[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 154 (Friday, November 18, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13326-S13329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I talk about two subjects that are very 
near and dear to my heart. The first is the matter of child support 
enforcement. My colleagues might wonder how does that issue arise. The 
fact is, last night, the House of Representatives passed their version 
of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. As each of us knows, the purpose 
of that Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is to actually bring down the 
Federal deficit by finding cuts in the Federal budget, the Federal 
budget that currently comprises something in excess of $2.5 trillion a 
year.
  This is a very important exercise. This represents the first time, I 
believe, since 1997 when we have seen real and meaningful cuts in 
Federal spending. The challenge, of course, is that about a third of 
the money the Congress spends is discretionary spending. Half of that 
third is defense spending, and the rest of it is homeland security and 
other discretionary programs. But some of that you can tell by the mere 
description is hardly discretionary because it is important to our 
national security.
  My point is that two-thirds of the Federal budget is not, even under 
any conception or definition, discretionary spending. It is Medicaid, 
Medicare, and Social Security, and we simply have to come to grips with 
that so-called entitlement or nondiscretionary spending in order to 
draw the reins in on a Federal Government that continues to grow day by 
day in its scope and size and expense.
  I am here to say I think there are some cuts that make more sense 
than others and some cuts make no sense whatsoever. I consider child 
support money that goes to assist the States in collecting child 
support to fall into that last category--cuts that make no sense 
whatsoever. Let me explain.
  The House bill will cut $5 billion in Federal funds from the child 
support program over 5 years--$5 billion over 5 years. It will cut 
$15.8 billion, almost $16 billion, over 10 years. This translates into 
a 40-percent reduction in Federal spending for the child support 
program. My State of Texas would lose $258 million over 5 years and 
$824 million over 10 years.
  I ask unanimous consent that a chart prepared by the Center for Law 
and Social Policy which lays out the proposed cut to Federal child 
support funding State by State be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        TABLE 2.--PROPOSED CUTS TO FEDERAL CHILD SUPPORT FUNDING
                              [$ millions]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                               10-Year
                     State                       5-year Cut   Cut, 2006-
                                                 2006-2010       2015
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama                                                -187          -59
Arizona                                                -188          -59
California                                           -1,006       -3,211
Connecticut                                             -71         -228
Dist. Columbia                                          -15          -49
Georgia                                                -105         -334
Idaho                                                   -19          -61
Illinois                                               -161         -514
Indiana                                                 -61         -194
Iowa                                                    -49         -157
Kansas                                                  -47         -151
Louisiana                                               -55         -176

[[Page S13327]]

 
Maine                                                   -22          -72
Maryland                                                -94         -299
Massachusetts                                           -88         -282
Michigan                                               -249         -795
Minnesota                                              -133         -425
Mississippi                                             -23          -72
Missouri                                                -82         -261
Montana                                                 -12          -40
Nebraska                                                -42         -134
Nevada                                                  -38         -121
N. Hampshire                                            -15          -48
New Jersey                                             -173         -554
New Mexico                                              -37         -119
New York                                               -303         -967
North Carolina                                         -106         -339
North Dakota                                            -11          -35
Ohio                                                   -288         -918
Oklahoma                                                -44         -139
Oregon                                                  -49         -156
Pennsylvania                                           -188         -602
Rhode Island                                            -11          -35
South Carolina                                          -33         -105
South Dakota                                             -8          -25
Tennessee                                               -75         -238
Texas                                                  -258         -824
Utah                                                    -34         -110
Vermont                                                 -11          -36
Virginia                                                -80         -256
Washington                                             -130         -415
West Virginia                                           -36         -114
Wisconsin                                               -96         -308
Wyoming                                                 -10          -31
    Nationwide                                      -$4,962     -$15,846
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLASP calculations based on preliminary estimates by the Congressional
  Budget Office of the total cut in federal child support funding under
  the House Ways and Means Committee budget reconciliation chairman's
  ``mark,'' The total cut was distributed by state based on each state's
  share of total child support administrative expenditures in 2004, as
  reported by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement
  Preliminary Report FY 2004, table 7.

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, those are the cuts, $5 billion over 5 
years, $16 billion roughly over 10 years.
  What is the impact of these cuts on child support collected? This 
will reduce child support collections by $7.9 billion over 5 years and 
$24.1 billion over 10 years.
  That is right, for a $5 billion cut, it eliminates $7.9 billion in 
child support collections. For a $16 billion cut, it eliminates $24.1 
billion in collections over 10 years. In my State of Texas these cuts 
will reduce child support collections by $411 million over 5 years and 
$1.25 billion over 10 years.
  At this point, I ask unanimous consent that a chart also prepared by 
the Center for Law and Social Policy, which states the projected impact 
on child support collections State by State, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


         TABLE 3.--PROJECTED IMPACT ON CHILD SUPPORT COLLECTIONS
                              [$ millions]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                               10-Year
                     State                       5-year Cut  Cut,  2006-
                                                 2006-2010       2015
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama                                                 -93         -285
Alaska                                                  -31          -95
Arizona                                                 -94         -286
Arkansas                                                -61         -185
California                                           -1,601       -4,884
Colorado                                               -104         -316
Connecticut                                            -113         -346
Delaware                                                -35         -108
Dist. Columbia                                          -24          -74
Florida                                                -366       -1,115
Georgia                                                -166         -508
Hawaii                                                  -15          -45
Idaho                                                   -30          -92
Illinois                                               -256         -782
Indiana                                                 -97         -295
Iowa                                                    -78         -239
Kansas                                                  -75         -230
Kentucky                                                -85         -258
Louisiana                                               -88         -268
Maine                                                   -36         -109
Maryland                                               -149         -454
Massachusetts                                          -140         -428
Michigan                                               -397       -1,210
Minnesota                                              -212         -647
Mississippi                                             -36         -110
Missouri                                               -130         -397
Montana                                                 -20          -61
Nebraska                                                -67         -204
Nevada                                                  -60         -183
N. Hampshire                                            -24          -74
New Jersey                                             -276         -842
New Mexico                                              -59         -181
New York                                               -482       -1,470
North Carolina                                         -169         -516
North Dakota                                            -18          -54
Ohio                                                   -458       -1,396
Oklahoma                                                -69         -211
Oregon                                                  -78         -237
Pennsylvania                                           -300         -915
Rhode Island                                            -18          -54
South Carolina                                          -53         -160
South Dakota                                            -12          -37
Tennessee                                              -119         -363
Texas                                                  -411       -1,253
Utah                                                    -55         -167
Vermont                                                 -18          -55
Virginia                                               -128         -390
Washington                                             -207         -631
West Virginia                                           -57         -173
Wisconsin                                              -153         -468
Wyoming                                                 -15          -47
    Nationwide                                      -$7,900     -$24,100
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLASP calculations based on preliminary estimates by the Congressional
  Budget Office of the projected effect of funding cuts on collections
  under the House Ways and Means Committee budget reconciliation
  chairman's ``mark.'' The total cut was distributed by state based on
  each state's share of total child support distributed collections in
  2004, as reported by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement
  Preliminary Report FY 2004, table 7.

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in the year 2004, the child support 
program collected $ 21.9 billion, while the program costs were $5.3 
billion. Let me make this clear for my colleagues. In other words, for 
every $1 spent by the Federal taxpayer $4.38 in child support was 
collected for the children who need it. This is not the typical Federal 
program. This is not money that once spent we see no real benefit from. 
Rather, this is one that for every dollar that is invested $4.38 in 
child support is collected for the children who need it and who are 
legally entitled to it.
  The President's 2006 budget cites the child support program as ``one 
of the highest rated block formula grants of all reviewed programs 
Governmentwide.'' This high rating is due to its strong mission, 
effective management, and demonstration of measurable progress toward 
meeting annual and long-term performance measures.
  Even there, the numbers and these sort of accolades about this 
program do not tell the whole story. The story is completed by the fact 
that many children who receive child support are thereby prevented from 
drawing down other Government programs. For example, child support 
enforcement reduces reliance on Medicaid, temporary assistance to needy 
families, and other social service programs. It is estimated that more 
than 1 million Americans were lifted out of poverty through child 
support programs in the year 2002 alone.
  So in addition to money that is a good return on investment, $4.38 
for every dollar, this money actually avoids additional expenditures of 
tax dollars by creating individuals who are qualified for other 
Government programs at a lot more expense to the Federal taxpayer.
  The problem with these cuts is that they are likely to reverse 
dramatic improvements in the child support program's performance over 
the past decade, and they may well force many families back on the 
welfare caseload. This means former welfare families and working 
families of modest income will lose an important source of income that 
now enables them to maintain financial self-sufficiency and thereby 
having to draw on Government resources through public assistance 
programs.
  The reason I feel so passionately about these particular cuts and the 
effectiveness of the child support enforcement program is that for 4 
years before I came to the Senate I served as attorney general of 
Texas. It was my job, on behalf of approximately 1.2 million children, 
to see that they got the child support that they deserved, that they 
needed, and that they were legally entitled to.
  I am proud to say that my State ranks second in the Nation in terms 
of total collections, collections of about $1.8 billion in fiscal year 
2005, and an increase of 83 percent of collections since fiscal year 
2000.
  Now, that did not happen by accident. The reason it did happen is 
because of the great work being done by the men and women in the child 
support enforcement division of the State of Texas. It also happened 
because of the money that is provided by the Federal Government to help 
fund this necessary function. Due to the good work of these hard 
working men and women in the child support division, obligations, that 
is court orders, establishing support have risen from 55 to 82 percent 
of the qualifying population, and the cost-effectiveness in Texas has 
gone from $4.96 to $6.81.
  I mentioned the national average of $4.38 for every dollar spent. In 
Texas, we now collect $6.81 for every dollar spent.
  If the financial benefits, if the cost-effectiveness of this program, 
and if the avoidance of other costs to the Federal taxpayer were not 
enough, there are other intangible benefits to a strong and effective 
child support enforcement program. I have seen with my own eyes that 
too many families, when they divorce, reach a tacit agreement with 
regard to their children. Moms who frequently are the ones who have 
custody of the children sometimes

[[Page S13328]]

reach a tacit agreement with their ex-spouse, typically the father, 
that if they do not exercise their visitation rights that the mother 
will not press the father for the financial support to which their 
children are legally entitled.
  What happens is that these children become two-time losers. Not only 
are they denied the financial benefits that the law says they are 
entitled to, they are denied contact with both parents that every child 
needs in order to have the best chance of success.
  Indeed, one of the intangible benefits of an effective child support 
program is not just the money collected, it is not just lifting 
children who would otherwise be in poverty out of poverty, it is not 
just avoiding the additional expenses of Government programs that would 
otherwise be invoked if that support was not there, it is literally the 
benefit of having a mother and a father both engaged, involved, and 
committed to the welfare of their children.
  I can think of no more important purpose that our efforts could serve 
than to reunite mothers, fathers, and children in a collective effort 
to improve the status of our children and their prospects for a bright 
future.

  So I hope in the conference on the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 our 
colleagues in the House will reconsider, and I hope our colleagues in 
the Senate will persuade them that of all the cuts they might have 
chosen these were the least deserving and that the money should be 
reinstated. I am confident throughout the $2.5 trillion Federal budget 
that there are other programs, other waste, other fat, other 
ineffective programs that could be more effectively cut and with far 
less damage to the most vulnerable among us.


                              PATRIOT Act

  Finally, just for a couple of minutes, maybe 5, I want to speak about 
another subject, and that is the USA PATRIOT Act. It has been more than 
4 years since our country was hit on September 11 by terrorists who 
care nothing for our way of life and nothing for the laws of war. They 
have attacked, because they could, innocent civilians in their jihad 
against those who have different ways of life and different views.
  We know the PATRIOT Act has been largely responsible for making 
America safer by bringing down the wall that prevented the sharing of 
information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, by 
making available to our FBI and other intelligence-gathering bodies the 
same sort of techniques that are currently used against organized crime 
members and other criminals. Simply, what this body did in the PATRIOT 
Act was make sure that we used every legal and reasonable means to root 
out terrorism, to investigate it, and to stop it before it killed other 
innocent Americans.
  The PATRIOT Act was passed shortly after September 11 by a strong 
bipartisan vote of 98 to 1 in the Senate and 357 to 66 in the House. As 
I said, the PATRIOT Act enhanced law enforcement and intelligence 
agencies' ability to gather and analyze intelligence information and to 
use the most modern communications technologies, such as e-mail, 
cellular telephones, and the Internet, and it strengthened criminal 
laws and penalties against terrorists.
  As always, we must be concerned with the right balance between the 
need to protect innocent American lives and the need to preserve our 
civil liberties. Despite the dire predictions of some groups, the 
PATRIOT Act has not eroded any of our rights that we hold near and dear 
as Americans. To the contrary, the PATRIOT Act has enabled the Justice 
Department, the FBI, and the CIA and other Federal, State, and local 
law enforcement agencies to cooperate and to share information and 
thereby save American lives and protect what is perhaps the most 
important civil liberty of all, and that is freedom from future 
terrorist attacks.
  I serve on the Judiciary Committee, and we have held 25 oversight 
hearings to date within the Judiciary Committee to ensure that we have 
both the tools we need and that we struck the right balance between 
civil liberties and our need to be secure. As all of our colleagues 
know, several sections of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire, sections 
203 and 218, on December 31, 2005. These are the very provisions that 
have been instrumental in bringing down this wall that has previously 
separated different agencies of the Federal Government in getting 
information that is needed in order to save American lives and to stop 
terrorist attacks.
  I would just read briefly from recent testimony before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee by Peter Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the 
Northern District of Illinois, who has recently been in the news. He 
has recounted from personal experience how this wall between law 
enforcement and intelligence personnel have operated in practice. He 
said:

       I was on a prosecution team in New York that began a 
     criminal investigation of Usama Bin Laden in early 1996. The 
     team--prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to the criminal 
     case--had access to a number of sources. We could talk to 
     citizens. We could talk to local police officers. We could 
     talk to other U.S. Government agencies. We could talk to 
     foreign police officers. Even foreign intelligence personnel. 
     And foreign citizens. And we did all those things as often as 
     we could. We could even talk to al Qaeda members--and we did. 
     We actually called several members and associates of al Qaeda 
     to testify before a grand jury in New York. And we even 
     debriefed al Qaeda members overseas who agreed to become 
     cooperating witnesses. But there was one group of people we 
     were not permitted to talk to. Who? The FBI agents across the 
     street from us in lower Manhattan assigned to a parallel 
     intelligence investigation of Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. 
     We could not learn what information they had gathered. That 
     was ``the wall.''

  Well, people who remember the hearings before the 9/11 Commission 
will remember that there were a number of high-profile witnesses from 
Janet Reno, the former Attorney General of the United States, to former 
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served during the first term of the 
Bush administration, and FBI Director Mueller. Witness after witness 
testified that that wall between criminal investigators and our 
intelligence-gathering communication prevented the sharing of 
information that has been absolutely critical in protecting innocent 
American lives and preventing future terrorist attacks.
  It is that same wall that will be resurrected on December 31, 2005, 
unless the U.S. Congress acts. It is absolutely critical that we look 
at this with cold-eyed clarity and not be swayed by scare tactics or 
emotional appeals.
  I am astonished, when I look at the reality of how the PATRIOT Act 
has made our Nation safer, that there are those who would use scare 
tactics to try to convince them that America's civil liberties are 
somehow imperiled. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union, time 
and time again, through fundraising appeals and elsewhere, has 
misrepresented the PATRIOT Act in a way that I believe has frightened 
the American people. They happen to use it to raise money in their 
direct mail campaign, but it has had the disservice of breaking 
American resolve and confusing the American people about exactly what 
is at stake and what the benefits of the PATRIOT Act are.
  Perhaps the most telling manifestation of the effectiveness of their 
scare tactics and their misinformation campaign is that approximately 
300 different municipalities across America have passed resolutions 
calling for the repeal of the PATRIOT Act. I think we have to mark that 
off to a lack of good information, or perhaps the gullibility on the 
part of some of these city councils and others. Because, as the Senate 
Judiciary Committee has found out, when you ask the American Civil 
Liberties Union to detail a single violation of American civil 
liberties as a result of the passage and implementation of the PATRIOT 
Act, they have been able to come up with none, zero, zilch, nada.
  Senator Dianne Feinstein, with whom I am honored to serve on the 
Senate Judiciary Committee, who always does a very diligent job on 
behalf of her constituents and on behalf of the Senate, asked the ACLU 
to search the records and come up with a single instance that they 
believe demonstrated or proved that the PATRIOT Act imperiled the civil 
liberties of the American people, and they did not come up with a 
single example.
  I hope, as we continue to work on a conference report to reauthorize 
the PATRIOT Act, that the Members of the Senate will do our jobs with a 
clarity of mind based upon evidence and not yield to the scare tactics 
by those who want to create a disinformation campaign and perhaps 
confuse the American people about the importance of the PATRIOT Act. It 
is absolutely critical that we reauthorize this act, that

[[Page S13329]]

we not allow that wall to be resurrected because the truth is, we owe 
it to the American people and we owe it to those whose lives will 
literally be lost unless we do our job and reauthorize the PATRIOT Act 
before provisions of that act expire on December 31, 2005.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________