Not content with repealing welfare reform through the job-killing stimulus package, and proposing a massive marriage penalty in the tax code, Obama and his Congressional allies are now planning to make married and widowed taxpayers subsidize benefits for which they are not eligible, such as payments to households with out-of-wedlock births. For example, they are pushing a bill that will allow even households that receive tens of thousands of dollars a year in child support to demand food stamps.
“With support from President Obama, Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL) introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2009 for Father’s Day, a bill cosponsored by then-Senator Barack Obama in the last Congress.” The bill will “ensure that child support payments to families do not count as income and result in loss of food stamps.”
Intact families, and widows, usually have every dollar they make considered in whether they qualify for food stamps. But under the Obama-backed proposal, unwed mothers, and divorced mothers, would not, since the child-support dollars they receive would be arbitrarily excluded.
Take a hypothetical widow and divorced woman, both of whom have children to take care of. The widow’s household has an income of $25,000 a year, based solely on the widow’s salary for working in a meat-packing plant. The divorced woman, who does not work, has an income of $48,000, $12,000 from alimony, and $36,000 from child support — the actual amounts received by a divorced mom with one child in Freedman v. Freedman, 730 N.E.2d 913 (Mass. App. 2000).
Under Obama’s plan, the divorced woman is eligible for food stamps, even though she is not poor, because her child support is arbitrarily excluded from her income.
But the widow, who makes much less than the divorced woman, and works much more, is not eligible for food stamps, simply because her income is from working, not from child support. Instead, she ends up paying for the divorcee’s food stamps with her hard-earned tax dollars. (I’ve actually understated the case, since the earnings for my hypothetical divorced mom are based on a 2000 court decision in Massachusetts, where child support levels have since risen radically).
The Obama-backed bill also increases the federal matching funds states receive for maximizing their collection of child support payments, giving them an incentive to artificially jack up child support obligations in order to reap federal money (as many states did in the aftermath of the 1988 Family Support Act), even if that means forcing fathers who have never missed a payment to pay much more than the actual cost of raising a child. I have previously written about how court-ordered child support payments generally exceed the actual cost of raising a child under most existing state child-support guidelines.
(The other way for states to increase their collections, and thus reap federal matching funds, would be to increase rates of compliance with child support obligations, rather than increasing the obligations themselves. But that is much more difficult for states to do, since deadbeat dads tend to be low-income men who cannot possibly pay all that they have ordered to pay under state child support guidelines, which typically order divorced fathers to make payments that exceed what the fathers spent on their children back when they were married, financially destroying some of them in the process. As Glenn Sacks observes, the “Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement’s own data show that two-thirds of ‘deadbeat dads’ earn poverty-level wages, and only 4 percent earn even $40,000 a year.” It is much easier for states to ratchet up the child-support obligations imposed on middle-class fathers who already pay their child support, than to collect unpaid child support owed by low-income fathers.)
By the way, I am not divorced, and have never been ordered to pay child support.
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The real penalty, as we can see, is on those who have the audacity to keep themselves financially independent of the State. It’s hard to vote against one’s own lifeline.
I agree completly that the child support collections have gone to far. I work with several good, hard working men who have to live with family members because their child support is so high they can’t afford to live on their own. There is no way they would have spend the majority of their income on their children when they wouldn’t have enough left to buy groceries. sad sad
I would like to meet the person who actually gets that much in child support! It’s very hard to get consistant payments from the father! I agree with Obama because being single makes it much harder for women to provide for their children! Is it really that bad for children to be able to have food in their stomaches? There are many who has snubbed their noses at food stamp recipients that have to be on them now. I haven’t met anyone who is proud to be on them! It’s very difficult raising children alone but as mothers we don’t give up and try to make our childrens lives a little easier. Stop holding grudges because you or someone you know might need them too!
This not only in response to your article; by the way, well done.
But I would like to respond to the post on July 2, 2009 at 4:03 am.
It is obvious and understandable that from an outsiders’ point of view to express a surreal opinion like that.
However, my mother was single with two children. Never were we on food stamps, or were we ever on welfare and I had a ‘rich’ and healthy childhood. My mother would have accepted help for me and my brother, but SHE WOULD HAVE NEVER ALLOWED SOMEONE TO ALSO SUPPORT HER! She knew that with common sense and a ‘moral heart.’
How many children need to eat, be clothed and play video games with $150.00 a week? (And you have been given a low estimate.). If there is one child receiving that much in a functional family household, I would show you an overweight and very spoiled child.
Let us get to reality here. The situations involved have nothing to do with the children. It is about State level government getting their money off the enslaved men and women, (yes women also are victimized), working for the system. To include they are without any visitation rights what-so=ever. Child visitation and Child support are not handled by one administrative action.
If you have the guts and ‘heart’ to read even a handful of the horrific situations, including suicides, then go to this petition site: PetitionChildSupportReform.com.
So many people are under the illusion that this really is about the children, and I understand that; and why. But the majority of the horrific situations out there, just don’t fall into most peoples’ little white or black scenarios.
One individual should not be supporting whole other families.
One individual should not be supporting multiple live in lovers.
One individual should be allowed to not only know what the money is spent on by a custodial parent, but also the County, State and Federal level. (What is .01 X 50 Billion Dollars?). Where is the excess money going? Where is the Accountability?
NON-’PATERNAL’ individuals should not be in the system, nor should they be going to jail.
Birth Certificates are being used to establish paternity; when we have DNA Technology.
It goes on and on and on… This system is the most corrupt system and no-one has the guts or heart to see the Truth.
Check PetitionChildSupportReform.com out… only if you have the guts to take the vail that has been shrouding your heart.
FATHER BLESS I do understand the thinking and how it got placed there… jim