There's Something Funny About CSE in Illinois

September 26, 2002

The child support enforcement scam must be at a turning point when the corruption turns into situation comedy. That happened this week in the Illinois race for governor.

One of the contestants, Jim Ryan promised to crack down on "deadbeat dads" in a previous successful campaign for Attorney General. Many of you know the routine by now. Hundreds of thousands of people in arrears. Billions of dollars in child support owed. Bring out the crying mothers in tattered clothing with hungry children dressed in barrels and flour sacks. It's a politicians dream come true. Who can resist?

Now, his opponent Democrat Rod Blagojevich is doing the same thing to him. "When it comes to taking responsibility to fix the child-support collection system, Jim Ryan is all words and no action," Blagojevich said.

Temporarily the joke is on Jim Ryan. Divorced mothers, as a group, live at a higher standard of living than divorced fathers. Fathers have a very good record paying child support. As far back as the records go, they always have. A quarter century of wild federal and state spending has not improved compliance with court orders at all. Parents who owe child support are sometimes unemployed, incarcerated, and incapacitated. It happens. That's life. Some of the "deadbeats" in frequently quoted statistics are actually dead. Not much opportunity for improvement, but since the federal government is doling out more than $4 billion of the taxpayer's hard-earned money a year to pay for the program it doesn't need substance.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Now there are two directly competing versions, one for incumbents defending their records and one for those trying to displace them.

The way sensational statistics on non-payment of child support are produced these days, there is a built in guarantee that any politician promising to "fix it" will fail. Government sources accumulate statistics rather than reporting yearly results. The current non-payment statistics are for the accumulation of arrearages over the last twenty-six years. Every year, most child support gets paid but some of it does not. Get elected this year and by the next election you will be held accountable for the total accumulation of debt over thirty years instead of twenty-six. It's a no-brainer. The numbers will be worse than when you started.

But if you are defending, quote what has been paid instead. All payments are classified in government accounting as "collections." So the trick is to take credit for all the money that non-custodial parents have paid, and would have paid even if the child support enforcement program did not exist. As you enroll more parents in the system, especially higher income fathers who pay the best because the can, more money is paid through the system - "collected" so to speak.

Blagojevich (the attacker): Illinois collects only 16 percent of money owed to children. There are 324,000 cases in arrears in Illinois and that translates to $2.4 billion in back child support.

Ryan (defender): While Attorney General, "collections" rose from $60 million to $125 million in those counties where the Attorney General's Office was in charge of "collections."

Two competing lies is nothing new in politics and just isn't that funny. With experience as Attorney General with responsibility for the child support collection program, Jim Ryan must know he's lying. But let's just imagine for the moment, as we consider the new guy's proposal, that Rod Blagojevich doesn't yet have a clue.

Blagojevich proposes to create a cabinet-level Child Support Enforcement Bureau. He would add 100 new caseworkers and investigators to track down deadbeats, give them a computerized system to support the tracking system and switch cases from court hearings to administrative hearings to end case backlogs.

If elected, he promises to create a cabinet post to oversee a 100% fake pork-barrel program. He is going to add another 100 useless caseworkers to the 60,000 or so that taxpayers are already supporting nationwide. He will "give them" a computerized tracking system that the federal government paid $4 billion to build, is already in use, and is controversial because its only actual function seems to be the invasion of everyone's privacy. And obviously computerized tracking would not only negate the need for new workers, but make existing workers redundant. Finally, he would make a move to deny basic constitutional rights to tens of thousands of citizens.

OK, I have to admit that it really isn't that funny.

Roger F. Gay