House Set To Revamp Child Support Collection

With billions of dollars in child support uncollected each year, a new bill is aimed at prodding states into doing a better job of tracking down deadbeats.

The bill, expected to sail through the House, would create a method for dividing up federal money to aid child support collection programs.

“The old incentive system for child support enforcement just doesn’t cut it,” said Donna Shalala, the Health and Human Services secretary.

Meanwhile, about a dozen states continue to worry about losing all their child support money after they miss an Oct. 1 deadline to computerize their collection systems.

Under the current system, Washington rewards states based on how much money they collect.

The House plan, approved by a subcommittee Thursday, bases payments on how many newborns have paternity established, how many child support court orders are established and how much the state collects in current payments and in past-due support.

It would also reward cost-effectiveness.

The big loser is California, which would lose about $30 million per year - more than half of it gets from Washington - if its performance does not improve over three years.

The House Ways and Means Committee is expected to approve the bill next week.

Meanwhile, California and other states face another vexing child support matter: failure to computerize their collection systems.

About a dozen states will miss the Oct. 1 deadline, and current law calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to pull their entire child support subsidy and welfare block grant.

States expected to miss the deadline include California, Hawaii, llinois, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and New Mexico, plus the District of Columbia.

Members of Congress representing those states are lobbying for an extension of the deadline, which has already been extended once.

“Imposing huge financial penalties … will not hasten the development of workable systems but will result in harming the very people who the … (laws) were designed to serve,” said a letter to President Clinton signed by 18 senators.

Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee that handles child support, is promising to introduce legislation in January giving HHS the power to reduce and delay fines.