Obama’s Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act–Fair to Fathers?
From the Boston Globe's Men at work in Washington (8/10/08):
"...a bill coauthored by Senator Barack Obama and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh called the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act...would provide job training, remove marriage penalties from the tax code, and support domestic violence prevention efforts.
The legislation would also address another issue: Currently, single mothers who receive benefits must sign over their child support money to the state. This often diminishes the incentive for poor men to pay, since the payments will not even reach their children. The bill would eliminate that practice, and ensure that all child support money goes directly to families. The bill has been introduced twice, in 2006 and 2007, without passing, but the sponsors plan to introduce it again.
I discussed the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act in some detail last year in my co-authored column Obama's Responsible Fatherhood Bill--Not Enough Carrot, Too Much Stick (Wisconsin State Journal, Buffalo News, 6/30/07). We wrote:
U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) recently introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2007, which they say will address our “national epidemic of absentee fathers.” Obama and Bayh are correct that fatherless children are dramatically more likely to commit crimes, drop out of school, use drugs, or get pregnant than children who have fathers in their homes. The Responsible Fatherhood Act is explicitly a carrot and stick approach. The problem is that the carrot is too small and the stick is already too big.
Currently many noncustodial fathers—particularly African-American and Latino fathers, upon whom Obama often focuses—are required to pay their child support to the state to reimburse the cost of public assistance, instead of to the children’s mothers. This is demoralizing for low-income men struggling to make a difference in their kids’ lives.
The Responsible Fathers Act will make this money go directly to the mothers, instead of the state, a policy which research shows helps bring fathers closer to their children. The bill will also expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and provide fathers with job training services.
All of these are good things, but the bill’s stick—increasing federal reimbursements for child support enforcement--is damaging and misguided. Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data shows that two-thirds of those behind on child support nationwide earn poverty-level wages; less than four percent of the national child support debt is owed by those earning $40,000 or more a year.
Most "deadbeat dads" are low-income men who are unable to meet the demands of the child support system because of their employment problems. Stepping up already draconian enforcement only makes it more difficult for them to play a meaningful role in their children’s lives.
Bayh himself endorses such wrongheaded efforts, boasting without a trace of irony that when he was the governor of Indiana, “We used ‘most wanted’ posters to track down deadbeat parents and intercepted their tax refunds, lottery winnings and unemployment benefits” (emphasis added)...
Obama is correct when he notes that it would be naïve to think “government alone can solve this problem.” Yet while the text of the Responsible Fatherhood Act mentions “child support” 65 times, “custody,” “visitation,” “parenting time,” and “access denial” do not appear even once. Lawmakers can’t turn a disinterested father into a caring one, but they can do much to break down the many barriers separating devoted fathers from their children. That’s where the focus of the Responsible Fatherhood Act should be.
I would add that in many of these low-income broken families, child support is simply not appropriate. Generally the fathers aren't making any more money than the mothers are, and sometimes less. If the fathers are able and willing to play a significant role in their children's lives, including providing child care for them and having them in their homes a substantial percentage of time, I see no reason why the fathers should be obligated to pay child support.
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