The West Salem Coulee News published an opinion piece by U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, "GUEST COLUMN: Reverse child support cuts," which aims to convince the public to support legislation to reverse specific provisions of the Budget Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 that closed a loophole that states were taking advantage of in their child support enforcement programs. (Source: West Coulee News March 22, 2007)
In July 2006, I took the time to write Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson, regarding plans that were being put into place to reverse the progress made in 2005 to close funding loopholes in the voluntary Title IV-D program that the states were taking advantage of.
In papers around the nation, government bureaucrats are busy starting the propaganda machine trying to convince the public that if funding cuts aren't reversed that children are going to be starving to death. These bureaucrats are leaving out some critical facts. What these bureaucrats are not telling you is that the majority of the cases being served by the affected programs are middle and upper income feuding families that have been placed into the program automatically to boost participation numbers and establish bigger reimbursement checks from the federal government.
The purpose of over participation being encouraged by state and county officials is to conceal program failure and bring in money for state bureaucracies, not needy families or children. By focusing on the higher income collections using Income Withholding Orders state and county officials are able to drown out and dilute the overwhelming failure of their collections that are supposed to benefit actual needy families that are near or below the poverty line.
The child support enforcement program focuses only on revenue generation for the state and county agencies, and the only numbers that should surprise Senator Herb Kohl is trying to explain how an agency that is reimbursed $66.00 of every $100.00 based on its expenditures can actually be on the verge of failing. To make it simple, an organization that only has to put up $1.00 and receives $2.00 back should have no excuse for having budget problems and should be seriously overhauled from the ground up to ensure that the families that need them are the ones that are serviced.
It’s time to reign in free for all welfare spending programs to ensure that programs are not abused by states for revenue generation and that the families that are supposed to benefit from the program don't have to compete with the ones that don't belong at all. Just say no to Senator Herb Kohl trying to solve state overspending problems with programs that were meant for the needy not the rich.
