[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5094-S5095]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. SNOWE (for herself, Mr. Dole, Mr. Bradley, Mr. 
        Rockefeller, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Kerry, and Mrs. Feinstein):
  S. 1760. A bill to amend part D of title IV of the Social Security 
Act to improve child support enforcement services, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Finance.


               the child support improvement act of 1996

 Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Child 
Support Improvement Act of 1996.
  Fourteen months ago, Senator Dole and I introduced our bill, the 
Child Support Responsibility Act of 1995, which later became an 
important piece of the welfare reform bill. Since that time, Congress 
has twice passed welfare reform, and twice it has been vetoed.
  And now, we are in much the same place we were 14 months ago. While 
it is my sincerest hope that child support will pass as part of a 
comprehensive

[[Page S5095]]

welfare reform bill this year, I believe that we must seize this 
opportunity to move forward on child support. Because this issue is too 
important to the future of American children to stand by and wait any 
longer.
  For many of our Nation's children, the American dream is a rapidly 
fading mirage--one that they can see but are unable to firmly grasp. 
I'm talking specifically about the millions of children who suffer from 
the neglect of deadbeat parents--those parents who help bring a child 
into the world and then, for whatever reasons, renege on their 
responsibilities as a parent to care for them and give them the tools 
necessary to craft a better life than the one we enjoy today.
  At a time when one in four children grow up in single-parent 
households, the crisis of unpaid child support remains a heavy burden. 
It is a burden that has not only taken an emotional toll on single 
parents and their children, but an economic toll as well. And it is 
sapping the financial resources of our State governments.
  While many single parents have had some success in winning child 
support, only half of those who succeed actually receive what is owed. 
The other half receives partial payments or no payments at all. And an 
alarming 40 percent of single parents who seek child support do not 
succeed in winning any order at all. That means that, while the 
potential for child support collections is estimated to exceed $47 
billion each year, only $15 billion or so is ever collected from 
noncustodial parents.
  Worse yet, those single parents who have never been married have a 
difficult time receiving any child support payments at all. Data 
collected from the 1990 census indicates that of all mothers who have 
never been married, 75 percent did not have child support orders and 
more than 50 percent had household incomes below the poverty level.
  These statistics translate into unprecedented burdens for single 
parents and their children, many of whom struggle to find good child 
care, quality medical care, warm clothes, or simply put food on the 
table.
  In all fairness, Congress has tried to strengthen child support 
enforcement mechanisms prior to this term. In 1975, Congress did pass 
the Child Support Enforcement and Paternity Establishment Program as 
part of the Social Security Act, and then it enacted further 
improvements to this effort by way of the 1984 Child Support 
Enforcement Amendments and the Family Support Act of 1988.
  Despite these actions, States have been hard pressed to keep pace 
with the virtual tidal wave of mothers seeking child support. States 
are faced with the daunting task of locating parents, establishing 
paternity, establishing child support orders, and collecting child 
support payments. Yet States have been hampered by a lack of leadership 
and technical support from the Federal Government.
  As a former Member of the House of Representatives, I have a long 
history of working to change and improve Federal laws governing child 
support enforcement, and introduced my own legislation to help relieve 
single parents and their children of the institutional barriers to 
progress on this issue. As cochair of the Congressional Caucus for 
Women's Issues, we made child support enforcement one of our top 
legislative priorities in previous Congresses, where some 30 bills were 
introduced to address this problem. But I believe we have come to a 
point where everyone agrees that child support enforcement is one of 
the most important aspects of our campaign to revamp the welfare system 
of this country. It affects every State--children at every income 
level--and it affects both single mothers and single fathers. As a 
national problem, child support enforcement merits a national solution. 
And we must demonstrate our leadership by providing it.
  That's why I have joined forces again with the distinguished majority 
leader, Senator Dole, to introduce the Child Support Improvement Act of 
1996. I should add, Mr. President, that this bill has true bipartisan 
support, and is intended to complement the efforts of my House 
colleagues, Congresswomen Nancy Johnson and Barbara Kennelly, who have 
introduced companion legislation in the House. Together, we have 
introduced the same child support provisions which received 
overwhelming support from both parties of Congress, as well as the 
administration, during welfare reform.
  By passing this legislation, we will send a clear signal to deadbeat 
parents that their days of irresponsibility are over. We will also send 
clear signal to States that the Federal Government will provide them 
with the assistance they need to collect child support on behalf of 
millions of American families.
  The bill contains commonsense reforms which achieve the following:
  To strengthen efforts to locate parents, it expands the Federal 
parent locator system by creating Federal and State data banks of child 
support orders, and allowing State-to-State access of the network. It 
also creates Federal and State directories of new hires, to allow for 
basic information supplied by employers from W-4 forms to be compared 
against child support data.

  To ensure that collected funds go to families as soon as possible, it 
establishes a centralized State collections and disbursements unit, and 
requires employers that garnish wages from employees to pay those 
withheld wages to the State within 5 days.
  To increase paternity establishment, our approach simplifies 
paternity procedures, facilitates voluntary acknowledgement, and 
encourages outreach.
  To ensure that child support orders are fair and equitable to 
children, it provides for a simplified process for review and 
adjustment of child support orders, and requires provisions for heath 
care coverage to be required in child support orders. And to facilitate 
child support enforcement and collection, it requires States to adopt 
the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, to encourage the seamless 
enforcement of child support orders across State lines.
  Finally, this bill expands the penalties for child support 
delinquency to include the denial of professional, recreational and 
driver's license to deadbeat parents, and permits the denial of a 
passport for individuals who are more than $5,000 in arrears. My 
husband, former Gov. Jock McKernan, pioneered a similar program in 
Maine in 1993. This program has been an amazing success in my home 
State. Between August 1993 and April 1996, $44 million was collected in 
outstanding child support payments from 15,000 individuals. In fact, in 
one case, a long-haul trucker who owed the State $19,000 drove to the 
State capitol and paid the amount in one lump sum. In another case, a 
real estate agent who owed more than $11,000 in child support money 
contacted the State and agreed to sell off some land to pay off his 
debt. Clearly, it's worth taking these steps. But we can do--and should 
do--much more.
  Mr. President, perhaps if we can replicate the successes of States 
like Maine on a national level, we can begin to ease and eventually 
lift the economic and emotional burdens caused by delinquent child 
support payments, and at last bring the justice, security, and equity 
to millions of single parents and their children.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that 
noncustodial parents begin to accept and bear responsibility for their 
children, who will reap the financial support they so justly deserve 
and desperately need.
                                 ______