond.  Part of the cautious traditional response has been 
that this is a state and local issue from which Big Brother should keep its 
distance.  A striking proposal now in play on Capitol Hill would abandon that 
tradition on grounds that only the national government has the resources to 
combat what has become a national emergency.  The problem is such that normal 
political lines have been blurred.  In the House, where the idea has got to the 
point of hearings, the principal sponsors are the unlikely pair of liberal 
Thomas Downey and conservative Henry Hyde. 

The proposal is to federalize the patchy child support system -- the 
collection, disbursement and periodic adjustment of child support awards -- and 
to make failure to pay on the part of an able parent a federal crime.  Awards 
would still be made in state courts, but increasingly according to federal 
standards -- and state welfare agencies would be given powerful financial 
incentives to see that the number of such awards increased.  The Internal 
Revenue Service would then become the enforcer of every child support award in 
the country, collecting the money just as it does taxes, through withholding, 
with similar penalties for evasion.  Unemployed fathers who had no income would 
be enrolled at federal expense in a job preparation program and might 
eventually be given public-sector jobs from which support would be subtracted.

The likely increase in support would reduce welfare costs.  The government
would reduce them further by guaranteeing every cooperating single parent in
the country a minimum level of child support; if for lack of income or other
reason the payment from the other parent fell short, the federal government
would make up the difference.  The result would be a partial federalization of
the welfare system as well and a greater payoff for welfare mothers who went to
work.  They would still lose the welfare part of their benefits as they began
to earn, but not the child support part.  The lower welfare costs would also
provide some fiscal relief for the states. 

At the federal level, the system would be costly -- the amount depending on the 
guarantees -- and it's not going anywhere this year.  Messrs. Downey and Hyde 
didn't even introduce it as a bill, but as a concept; that's what the Downey 
Ways and Means subcommittee is holding hearings on.  But it's a provocative 
idea.  The government undertakes to shift more resources to children, poor ones 
especially, but only after making their parents also take more responsibility 
for them.  There's sometihing in that for everyone.  A shift of power over 
domestic relations to the federal level may yet unnerve some people -- making 
non-support of children a federal crime in the same way non-payment of taxes 
is.  You have to ask yourself, which is the greater offense -- and who pays 
when the parents don't?

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