[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.