Kenya N. Rahmaan
As many know, August is known as Child Support Awareness Month nationwide. In recognition of the child support program, local agencies have promoted the services provided, celebrated their employees, and boasted about the money collected during the previous fiscal year. Many states have mainly bragged about how much the collections increased in 2020. Not only have collections significantly increased during the past year, but government-owed child support debt has also experienced a significant decrease.
According to Elaine Sorenson (2021), this significant drop in arrears was primarily driven by the Economic Impact Payments (EIP) of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child issued to most Americans as part of the 2020 CARES Act. If a paying parent owed child support debt or arrears to the government or the other parent, the government seized the payment to cover the debt. This government uses the offset process to snatch income tax refunds, unemployment payments, and money deposited into bank accounts. When the government has complete control over who can and cannot receive much-needed funds, child support collections are bound to increase in record numbers.
Even after extensive research, the pass-through option has remained, and common sense has proven that the money better serves children when they receive the payments. A study released by Jane Venohr, Ph.D. for the Colorado Department of Human Services Division of Child Support Enforcement (2013) revealed numerous reasons why paying full child support to children provides the best outcome. Besides the obvious being that custodial families have more income when child support payments are passed through in full to them, Venohr mentioned that:
Undoubtedly, the children named in the child support orders, whether they are TANF recipients or not, should be entitled to all child support paid on their behalf. Because the program is a welfare recovery system, the main focus has and will always be to regain expenditures spent on low-income families and children needing government assistance. https://youtu.be/sE5EnetBlnk It seems to be of no consequence that the states receive TANF block grants that they rarely spend to help low-income families while refusing to pay child support to those same families.
According to Ali Safawi and Liz Schott (2021), states spend only about a fifth of their combined federal and state dollars under the TANF block grant on basic assistance for families with children, and several states spent less than a tenth. States have flexibility over how they spend block grants and how much the state spends each fiscal year. Ohio, for example, receives $725.6 million yearly from the federal government and is supposed to spend some of it on its citizens during hard times. Sadly, it appears that Ohio did record-high amounts of child support collections, and government officials also managed to increase the TANF coffers.
Susan Tebben of the Ohio Capital-Journal (2021) reported that as the state went through a pandemic and many Ohio families lost their jobs, the state’s balance in federal and state funding allocated to assist low-income families grew. By all accounts, while the government reaped the rewards of strict child support collection policies and lenient TANF grant regulations, Ohioans were left to struggle during one of the worst pandemics in recent history without financial support from the government.
According to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities or CBPP (2021), as of 2019, Ohio had accumulated $582 million in unspent TANF block grants. Even though there had been estimates that the unspent ‘rainy day’ funds would be depleted by 2024, evidence has proven that false. The ODJFS services framework data for 2021 showed the “sustainability fund balance,” a build-up of unspent TANF funding, had an estimated balance of $656 million in 2020 (Tebben, 2021). Last year was undoubtedly fruitful for Ohio in terms of making money off the backs of the less fortunate, primarily when children were concerned.
Further proof is evident when considering that the Buckeye State reported receiving $6.65 for every $1 spent in 2020 on the child support program, which is over a dollar more than the national average. Of course, every state benefited from the offset policies and took much-needed money from parents and children suffering from COVID-19. Jurisdictions such as South Dakota, Mississippi, and Texas reported double-digit returns for their dollar, receiving $11.74, $12.07, and $13.57, respectively (OCSE, 2021). Sadly, of the three, Texas is the only one to pass through a mere $75 collected for the children receiving TANF. Attorney General Paxton and other officials have been in the news bragging about the Lone Stars ‘ record-breaking child support collections in 2020. https://youtu.be/ESuVZWyT7S8
As we move forward in the fight for child support reform, there must be absolute transparency and accountability for the overseers of the child support program. It does a great disservice to this country and the citizens to allow the people running such a sizeable governmental operation to pat themselves on the back for a job well done without mentioning how performance measures have been met and exceeded. This accountability is crucial, especially when incentive money is the reward that agencies receive when performances such as current collection amounts, return-on-investments, and collections on arrears determine performance. The government controls every aspect of collecting money from parents, from garnishment to incarceration, even when they cannot afford the payments. The amount collected should not mean a celebration, particularly when the states can hoard the TANF grant money and keep the child support payments away from the rightful owners.
References:
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2020). Ohio TANF spending. https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/tanf_spending_oh.pdf
County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. (n.d.). Full child support pass-through and disregard. https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/take-action-to-improve-health/what-works-for-health/strategies/full-child-support-pass-through-and-disregard
Office of Child Support Enforcement. (2021, June 17). FY 2020 preliminary annual report and tables. Retrieved August 30, 2021, from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/css/policy-guidance/fy-2020-preliminary-annual-report-and-data
Safawi, A., & Schott, L. (2021, January 12). Policy brief: To lessen hardship, states should invest more TANF dollars in basic assistance for families. https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/to-lessen-hardship-states-should-invest-more-tanf-dollars-in-basic-0. https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/to-lessen-hardship-states-should-invest-more-tanf-dollars-in-basic-0
Sorensen, E. (2021, May 11). Certified child support arrears shows sharp decline. Office of Child Support Enforcement. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/css/ocsedatablog/2021/05/certified-child-support-arrears-shows-sharp-decline
Tebben, S. (2021, April 11). Federal funding for low-income families stayed in state coffers amid pandemic. Ohio Capital Journal. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2021/04/12/federal-funding-for-low-income-families-stayed-in-state-coffers-amid-pandemic/
Venohr, J. (2013, September 4). Exploring a child support pass-through option for Colorado. Center for Policy Research – Enhancing individual, family, and community well-being. https://centerforpolicyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/Co-Passthrough-Sept-2013-final-report.pdf
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