MzRockMon's The Child Support Hustle®️

Let’s All Thank Bill Clinton for The Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act

Kenya N. Rahmaan

 

 

 

The U.S. government launched a welfare recovery system to combat alleged abuses of the welfare system. The system, known today as the Child Support Enforcement Agency, was revamped in 1998 courtesy of former President Bill Clinton. According to CNN.com (1998), the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act entails felony punishment for a parent who moves to another state or country intending to evade child support payments. The law was transparent in its meaning and purpose when implemented. The government made the punishments clear as well.

 

 

If a debt remained unpaid for over a year or was more significant than $5,000, the parent faced a prison sentence and fines. The guidelines are clear that a judge must prove a parent willful in failing to pay child support instead of being too poor to pay. Government officials have made several points that specified the intentions of the reformed child support program and the new law shortly after the program’s reintroduction. For example, the reintroduction was to combat the rising number of families relying on the former welfare system.

 

 

According to former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families, John Monahan (1998), child support was essential to welfare reform because it sent a message of responsibility to both parents. There, of course, are not many arguments against parental responsibility. However, it becomes a problem when government programs shift their responsibility to care for the less fortunate onto other low-income people. These programs are supposed to provide a safety net for families struggling to provide basic needs for their children and themselves.

 

 

The child support system and the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act essentially made it a crime to be too disadvantaged to provide those basic needs. By the agency’s admission, child support helps to ensure that single-parent families and their children do not need to rely on welfare in the first place (Manahan, 1998). By transferring the burden from the government to the parents, the system failed to provide cash, food stamps, and medical insurance for those families without providing the necessary tools to become self-sufficient. Strict restrictions and requirements, including signing over the rights to future child support payments, forced needy parents off the welfare system and placed that responsibility onto the non-custodial parents.

 

 

Theoretically, responsibilities for providing for our children should be on the parent’s shoulders. Still, reality changes the dynamic when both parents are disadvantaged. Based on the report by The Department of Health and Human Services (1998), many low-income non-custodial parents want to do right but do not earn enough to meet their child support responsibilities. This statement boils down to that low-income parents are not willfully failing to provide for their children and therefore are not breaking any law. Since this information was known and reported over two decades ago, low-income parents should not be labeled deadbeats. 

 

 

The law does not appropriately represent most circumstances, nor does the statistics represent the large majority of parents. Deadbeats, by law, are those that evade child support responsibilities and willfully fail to support their children. That is vastly different from being a low-income parent and simply too poor to meet obligations. The Clinton Administration may have implemented the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act with the best intentions, but those intentions were quickly lost. Some say the intentions were never good in the first place.  

 

 

States and counties love flooding internet articles and newspaper headlines advertising “Deadbeat” roundups across the country. Poor parents are not necessarily deadbeats. The government should stop labeling parents delinquent on child support payments with such a derogatory term. Our elected officials and those hired to carry out the law should be forced to acknowledge the distinction between dead broke parents and deadbeat parents. Dead broke should never automatically mean deadbeat. 

 

 

The welfare-to-work programs that the government initially mandated to receive welfare benefits could be used today with one exception. Congress needs to remove the required child support cooperation mandate immediately. The highly exaggerated arrears amounts must be erased by executive order. The grant money that states use when performance measures are met or exceeded should be reinvested into job programs so parents can find long-term employment.  

 

These programs will be extremely beneficial to the children and their families. They will genuinely assist with the goal of self-sufficiency.  The government can pursue and prosecute the real ‘deadbeats’ by employing such programs if necessary. Those parents have the means to support the children but willfully fail to provide any support. The Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act and the child support system are just more examples of government-borne programs that have waged war against America’s low-income and poor parents.

 

 

References:

CNN. (1998, June 24). Clinton Signs Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act – June 24, 1998. Retrieved August 18, 2014, from http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/06/24/deadbeat.parents.bill/

Department of Health and Human Services. (1998, January 29). Child Support Enforcement Systems Penalties. Retrieved August 18, 2014, from http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t980129b.html

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