Legislative Update: Cuts in Child Support Enforcement Funding Take Effect October 1 Unless Congress Acts

Federal legislation that would undo the substantial cuts in federal funding for state child support enforcement programs scheduled to go into effect on October 1, 2007, is gathering bipartisan support in Congress. Two identical bills, S. 803 and H.R. 1386, would repeal the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005’s Section 7309, which requires the funding cuts.

Illinois estimates that if the law is not repealed, the state will lose $159 million, 20 percent of the federal funds for operating its child support program, over the next 10 years.

The repeal bills have 22 Senate and 45 House sponsors, including three members of the Illinois Delegation, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Representatives Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) Illinois residents concerned that the state child support enforcement program not suffer this significant reduction in federal funding should contact Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) (202.224.2152) and their House representatives and encourage them to become sponsors of the repeal legislation and to vote in favor of the bills when they reach the Senate or House floor. To find the name and contact information for your House representatives, click here.

States operate child support enforcement programs with a mix of federal and state funds. Basically the federal government matches every $1 a state spends on child support enforcement efforts with $2 of federal funds. The federal government also offers graduated “incentive payments” to states as they achieve higher and higher levels of good and better performance on five specified indicators, all of them important to children and families: percentage of cases with paternity established; percentage of cases with support orders; percentage of cases with on-time collections of support; percentage of cases with collections on arrears; and cost-effectiveness (dollars of support collected compared to dollars spent on collection efforts). Pre– Deficit Reduction Act funding methods (state funds plus basic federal match plus incentive payments plus federal match on incentive payments used for child support enforcement) enabled total child support collection to climb impressively, reaching $24 billion in 2006, up from $10 billion in 1994.

However, Section 7309 of the Deficit Reduction Act prohibits states from seeking a federal match on their federal incentive payments even though the states reinvest those incentive payments in their child support programs. Section 7309 is only a federal deficit reduction measure—it is not based on the needs of the child support programs or what’s better for families.

Unless Section 7309 is repealed, as S. 803 and H.R. 1386 would do, families, especially struggling, lower-income single-parent families will be hurt. As the 1990s’ welfare reforms took hold, fewer and fewer families received cash assistance and more and more relied on child support as a major part of family income. The Urban Institute analysis of family income for poor single-mother families showed that child support supplied 31 percent of their income, second only to mothers’ earnings (45 percent), and far greater than Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (5 percent) and other income (19 percent). Decreasing the funding for child support enforcement programs will mean that child support will go uncollected and children will be worse off. In many cases, families without child support will need to apply for TANF and other public assistance programs.

For more information, contact Margaret Stapleton at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, 312.368.3327 or mstapleton@povertylaw.org.