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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Sat, 10 Feb 1996, fathers wrote:

> Imagine what would have happened to an executive in corporate American 
> who misrepresented a statistic by tens of Billions of dollars!!

Yes!!  We elected him President!!  Actually about 4 of them!

> Gentlemen -- what do we do with a 'public servant' who does this?!  
> Repeatedly and intentionally!!  Day in and day out?

Elect them as Presidents, Governors and Mayor of Large Urban populations.

> From: Don Lewis 

> Jan is right.  It's there.
> 
> It is remarkable to see  DHHS is featuring this hypothetical child
> support advocacy study claiming a $34 Billion child support
> enforcement gap  on their home page.   It is a monument to how far
> some will go to maintain the economic oppression of fathers today. 
> It is now well known that the hypothetical  $34 Billion enforcement
> gap in Ms. Sorenson's paper is far different from the *actual*
> enforcement gap. I have included the DHHS home page in text below for
> some who may not have browsers. 

This is the greatest "shell game" since "3 card monte".  As we shuffle 
the cards:

> For those who may not remember, this is as best *anyone* can tell
> the *hypothetical* advocacy study from which the famous $34 Billion
> dollar child support enforcement gap originated.   The $34 Billion
> was mentioned in the State of the Union address  in January 1995 as
> the *actual* enforcement gap.   The $34 Billion figure was mentioned
> day in and day out last spring in the Congress of the United States 
> as the *actual* child support enforcement gap to enrage congress
> members against non-custodial parents  during the hearings on
> welfare. 

What nobody bothered to tell Congress, or the public was that the net 
would actually be a loss.  Legally, the child support would be paid to 
the mother or guardian of the children.  Most mothers won't go to a 
lawyer or collection agency because they don't want to lose 1/3 of the 
settlement money.  DHHS would actually take as much as 70% based on past 
practices and stipulations sanctioned by HR 4.  The mothers would love 
that government went after the "deadbead dads" for about 3 months, then 
they would be rampaging for impeachment when they discovered that they 
would only get about 1/3 of the payment.

Even this net 2/3 that would "go to DHHS", would actually end up being 
spend in litigation.  What little was left would go to the law 
enforcement and federal penitentiary system.  The net "profit" could 
actually be NEGATIVE 38 billion dollars.  Child Support runs from 
$10-30/day.  Prison beds run from $75-$100/day and Lawyers run from 
$100-400/hour.

>  DHHS embargoed the *actual* enforcement gap figures,
> substantially less, until *after* the congressional vote on tougher
> child support enforcement measures, which included the infamous
> suspension of drivers licences.  Afterwards, Ms. Sorenson  wrote a
> newspaper editorial acknowledging a much lower *actual* enforcement
> gap and was somewhat realistic about the  plight of some fathers
> owing child support. (included below).  But DHHS stubornly hangs on
> to and keeps the spot light on this hypothetical advocacy paper.

Often, when a "Government Expert" declares that something is possible, it 
becomes a "reality".  Only if that expert declares that she lied, or the 
government discovers that the is "unreliable" (taking bribes, caught in a 
"Whitewater or Watergate" scandle...), will that "reality" ever be 
questioned.

The "Deadbeat Dads" of the 1950's were the "Communists".  By suspending 
the constitution, the House Unamerican Activities committee was able to 
destroy the lives of millions whose big crime was to attend a church 
bazaar.

> What is wrong with this picture?  Public policy  at the very highest
> level of government for *police action against fathers* is being
> driven by something that is *known* not to be factual.   They are
> claiming that an enforcement gap exists for theoretical fathers who
> are disabled, on AFDC themselves and will never be able to pay child
> support.

How many fathers are on AFDC?  The $38 billion was based on:
	Wisconson Standards - the highest in the country by percentage
		due to a local economy with low wages and high "minimum 
		survival requirements".  Median income is low for employed
		men and heating costs, housing costs, and transportation costs
		are extremely high.

	No mitigating circumstances.  Judges often consider such issues as 
	infidelity, disability, employment history, assets assigned to the 
	mother,...  States without community property that require minimum 
	payments take this into consideration.  The same 30% minimum used in 
	Wisconsin probably wouldn't fly in New York City or Texas.

	No extenuating circumstances.  The mother might be a drug addict, 
	alcoholic, abusive, and have AIDS from sleeping with the "man of the 
	hour" but under the DHHS proposal, the "father" would still have to pay 
	his full 30% - directly to DHHS of course.

> It is known that many of these theoretitcal fathers are not
> employed and some not employable.  Legal child support, like income
> taxes, is based on income, real income.

Oh, you forgot about "imputable income".  This is the amount that the 
court can determine that you "could make" if you wanted to.  If your 
wife's lawyer is clever, he can figure out that since you make $40,000 as 
a salaried employee, you could make $40/hour as a contractor.  
Multiplying this by 2000 hours gives you an imputable income of $80,000.
You don't thing DHHS is going to miss out on this one do you?

>   State child support
> guidelines are based on this income.  Just like there is no federal
> income tax enforcement gap for people who do not have income, there
> is no child support enforcement gap for fathers who have no income.
> There is none.   It really is just this simple.  Blowing right pass
> all of the questions about the validity of the assumptions and the
> statistical theory models mentioned in the paper, where I grew up
> when something was claimed to be true that obviously was not, people
> call that fraud.  DHHS is calling  it child support advocacy.
> 
> =============================================
> From:  "Dave P. Mozgala" 
> Subject:   'Deadbeat Dads"
> 
> The Nov 15th Washington Post had an interesting  editorial by Elaine
> Sorensen of the Urban Institute. Highlights are below: "The latest
> census figures show that 'deadbeat' dads owe more than $5 billion in
> child support to 2.3 million custodial mothers and their children.As
> part of its welfare reform legislation, Congress therefore proposes to
> increase child support enforcement. One of the provisions of the bill
> would deny means-tested benefits such as food stamps and Medicaid to
> noncustodial fathers who are more than two months behind in their
> child support...But the costs of this legislation would exceed its
> benefits. The perverse effect would be not to increase child support
> collections significantly but to plunge more children further into
> poverty and alienate noncustodial fathers from the child support
> system...Based on Urban Institute estimates from U.S. census data, as
> many as 700,000 noncustodial fathers could be affected, either because
> they have a child support order but don't pay up or because they don't
> have a child support order...This bill is aimed at a group of fathers
> whose ability to pay child support is already limited. The median
> personal income of these fathers was $430 a month in 1990...almost two
> thirds of these fathers were not working at the time of the census
> survey.Nearly 40 percent of the noncustodial fathers potentially
> affected by this legislation are receiving supplemental security
> income (SSI) or Medicaid, which means they are disabled and unable to
> work or medically needy.  About half are receiving food stamps or are
> in public housing. The final 10 percent of nonpaying fathers who are
> receiving public assistance are collecting Aid to Families with
> Dependent Children (AFDC). Although these fathers have children living
> with them, it is also worth noting that about 60 percent of them are
> living with children.  This legislation would push one group of
> children further into poverty in an effort to improve the economic
> circumstances of another group...Poor fathers should be expected to
> pay child support. But their child support orders should be set at
> levels commensurate with their ability to pay...Noncustodial fathers
> who become unemployed or disabled cannot simply walk into a child
> support enforcement enforcement office and have their orders adjusted
> downward as the result of their change in status. The process is
> quite bureaucratic...this takes time, and often, money...According to
> U.S. census data, only 4 percent of noncustodial fathers who were
> paying child support under an order received a downward adjustment
> when their earnings fell by more than 15 percent between one year and
> the next...government should begin to think of more positive ways to
> enable these fathers to pay their child support...one suggestion is to
> offer a safety net to poor fathers during hard times as long as they
> cooperate in establishing a repayment plan for past-due child
> support. Such repayment plans should reflect noncustodial fathers'
> CURRENT income in accordance with the child support guidelines in the
> relevant state...Offering flexibility to these fathers will increase
> the chance that they will pay child support later or when they are
> better able to do so." I like this lady!!
> 
> Dave.
> 
> ================================================== 
> 
> 
> http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/hsp/isp/13xsum.htm
> > NONCUSTODIAL FATHERS: CAN THEY AFFORD TO PAY MORE CHILD SUPPORT?
> > 
> > by Elaine Sorenson
> > 
> > The Urban Institute
> > 
> > February, 1995
> > 
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > 
> > EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
> > 
> > This report provides the first national estimates of noncustodial
> > fathers' income and child support payments as reported by
> > noncustodial fathers themselves. Noncustodial fathers are identified
> > using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a
> > nationally representative survey of 20,000 households conducted by
> > the U.S. Census Bureau. Previous research has analyzed specific
> > demographic and geographic subgroups of noncustodial fathers, but
> > has done so without the benefit of national estimates of
> > noncustodial fathers' income and child support payments, which have
> > not been available. Instead, researchers have relied on indirect
> > methods to generate national estimates of noncustodial fathers'
> > incomes and child support payments.
> > 
> > This report also examines the extent to which underreporting exists
> > in the SIPP data, since previous efforts to identify noncustodial
> > fathers in nationally representative surveys have met with
> > considerable underreporting of fertility. We find relatively little
> > underreporting of noncustodial fatherhood except among blacks, and
> > we develop a method of reweighting to compensate for this
> > underreporting. We also compare the ability of the SIPP to identify
> > young noncustodial fathers with that of the National Longitudinal
> > Survey of Youth (NLSY), another national survey that can identify
> > young noncustodial fathers. We find that the SIPP is able to
> > identify noncustodial fathers as well as the NLSY once both samples
> > are restricted to members of the noninstitutionalized population who
> > answer the fertility questions.
> > 
> > We show that noncustodial fathers paid, on average, 7 percent of
> > their personal income in child support in 1990. This figure is low,
> > mainly because so many noncustodial fathers paid no child support in
> > 1990. Even among those who paid, most spent less than 15 percent of
> > their income on child support. In fact, over 80 percent of all
> > noncustodial fathers either paid no child support or spent less than
> > 15 percent of their personal income on child support.
> > 
> > The Wisconsin child support guidelines are used to ascertain how
> > much more noncustodial fathers could pay in child support. Although
> > these guidelines are used only in Wisconsin, they are similar to
> > those used in many states. We find that another $34 billion of child
> > support could have been paid in 1990 if all noncustodial fathers had
> > paid child support according to the Wisconsin guidelines. This
> > figure is three times the amount of child support actually paid by
> > noncustodial fathers in 1990. We also show that a relatively small
> > number of noncustodial fathers--another four percent--would have
> > become poor had they paid this amount of additional child support.
> > 
> > Although we find that noncustodial fathers as a group are able to
> > pay more in child support, 13 to 26 percent of noncustodial fathers
> > are already poor or have extremely low incomes. Asking these
> > noncustodial fathers to pay child support may result in shifting
> > poverty from one group to another rather than in alleviating it.
> > Almost 90 percent of these poor or low-income men were not working
> > in 1990 or were working intermittently, and almost half had not
> > completed high school.
> > 
> > This research identifies four factors that contribute to the
> > nonpayment of child support: out-of-wedlock childbearing, poverty
> > among noncustodial fathers, underemployment among noncustodial
> > fathers, and the presence of second families. Among those who do not
> > pay child support, nearly 60 percent of black noncustodial fathers
> > and 36 percent of nonblack noncustodial fathers had their children
> > out of wedlock and thus are probably not legally required to pay
> > child support. As just mentioned, some noncustodial fathers are
> > already poor and thus find it economically difficult to pay child
> > support. In addition, nearly one-third of noncustodial fathers who
> > did not pay child support in 1990 were out of work for at least part
> > of that year, making it economically difficult from them to pay
> > child support. Finally, many noncustodial fathers who do not pay
> > child support have established new families, placing additional
> > economic constraints on their ability to pay child support.
> > 
> > We identify two additional factors that contribute to the disparity
> > between what noncustodial fathers actually pay in child support and
> > what they could pay under the Wisconsin child support guidelines. We
> > estimate that one-third of ordered support went uncollected in 1990,
> > representing $7 billion that year. We also find that average award
> > amounts are considerably lower than they would have been under the
> > Wisconsin guidelines. If child support awards had been set according
> > to those guidelines, another $7 billion of child support would have
> > been awarded in 1990.
> > 
> > Our findings identify several policy objectives that could address
> > the weaknesses in the current child support enforcement system:
> > increasing paternity establishment and child support obligations;
> > providing employment and training opportunities for low-income
> > noncustodial fathers with the goal of enhancing fathers' ability to
> > pay child support; reviewing the treatment of second families;
> > increasing collections of ordered support; and updating child
> > support awards to reflect changes in the cost of raising children
> > and in the parents' economic situation.
> 
> 
> 
> > Date:          Sat, 10 Feb 1996 18:33:16 -0400
> > Reply-to:      "Jan F. Cohen" 
> > From:          "Jan F. Cohen" 
> > Subject:       Re: DHHS and Elaine Sorensen
> > To:            Multiple recipients of list FREE-L 
> 
> > A number of people are having problems trying to download the following:
> > 
> > "Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to Pay More
> > Child Support?"  Updated February, 1995, by Elaine Sorensen.
> > 
> 
> > Jan Cohen
> > 
> > 
> 
> 

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed Feb 14 23:56:44 1996