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Apparently members of Congress do not remember.
In the most recent round of congressional budget cuts — done in order to pay for the war and for tax cuts — Congress has cut the amount of money the federal government spends to enforce child-support laws.
Can there be a better way to fight poverty than to make sure that single mothers get the child support they are entitled to from their ex-partners?
This point is sometimes a matter of contention from organizations of noncustodial parents, who say that men are given a bad rap on this issue, and that many men can’t afford to pay what the courts order them to pay, and that women are at fault in many ways.
OK. But the fact remains that the vast majority of noncustodial parents are women — and actually getting some of the money that their ex-partners have been ordered to pay might go a long way in relieving their poverty.
But now the money that the federal government sends to states to help them enforce child support collection efforts is being cut.
Wisconsin will lose $52.4 million in federal funding during the next five years. That figure will be $157 million during the next 10 years under the budget proposals approved last week.
An official from Milwaukee County’s child support enforcement division told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “It will hinder us getting people into court to compel support.”
In the same news story, a spokeswoman for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a national advocacy group on poverty issues, said, “This is money right out of ot he budgets of families who need the child support owed to them to meet their children’s needs.”
In dealing with poverty, the administration and Congress are in the process of making the lives of millions of people worse than they are now.
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