    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [September 28, 1996]
    [Pages 1711-1712]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    The President's Radio Address
    September 28, 1996

        Good morning. Today I want to talk to you about a new executive
    action I'm taking to crack down on deadbeat parents who won't pay the
    child support they owe.
        During my time as President, I've had a straightforward strategy:
    opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and coming together in a
    stronger American community. That's America's basic bargain.
        We've worked hard to offer every American opportunity, the chance to
    make the most of his or her own life. We've got 10\1/2\ million new
    jobs, the lowest unemployment in 7\1/2\ years, the deficit has been cut
    by 60 percent. And just this week, we received more news that our
    strategy is working and America is on the right track. According to the
    U.S. census, the income of a typical family went up $1,600 over
    inflation over the past 2 years. In just the last year the increase was
    almost $900, the biggest increase in a decade. The number of people
    living in poverty and the rate of income inequality in our country
    dropped faster than at any time since 1968. Our economy clearly is on
    the right track to the 21st century.
        As we offer opportunity, we must also demand responsibility. The
    problems of our society will only be solved if there is an upsurge of
    personal responsibility, if individuals take it upon themselves to meet
    their obligations, do the right thing, and give something back to those
    around them.
        No area cries out for greater personal responsibility than the quiet
    crisis of child support. No one should be able to escape responsibility
    for bringing a child into the world. That is our first and most
    fundamental duty. But today, too many fathers have tried to walk away
    from that obligation. When a father leaves the home it can throw a
    mother and children into poverty. In fact, one of the main reasons
    people go on welfare is because the father has failed to meet his
    obligations of child support. If all the parents in this country paid
    the child support they owe, we could move 800,000 women and children off
    the welfare rolls tomorrow.
        So our administration has waged an unprecedented and sustained
    campaign to collect child support and make deadbeat parents pay up. We
    required States to set up programs at hospitals to find out the identity
    of fathers at the time a baby is born. Two hundred thousand fathers have
    been identified through this program. We're requiring mothers who
    receive welfare to tell us the name of the father of the child. We set
    up a national data base of delinquent parents and linked up the data
    bases from 17 States. And I'm pleased to report that in its first few
    months this system has identified over 60,000 delinquent fathers. Over
    half owed money to mothers on welfare.
        And the landmark welfare reform legislation I signed last month
    institutes the most dramatic crackdown yet on child support enforcement.
    It says to deadbeat parents, pay up or we'll track you down, garnish
    your wages, and make you pay what you owe. Under the new welfare law,
    States will suspend driver's licenses of deadbeats who don't pay and the
    National Government will take away passports. This year, at my
    direction, the IRS will collect $1 billion in child support by
    withholding part of tax refunds. The U.S. Postal Service has begun work
    with the States to post lists of parents who owe support. And we're
    using the new information technologies to catch delinquent parents,
    linking the web pages of 20 States to post the identities of deadbeat
    parents on the Internet.
        We now have new evidence of how effective this crackdown has been.
    In 4 years, child sup-

    [[Page 1712]]

    port collections in our country have risen from $8 billion to $11.8
    billion, a nearly 50 percent increase in child support collections. And
    nearly 800,000 paternities were identified. That's an increase of 50
    percent over 1992.
        We've made a real difference. But we can do more, and we must do
    more. This past week, the Justice Department proposed legislation making
    it a felony and increasing penalties for crossing State lines to avoid
    paying child support or to refuse to pay support for a child in another
    State.
        Last year I issued an Executive order requiring all employees of the
    Federal Government to pay the child support they owed. Today I'm issuing
    a new Executive order designed to crack down even harder on those who
    refuse to pay their child support.
        First, I'm ordering Federal agencies to take necessary and legal
    steps to deny Government loans, such as small business loans, farm
    loans, home loans, to deadbeat parents.
        Second, the Government will do more to collect child support itself.
    We'll create a streamlined computer system that can find out which
    people who receive Federal payments still owe child support. We'll
    deduct child support debts from these fees paid to Government
    consultants and vendors and the benefits paid to retired Federal
    employees. The Treasury Department estimates that some $800 million in
    payments go to these deadbeat parents. These funds can then be paid to
    the mother and the children.
        The Executive order says simply if you owe child support, you
    shouldn't get the support of the National Government. You can't make
    money off the taxpayers if you're refusing to support your own children.
    It says we mean business, and we intend to make responsibility a way of
    life.
        We know that when we do take responsibility we can meet the
    difficult challenges like crime, welfare, and poverty. We're already
    making real and dramatic progress on child support collections. And I am
    confident that we can make even more progress. But ultimately, we will
    only meet this challenge if we recognize that governments don't raise
    children, parents do. We need everyone to take responsibility to give
    our children the love and support they need and deserve, to show them by
    our own actions the meaning of right and wrong. If we do this, then I
    have great confidence in our country, our children, and our future.
        Thank you for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 7 p.m. on September 27 at a private
    residence in Houston, TX, for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on September 28.
    The Executive order of September 28 is listed in Appendix D at the end
    of this volume.