Federal reform of the child support system has been the most significant part of welfare reform in the US over the past 25 years. The purpose of the reforms was to 1.) federalize the child support system, 2.) extend the welfare system's formulae and enforcement methods to non-welfare cases, and 3.) adapt to defined and as yet undefined international standards.

In 1973, The Hague Convention on Recognition and Enforcement established an international view of cooperation in the enforcement of child support orders. In 1974, apparently lacking any sense of coincidence, Senator Russell Long "perceived a connection" between "fathers who abandon their children" and a growth in AFDC spending. This led to the original federal child support and paternity legislation enacted in January 1975.

By the mid 1980s, it was clear that the proposed reforms were being promoted by people who could profit directly from them. The most aggressive promoters were private collection agencies which take a percent of the amount of child support paid in return for acting as middle-man in the payment process. These entrepreneurs worked together with other special interest groups, and unfortunately government employees and politicians, in a persistent and largely successful nationwide propaganda attack against a relatively peaceful, law-abiding, politically unorganized group of American citizens -- fathers.

At the Hague Conference on Private International Law in 1995, a U.S. delegate promised the international community that federal legislation would "provide for services at the federal level through a Central Authority to ensure an efficient, workable and uniformly implemented system in cooperation with the states and with the foreign countries which are willing to take part. In addition, the federal government is considering the possibility of the United States becoming a party to one or more of the existing conventions."

The domestic political discussion has consisted almost exclusively of propaganda demonizing non-custodial parents. But not a hint of information has been fed to the general public on integration of or "cooperation" in an array of social programs or the impact of global integration on our domestic judicial system. Had the government made a greater effort at full disclosure, the American public would surely have responded with pressure to adapt newly proposed systems to Constitutional requirements. Such dramatic reform as has been undertaken was neither necessary nor appropriate even in the context of cooperation with other nations.

As a result of the Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984, the National Center for State Courts and the Office of Child Support Enforcement selected someone to write a report to "assist states in development of their child support guidelines." By that time, it was clear that funding of the OCSE and their state operations would be tied to the amount of child support paid. These government organizations selected someone with no expertise in the application of laws governing child support decisions who had done no previous work in developing child support decision models. They selected a child support collection entrepreneur whose interest in arbitrarily increasing child support awards for profit was at least as great as their interest in increasing the funding they received.

Due to federal legislation tying funding to the amount paid, states have a direct financial interest in increasing child support awards. They have increased payments, mostly by middle and upper income payers to middle and upper income recipients, largely by accepting the recommendations for arbitrarily increasing awards and by eliminating due process rights that would lead to correction of award levels.

While complaints from citizens pile up by the millions, states defend their use of the formula with bold-faced lies. Among them is that the National Center for State Courts has carried out extensive economic studies which have led to a highly credible formula for determining just and appropriate child support awards. In addition, I quite recently have read newspaper articles claiming that the reforms have been an economic success.

The child support decision model recommended by the child support collection entrepreneur, in slightly modified form is the most popular formula in the states. State child support commissions today, which control the review of child support guidelines required by federal law are largely controlled by government units that receive funding in relation to the amount paid. Not one state has ever shown that use of their child support guideline results in just and appropriate awards in each case, as required by law. And the child support collection entrepreneur continues to be the consultant in highest demand in carrying out the reviews.

The second most popular child support formula in the states was first suggested by a group at the Institute for Research on Poverty and is part of what has been called the "Wisconsin Model" in relation to welfare reform. The Wisconsin Model for child support determination and enforcement was largely plagiarized from old Soviet law. Some, and probably most of it is still part of Russian family law today. There is no justification for its use in the United States.

Still today, there are defenders of the Wisconsin Model. There are those who will not admit the wrong that has been done. There are those who continue to blame the victim of the injustice, who continue to rely on the prejudice against fathers that was so skillfully built during the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of admitting the fault, they recommend a further reduction in human rights and the use of greater force against that target population. And we hear about it more subtly in political discussion today from candidates for office who want to "build on what has already been done."

A result of my own research that I should convey is that there is no credible research supporting the idea of the "adequacy gap" in the amount of child support awarded in the past. The "adequacy gap" served as the stated justification for increases in award amounts. It meant that courts had wrongfully awarded child support under rational child support laws and the prescribed correction was the use of rigid formula that promoters claimed would produce appropriate awards.

My own research led to an understanding that on the whole (overall result), judges did not award child support improperly (footnote *) and that the rational basis for the award of child support used before the federal reforms was appropriate. The so-called "adequacy gap" was nothing more than the arbitrary increase in award levels promised by formula promoters. Individual case results may have been wrong, but no one showed that such problems could not be dealt with in the best way through proper administration of justice in the courts.

Among other things, new federal child support enforcement services were thought to be required for families receiving assistance under AFDC, FC, and Medicaid programs. Even if true, it does not explain the expansion of federal government authority into non-welfare related family law, nor the mandate for use of rigid formulae for calculating child support awards in non-welfare cases. It came nowhere near explaining the import the expensive, dysfunctional, bureaucratic child support systems from other countries, which has been accomplished over the past two decades. This is particularly true since they have largely been a failure, both in the United States and in the countries of origin. Even the best of them simply achieves what parents most often do privately and none of them have achieved the high level of support for children by parents in the US (both current and historical).

All this might suggest that my testimony is in support of H.R. 1488, which would apparently reduce the profit potential in child support enforcement by shifting at least some of the collection process to the IRS. I do not however, support H.R. 1488. Still, it is apparent that something must be done. While child support reforms have not produced the reduction in welfare cost promised by their promoters, they have certainly produced a great deal of harm.
 
 

Footnote * One very important exception was found in the details. Prior to the introduction of the Income Shares model (most popular) after federal reforms were in place, many state judges and local bar associations developed and used "cost sharing guidelines" sharing the same logic. The difference was largely in the numeric values representing the "cost of children" and the judicious consideration of a wider range of mitigating factors before "guidelines" became presumptively correct. The logic expressed mathematically in this simple cost sharing model produces cost sharing proportions that unfairly reduce the amount of support awarded when the recipient's income is low, especially when the payer's income is much higher. The problem is easily corrected by proper inclusion of a self-support reserve as it is expressed in, for example, the Delaware-Melson formula.