Cutting to the chase on the deadbeats' trail - parents who are delinquent in meeting child support payments

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 26, 1993 | by Susan Moran

Bond's and Polito's back of success with state and local agencies isn't unusual. Child support enforcement specialists who track down delinquent parents are responsible for an average of 1,000 cases each on any given day, says Elizabeth Ray, district manager of the child support enforcement agency in Norfolk. In other states as well, most enforcement specilists have huge caseloads, according to the White House Domestic Policy Committee.

"It's a bureaucratic nightmare," says Bruce Reed, deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.

Given the ineffectiveness of local and state authorities (who take an average of two years to track down recalcitrant parents), both the White House and Congress are grappling with ways to tighten up the collection system.

"The states have an important role to play, but now the system is mired in bureaucracy," says Reed, who handles welfare reform and child support enforcement for the White House. "The states get incentive payments from the federal government, which they can then use to subsidize their welfare systems or their highway systems or anything they want to. Clinton thinks that child support enforcement money should be spent on child support enforcement."

Though HHS is responsible for enforcing child support laws, Clinton has formed the Welfare Reform Working Group -- made up of officials from the Justice Department, HHS and the Internal Revenue Service -- which will propose welfare and child support reforms to Clinton this year. Clinton, in turn, will propose a reform bill to Congress.

"There is no reason why as a society we should look the other way when parents don't take care of their children," says Reed. "We think that calling national attention to this problem and turning up the heat will make a big difference. . . . The fundamental problems at the moment are in enforcement, and we need to prove that we can strengthen the laws and strengthen the enforcement."

One of the most effective ways to enforce collection may be to bring the IRS, which collects some unpaid child support, more into the picture. The IRS currently runs a computer tape sent by the Office of Child Support Enforcement at HHS against an IRS master file of the 157.1 million people who file tax returns. "If someone has any complaint, then they should take it up with their state," says an IRS spokeswoman. "The IRS is only collecting [the money]. We are like a pipeline."

Tommy Graganus got caught in that pipeline. After years of owing child support, he recently was informed by the IRS that it was going to keep his $3,500 tax refund to cover the past payments. Graganus objects. "They sent me a letter saying that I owed child support -- but I don't owe it," he says.

Graganus's case is not unique. In 1992, the IRS withheld $659 million from 987,948 taxpayers who were behind in their child support payments and returned the money to the states. Since the IRS first got involved in 1981, it has collected $3.2 billion for court-ordered child support, from 5.5 million returns.