Title IV-D Welfare

Society has done a wonderful job at claiming that "child support" is a special kind of "debt." Society has also done a wonderful job in convincing the public that people sentenced for owing debt to prisons nationwide is a good thing. Where is the societal value in placing a 51-year old man in PRISON for years on a debt that is likely going to cause a significant recitivism rate, especially since once this man gets out his employment is likely going to be minimum wage work? Who is really penalized by this? The taxpayers are penalized more than anyone, as well as this man's children.

The child support enforcement program was intended to pay back the federal government for welfare payments they were making to the States to operate their social welfare programs. What is odd, is that the program has morphed into a cumbersome and bloated bureucratic machine that doesn't benefit society, only those that are directly employed by the system. If anything, the programs are encouraging more out of wedlock births, more fights over money, and more dissolutions of marriage because it is now financially beneficial to separate. The government is simply glorifying the bad behaviors of society while punishing the tax payer. Read the below article and tell me where the value to society is.

Man to serve time for back child support

From Wire Reports

A 51-year-old Kosciusko man was sentenced to 10 years in prison with eight suspended and ordered to pay $68,215.87 in back child support. [This man will likely no longer be as marketable when he gets out of prison, therefore reducing his earnings potential and contribution to society dramatically.]

Dennis Kern was sentenced Wednesday, April 30, by Oktibbeha County Circuit Court Judge Lee Howard on charges of refusing to provide for the support and maintenance of his children.

The case was prosecuted by Mississippi's attorney general. [This AG should have been focusing on serious crimes.]

The court ordered Kern to start paying the owed child support payments 60 days after his release from prison. [Unlikely because most employers will not want ex-cons working for them.]

He will be on supervised probation once he's out. [More Fees for the System]

The Commonwealth State of Virginia has been reported from multiple sources to be suing the Texas-based private child-support collection agency known as SupportKids, Inc. In a political atmosphere where budgets are tight, some states are struggling to maintain their monopolies where they can instead of sharing markets with private firms, saving taxpayers billions nationwide.

The state is suing Supportkids Inc., a private child support collection
company based in Texas, to prevent the company from interfering with
the enforcement of child support in the Commonwealth.

Governor Tim Kaine and State Attorney General Bob McDonnell
announced the lawsuit today (Friday). “Any actions that impede the
Commonwealth’s efforts to lawfully and fairly collect child support
must be addressed,” Governor Kaine said in a news release.₁

The various state child support agencies are funded through a federal grant and incentive program under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act₂. For every three dollars spent by a local state agency for actions like paternity establishment, child support enforcement, and creation of child support orders, the local agency only has to contribute $1.00 while the Federal government pays the State and Local agencies $2.00. This program has been referred to as a "Free For All Welfare Program" where the overwhelming majority of the program are middle and upper-class families fighting over money and the more actions that the local agency takes the more money they receive from the Federal Government.

When private firms refuse to work with the State and Local agencies, despite an individual parent contracting with a private collection firm, there actually exists the potential to cost the State and Local agencies federal funds. With a loss of federal funds, State and Local agencies look for additional ways to bolster membership by requiring nearly every case involving children and spousal support to go through their local Title IV-D offices despite not being means tested for need like other government welfare programs. Essentially the programs reward for a negative result instead of positive results of actually solving a root societal problem.

Families typically
turn to a private, for-profit child-support collection agency when the state
has not been successful in collecting payments.

According to the
Supportkids' Web site, the company has collected more than $360 million since
1991 on behalf of clients, making it the largest private child-support
collection company in the country.

In the news release
about the lawsuit, Kaine said Virginia's Child Support Enforcement agency
collected more than $608 million last year for 484,000 children who are owed
money. ₃

SupportKids, Inc. has claimed to be successful at collections where many State and Local agencies have failed and if a parent contracts with such a collection service they should be allowed to do so instead of requiring a parent to use government and tax payer subsidized programs against their will. Right now the tax payers are paying for the entire expense of child support enforcement and other services at the federal, state, and local level and if participants would rather do business on their own dime instead of the taxpayers dime we should certainly encourage it.

Necessary changes to the national child support program should be implemented to remove the multitude of cases nationwide that do not qualify for current state aid programs and allow parents to conduct business with whatever firm in their judgment will get the desired result. Society cannot force business owners to chose between one or more collection agents, so government shouldn't be able to force parents to work with a government monopoly where there are clear alternatives that do not cost the taxpayer. Child Support orders are regular civil judgments and should be treated accordingly not as a business for our federal, state, and local governments to subsidize bloated bureaucracies.

_{1. WSLS News, February 8, 2008, http://www.wsls.com/sls/news/state_regional/article/virginia_sues_texas_company_over_child_support_enforcement/5283/}

_{2. Social Security, Welfare, and Child Support Enforcement, February 2006, Lary Holland & Jason Bottomley, http://www.laryholland.com/ssacse}

_{3. The Virginian-Pilot, February 9, 2008, http://hamptonroads.com/2008/02/va-sues-texas-collection-agency-over-child-support-payments}

Political unrest continues in Delaware and other states regarding the tyrannical and systematical exclusion of one parent from children's lives in lieu of steep financial gains by both special interests and government.
(Original Publication: Delaware Online: Letters to Editor: January 26, 2008)

In this NewsDay.Com article the Court says that a sperm donor is liable for child support without giving the father any opportunity to even prove whether or not he is the father.

Nassau County Family Court Judge Ellen Greenberg ruled on Nov. 16 that despite
the mother's willingness to have the child's DNA tested, the man was barred
from seeking a paternity test to determine if he is truly the father because
the results could have a "traumatic effect" upon the child, who is
now 18 years old and lives in Oregon with the mother. The next step is a
meeting with a support magistrate to determine the amount of child support
payments - if any - the man would have to pay until the teen turns 21, Kelly
said

Just another example of how the child support enforcement industry wants to increase the numbers and collection rates to justify their own existence. Read the complete story below.

newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-lifath015484074dec01,0,1707390.story

John Mercure frequently targets child support obligors in his news stories.

• Most child support collections are made for families who have never been on assistance! The program was originally intended to recuperate money expended by the federal government to the states for their welfare programs. Now the taxpayer is caught funding a glorified collection service for middle and upper income feuding families!
• The most effective form of collection is through income withholding orders through Fiscal Year 2006. Income Withholding Orders are an automated task that doesn't require employees.
• The Financial Data Match program is a computer generated list that is matched up electronically by the State's data contractors. This sweeps money from obligors' accounts automatically and doesn't take additional employees.
• Federal and State Income Tax Off-Sets are another highly effective method of collection child support according to the federal government reports on Child Support collections. This again does not take additional employees.
• Wisconsin's Total Administrative Expenses, which as of today are unaudited and likely to be plagued with immense overspending, total $108,692,436.00! At least $777,010.00 of the administrative expenses weren't even for Title IV-D / Collection services.
• NON-TANF (should be income ineligible to receive government services at taxpayer expense) collections continued to increase in Fiscal Year 2006, While the collections on cases that are Welfare cases DECLINED according to federal reports.
• Wisconsin has a central child support distribution center for receiving and distributing child support funds and the local county offices no longer perform this intensive function.

The program should become more efficient over time and require less employees and the middle and upper income feuding families should be removed from the program, instead the program is getting larger and claiming to need more funds to operate. The State should not focus their programs on revenue generation but on aid to needy families. This will save the taxpayers immensely. An equal custody mandate would go along way in solving expense problems as well.

A final note on child support is that the I-TEAM should be focusing its attention on ensuring that the State of Wisconsin doesn't steal money from these poor children by not distributing collected child support. In Fiscal Year 2006 there is NET UNDISTRIBUTED CHILD SUPPORT COLLECTIONS OF $8,210,847 according to the Federal Child Support Preliminary Report for 2006. Of that Net UDC at least 8.6% of it has been completely unresolved. If this money is not distributed within one year from the date of collection the state is allowed to escheat the money into its own budget as program income, taking it out of reach of the children it was collected for! This makes it worthwhile for the State to sit on the money. Why not locate these parents and get this money distributed before it is stolen from these poor children!

John Mercure's email address is jmercure@todaystmj4.com.You can voice your opinion on the subject to him via email or peruse his blog, which has a few child support issues listed at http://www.todaystmj4.com/bloggers/mercure. Let me know if you get a response to your inquiries and I would be happy to post them here at this site.

The child support program rewards the states for actually creating broken homes and is an obstacle to shared equal parenting. Check out http://www.nationwideblueprint.com for more information about the program.

Articles are coming out across the board in Virginia and other states portraying that the child support program is ripping off poor mothers and poor families because of a $25.00 application fee after it has been determined the agency has distributed $500.00 or more in a calendar year. The propaganda couldn't be further from the truth and is simply untrue. My general response is that the State bureaucracies are just trying to solidify their position as savior to keep their jobs by rewarding a single party with a negative outcome, which is broken homes. Our irresponsible and wasteful government at work. My general editorial response (198 words) is pretty much as follows:

Federal cuts will not put more W. VA
families on welfare. This is a smokescreen that state bureaucracies put up in
an attempt to maintain comfy government employment with lush benefits.

The child support programs were intended to recuperate money
provided by the federal government to the states for welfare. This turned the
states that participate in voluntary Title IV-D programs into taxpayer
subsidized collection agencies. States now focus on revenue generation by
forcing middle and upper-income families into these “free for all” welfare
programs.

The states have created their own dilemma by trying to
artificially increase their participation numbers instead of focusing on families
that need them most, the lower income participants. Only 11% of the cases
should qualify for services on the taxpayer dime; people already eligible for
other state welfare programs.

There are sufficient private collection firms to make up the
difference of any budget cuts by removing nearly half the caseload which
shouldn’t qualify or be eligible for free government services in the first
place. Adding restrictions and removing income ineligible families will
streamline the agency and force the state to focus their programs on aid to
needy families and save the taxpayers immensely.

The Anti-Family Child Support War Mongers are clamoring their hammers on their shields because they don't think that an individual who benefits from their programs should have to pay a small $25.00 fee after receiving $500.00 or more dollars through the program. Bloggers at ReadExpress.Com and a few other sites have been disagreeing with the fee that is being imposed on the beneficiaries of the voluntary program.

I took the time to write about this exact issue when Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley was complaining of the same issue. You can view my initial response at the Nationwide Blueprint for Title IV-D Reform Website. Just like in Iowa and every other state in the United States of America, the State participation is voluntary. The States knew that the application fee was going to be a requirement and chose to sign up for the program anyways. Now they seek to change the rules and continue a trend of rewarding individuals and bureaucracies for negative outcomes instead of positive outcomes.

Just like in Iowa, The Virginia program suffers tremendous over participation of families that are 150% or higher above the poverty-line. Because of the significant level of over participation from wealthier families receiving voluntary services at no cost the failure of collections for the mandatory lower-income participants are going unnoticed while the program is being touted as a success. Essentially the mandatory participation in the state child support enforcement program by families receiving other forms of government assistance are being left behind while the state focuses on adding higher-income families and focusing resources on easier targets through income-withholding orders to continue maximizing federal funding received by the state of Virginia.

Similarly, since the super majority of the participants are families that are over the 150% threshold of poverty, there should be no reason that the beneficiaries of the programs, when proven successful, receive services at no cost. We need to reduce taxpayer burden and add proper eligibility requirements to restrict program participation. Free for all spending on these programs is irresponsible use of the taxpayer money and nothing more than fuel for a growing, federally subsidized, bureaucracy. When the federal funding dries up, the burden is going to become an immediate emergency associated with funding an oversized bureaucracy that will eventually rest on the shoulders of the local taxpayers that will not be able to foot the entire bill.

Bloggers need to understand the issues at hand before repeating the propaganda of State and Federal officials by doing a little research. Afterall, if they don't do the research they will be no better than the average news release service.