Child Support Propaganda Haunts Michigan Papers
January 2, 2004
by
Roger F. Gay
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has been in office for one year.
He promised to make child support collection his top priority. Just
as knowledgeable observers would expect, the promise was followed
by a year of lying and corruption. Three recent articles in Michigan
newspapers illustrate why he, and others like him, get away with it.
On December 18, 2003 the Detroit Free Press carried an article
by staff writer Dawson Bell entitled ATTORNEY
GENERAL MIKE COX: ONE YEAR IN OFFICE: Honing political skill, hunting
deadbeats. "Deadbeats" is a familiar reference to people who have
not paid all the child support that has been ordered.
Anyone looking for an unbiased analysis would be in the wrong place.
You only need look at the last paragraph, which reads: "But one thing
we do know. He's easily the best Republican attorney general Michigan's
had since Frank Millard."
Mr. Bell gives readers false hope with a section entitled; "Varied
reviews," which then begins by saying "Virtually all observers agree
there's not much downside for Cox on child support." That may be true,
unless of course you happen to pay attention to the swollen throngs
who see nothing but a downside to Cox on child support.
Mike Cox runs a private organization called PayKids
that takes corporate donations from companies interested in child
support collections. He has simultaneously been using his influence
as Attorney General to lobby the state legislature to set up a system
that would provide private child support collection agencies with
lucrative state contracts.
On December 29th, The Macomb Daily published an article by
Gitte Laasby, Capital News Service entitled; Cox
zeros in on $7 billion in unpaid child support. The title copies
misleading promotional information from the Cox website.
"Deadbeat dad" propaganda has been the subject of scientific investigation
and the source of plenty of work by fathers' rights advocates. Although
never supported by an ounce of honest evidence, proved and reproved
false again and again, such bizarre claims are still common political
fodder for dishonest politicians and their supporters.
One paragraph typifies the old-fashioned approach applied to Macomb
County. "Deadbeat parents in Macomb County," the article claims, leaning
heavily on the name-calling ethic, "owe about $17.3 million in estimated
arrears at any given time, and Michigan is third-worst of all states
for uncollected child support. Statewide, parents owe about $7 billion
in back child support to 650,000 Michigan children and to the state."
By population, Michigan is the 8th largest state in the country; but
adjusting for that, and reasonably for its claimed status as especially
bad, one might expect at least $200 billion in past due child support
owed nationwide. That's more than five times the total annual child
support owed in the United States, including the amount "owed" (so
to speak) by the 80-90 percent of fathers who pay regularly. The GAO
has reported Office of Child Support Enforcement estimates that the
total accumulated unpaid child support since the federal government
first became involved in 1975 is less than $100 billion, and several
analysts who have focused on child support (including me) believe
that number is too high.
Claiming 650,000 children are owed child support in Michigan would
imply around 25 million in the United States. With currently around
7 million (male and famale) custodial parents due child support nationwide
(including those who receive regular payments), that would be around
3.5 per custodial parent; but if considering only those not receiving
child support, the number might be somewhere closer to 25-30 children
per custodial parent.
Obviously something is wrong with the statistics and something wrong
with writers who repeat such dribble and newspapers that print it.
The article goes on to build up Mike Cox's image with an attack on
noncustodial parents. Cox's press officer Mike Doyle complains that
the public's misperception of the problem is partially to blame. "People
kind of see deadbeat parents not as criminals, but people who are
doing something unethical in not paying for their kids' support,"
he said.
'Another problem is that collecting support "wasn't a terribly high
priority" to county prosecutors and the former attorney general,'
parrots the article before a quote from the press officer drops entirely
off the reality truck.
"For too long, these deadbeats have been able to avoid paying child
support without too much fear of any kind of pursuit by law enforcement.
The attorney general is trying to establish a credible threat that
they will be prosecuted for a felony if they don't pay," according
to Mr. Doyle.
It's one thing to claim such programs are "for the children" but entirely
another to shape the promotional campaign for an audience under 5
years old. You can't expect people much older than that to be unaware
of the huge and extremely expensive government program aimed at the
so-called "deadbeat dads" that started more than a quarter century
ago; the continuous threats, and overzealous enforcement efforts.
It might seem possible that too few people understand, because so
few "news" outlets let on, that the program has not had any effect
on compliance. That's because fathers (85 percent of the statistically
understood noncustodial parent population are fathers) were paying
well before the program began. The primary cause of non-payment is
that a significant portion of parents who owe child support cannot
pay as much as they have been ordered to pay for various reasons.
One of them is that some of the so-called "deadbeats" are actually
dead.
People get behind in every sort of payment, house payments, car payments;
whatever payments there are, people get behind even when they don't
want to. It's only when it's child support that corrupt public officials
get away with treating it as a crime. What's worse is that the enforcement
program shut down the legal mechanisms for obtaining proper adjustments
to the amount owed when appropriate. The amounts owed as child support
are extremely random, typically unrelated to children's needs and
the parents' ability to provide. But that's just the circumstance
that results in the appearance of need for enforcement, as the past-due
amounts continue to rise.
Some payers encounter problems and later make up for it, or at least
start paying again. Cox attributes every payment of a past-due amount
to his personal efforts, a claim that could never stand up to scrutiny.
Writer Gitte Laasby regurgitates without question: "With $1.4 million
in overdue support payments collected so far, the attorney general
has surpassed the $1 million mark he was shooting for by the end of
this year."
It's not particularly interesting to know that some people are behind,
but paying. That's happened every year for as long as there have been
child support agreements and orders. All people like Cox need to know
in order to meet or beat their own projections is what the statistical
average is. It's likely that more than $1 million in past-due support
would have been paid without Mike Cox or any special child support
enforcement program at all for that matter. That's just part of the
way things work out in real life.
On the same day that the Capital News Service article ran,
The Macomb Daily also published an article entitled Macomb
officials skeptical of child support crackdown by Chad Selweski,
one of its own staff writers. At first the article seems to finally
present a challenge to Cox's propaganda machine; but it stops short
of the serious truth.
The article isn't so much about criticisms of Mr. Cox's involvement
in child support as it is about his defense, repeating the same bizarre
statistical misinformation as the Capital News Service article.
'Sheriff Mark Hackel sees the situation differently,' Mr. Selweski
tells readers. 'He calls Cox's program a "duplication of effort" with
no clear strategy. The state would reap more benefits, he said, if
it helped fund enforcement programs in Macomb and other major counties.'
That's right. It turns out that local officials want the state's Attorney
General to turn over more of the funding to them. Not a word from
any real skeptics, who according to Michigan's newspapers don't exist.