Kohl, Harkin, Bayh, Obama Co-Sponsor Effort to Fully Fund Enforcement of Child Support Payments
Kohl, Harkin, Bayh, Obama Co-Sponsor Effort to Fully Fund Enforcement of Child Support Payments
Senators say enforcing child support payments helps children, saves taxpayer dollars
U.S. Senators Herb Kohl,Tom Harkin (D-IA), Evan Bayh (D-IN),and Barack Obama (D-IL), today co-sponsored an amendment expressing the Sense of the Senate in support of maintaining funding for a federal program responsible for enforcing child support payments. The program is currently in danger of having its budget cut by 40 percent, despite its success in bringing back more than $4 in child support for every $1 spent on enforcement.
"By cutting funds for child support payment enforcement, we are pursuing a foolish fiscal policy and unduly jeopardizing our children," said Senator Kohl. "Promoting parental responsibility is vital and these cuts will ultimately hurt the children that need our help the most."
"Gutting this extremely effective program is penny-wise, and pound-foolish," Senator Harkin said. "Child support payments keep thousands of Iowa children out of poverty. When parents don't live up to their responsibilities, strong enforcement of child supports laws keeps our families self-sufficient."
"Parents who try to skip out on their responsibilities to their children should know that the government will make every effort to hold them accountable for their actions," Senator Bayh said. "Child support payments provide critical advantages to children and help ensure that they have a good start in life, while saving taxpayers millions of dollars. This program ensures that parents live up to their responsibilities and helps provide a brighter future for millions of children."
"Each year, millions of children count on child support payments to help lift them out of poverty and meet their most basic needs," said Senator Obama. "If this program is cut, over the next 10 years Illinois kids could be deprived of up to $500 million in child support payments. These cuts are immoral and I urge the Senate to reject them."
Sixty percent of all children living apart from a parent receive child support payments as a result of the federal child support program, and 84 percent of low-income children depend on payments secured by the program. If funding for the enforcement program is cut as is currently suggested, children across the country would lose more than $24 billion in support payments over the next ten years, a loss that would likely increase reliance on services provided at taxpayer expense, such as Medicaid, food stamps and subsidized housing.
In addition to the savings it represents to taxpayers, the federal child support program helps ensure a stronger start in life for millions of children across the country. Children who receive child support payments do better in school than those who do not receive payments and are more likely to attend college. Child support helps lift more than one million Americans out of poverty each year and makes it more likely for families to find and keep jobs.
http://kohl.senate.gov/~kohl/press/05/11/2005B04B01.html