DHHS Secretary Remarks - 20th Anniversary

                              Remarks
                         Donna E. Shalala
              Secretary of Health and Human Services
                                at
     20th Anniversary of Child Support Enforcement Legislation
                         July 12, 1995

        

     Thank you for that gracious introduction, Mary Jo (Bane).
     I am pleased to join all of you for this special occasion to 
commemorate the 20th anniversary of child support enforcement 
legislation.

     Senator Long, we are honored by your presence and we are grateful 
for your leadership in establishing child support enforcement 
legislation.

     Today's program is about children, and we also have with us today 
the families of two of the 19 children who died tragically in the 
Oklahoma City bombing last April.

     We have Aren Almon, the mother of little Baylee Almon, and 
Baylee's Almon's grandparents, Tommy and Debbie Almon.  And we have 
Vernon Scott and Helena Garrett, the parents of little Tevin Garrett, 
as well as Tevin's siblings, Vernon Scott, Jr. and Sharonda Garrett.

     I know I speak for everybody at the conference when I say that 
our hearts go out to you.

     All of us are moved and inspired by your courage -- you are in 
our thoughts and prayers.

      Let me take this opportunity to thank Dr. Mary Jo Bane for her 
extraordinary leadership on all issues affecting children and 
families, especially child support enforcement.

     I also want to recognize the professionals of the 
Administration on Children and Families and Deputy Director David Ross 
and the Office of Child Support Enforcement for their leadership and 
commitment.

     And I want to acknowledge our state and local partners who have 
joined us from around the country.

     You are the real, frontline troops.

     Every day you live and breathe the needs of families for whom the 
prompt and full payment of child support becomes an issue of survival.

     You see the anguished faces of parents fighting to go it alone to 
stay just above the poverty line...

     You see the confusion, the bewilderment of young children caught 
in the emotional and financial squeeze play.

     You know firsthand that child support is really about...

     ...whether there is money for real needs like clothing...

     ...money to buy food...

     ...money to pay utility bills...

     ...money to cover children's needs at day care...

     ...money for children to take field trips and work on science 
projects with the other students at school...

     And you know that child support is about much more than money -- 
it's also about engagement and involvement in a child's life, 
emotional support, love, and understanding.  It's about both parents 
being a part of a child's life.

     You know child support in America.

     You know the needs of our children.


                                ***
     Our children and families are the subject of a lot of talk in our 
country today.

     They are mentioned prominently in the larger debate about the 
future of America.

     From the White House to the Congress...

     From State Houses to city and county halls...

     ...and from our neighborhood centers to our living rooms, the 
debate about America's priorities keeps coming back to children and 
families.

     This country is engaged in an historic debate about who we are 
and what is the role of our government.

     This Administration's answers to these questions are quite clear: 
we must protect and preserve our children and families today as we 
would any other national treasure.

     That means helping families care for sick or dying relatives 
without losing their jobs, as President Clinton has done through the 
Family and Medical Leave Act...

     That means making work a better deal than welfare -- as President 
Clinton has done by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit by $21 
billion dollars...

     That means helping hardworking families send their children to 
college, as President Clinton has done by revamping the student loan 
program and the Middle Class Bill of Rights.

     And that means putting in place the most effective child support 
enforcement standards this country has ever known, which President 
Clinton is doing with your help.

     Child support enforcement may seem to the uninformed like an 
intricate game of cat-and-mouse between the authorities and 
irresponsible parents. 

     Child support enforcement is about creating stable, nurturing 
home environments;  It is assuring decent standards of living for 
millions of Americans who lose their economic footing after being left 
alone -- often unexpectedly -- to raise a family.

     It's about Debra Jennings, a 41-year-old Ohio mother, who has not 
seen one green dollar of child support due her for 18 years, though 
her ex-husband reportedly earns a hefty salary.

     It's about people like Marie Sherrett, of Maryland, who works 
three, sometimes four jobs to make ends meet.

     Marie has not been able to enforce the 1988 child support order 
from her divorce because her ex-husband has changed states and 
switched jobs more often than a train switches tracks.  He's an 
elusive moving target.

     These are the names and faces of child support enforcement.

     You know these people.  You care about them.

     On this 20th anniversary, we stand at a crossroads with an 
opportunity to make even more progress.

     We have this opportunity because we have a President dedicated to 
building a stronger child support enforcement system in tandem with 
real welfare reform.

     We have a President who knows how enough missed child support 
checks can transform a middle class working family into an 
impoverished family practically overnight.

     We have a President who believes that effective child support 
enforcement sends a critical message for young boys and girls who have 
not yet become parents.  It says that having a child is an awesome, 
longtime responsibility from which they cannot run.

     knows that timely child support can often mean the difference 
between independence and a fall into the welfare system.

     We have a President who has issued this stern warning repeatedly:  
"If you're not providing for your children, we'll garnish your wages, 
suspend your drivers' and professional licenses, track you across 
state lines, and, if necessary, make you work off what you owe."

     That's not talk, that's action.

     Let me share some results with you.

     Last year we collected a record $10 billion from non-custodial 
parents, thanks to your hard work.

     Collections nationally have gone up two years in a row -- a 12% 
increase from 1992 to 1993, and 11% from 1993 to 1994.

     There has also been progress in other areas.  Last year 36,000 
more paternities were established than in 1993, and 39,000 more were 
established in 1993 than in 1992.

     Under Bill Clinton's leadership, Congress passed a requirement 
for in-hospital paternity establishment as part of the 1993 Budget 
Reconciliation Act.

     And with the stroke of his pen, earlier this year, he made it 
easier through Executive Order to serve child support papers on 
federal workers no matter where they are located.

     ...to improve the ability of states to locate federal employees 
who owe child support by cross-checking.

     ...and to cut in half the time it takes to get the proceeds from 
garnished wages to the family that is owed money.

     The President also showed real leadership in convincing Congress 
to make tough child support enforcement provisions a key part of 
welfare reform legislation now under consideration.

     Originally, the welfare reform proposal in the House of 
Representatives included no provisions for child support enforcement.

     But the President prevailed upon the House leadership -- and with 
bipartisan support -- the House bill was rewritten to include most of 
the key elements of child support enforcement in the President's bill 
of last year.

     Because of the President's leadership, both the Republican bills 
-- and the Democratic bill in the Senate -- include a number of 
Clinton ideas.

     The bills in both houses withhold welfare benefits to mothers who 
do not lend assistance in establishing paternity and locating fathers.

     They create a new computerized national registry to help track 
names and addresses of non-paying parents who jump from city to city, 
state to state, and job to job.

     They would modernize the state child support enforcement programs 
to allow for the use of computers and automation to impose tough 
enforcement measures the minute a child support payment is not made.

     They include new measures to suspend drivers' and professional 
licenses of parents who fail to pay.

     They emphasize the importance of maintaining relationships with 
non-custodial parents through access and visitation programs.

     And the Democratic bill would enhance the employability of absent 
parents -- like teenage fathers --- through education and job-training 
that will ultimately empower them to work off what they owe.

     We're pleased that the strong child support enforcement 
provisions in all the major bills have received bipartisan support.

     They must become law as part of a comprehensive bipartisan 
welfare reform bill.

     It is critical that the House and Senate work promptly to resolve 
their differences and deliver to the President's desk a bipartisan 
bill that he can sign.

     A bill that provides child care to help single parents go to 
work...

     A bill that offers job training to improve parents' 
marketability...

     A bill that doesn't punish children for the mistakes of their 
parents.

     And a bill that builds on our bipartisan agreement on child 
support enforcement as a foundation for real reform.

     As the President has said, if we collect child support for all 
the children who should have it, we could move more than 800,000 
mothers and children off welfare.

     We believe the broad agreement on child support enforcement can 
be used as a foundation to build this bipartisan relationship on 
addressing welfare reform -- as it was 20 years ago when a Democrat 
named Russell Long and a Republican named Gerald Ford worked together 
to create today's child support system.

     The mission of child support enforcement legislation has not 
changed from when Senator Long introduced the bill.

     I reviewed the Committee report recently, and the legislation 
talked about absent parents...the rights of children to receive 
support...lower costs to taxpayers...and sparing children from the 
effects of family breakup.

     Those are still our goals today.  The needs of children and 
families haven't changed at all since 1975.

     Indeed, they've become greater.

     So many forces are tearing at the family, from poverty to 
violence to fatherless homes.
     
     More than 40 years ago the writer Agnes Meyer observed:

     "The children are always the chief victims of social chaos."

     It doesn't have to be that way.

     Child support is about much more than collecting overdue 
payments.

     It's about more than who owes what to whom.

     It's not only about making certain that absent fathers, or absent 
mothers, abide by the law, or do what's right and what's fair by the 
children they helped create.

     It's about real lives.

     It's about children....families...keeping them 
together...bringing them together...

     Children need to be brought up with both parents involved in 
their lives, even if the parents are not living together.

     Yes, we want absent parents to start sending those checks back 
home to their families.

     But we also want to see those same parents come back to their 
children emotionally....spend time with them...talk to them.....listen 
to them...help discipline them...be a visible, active, engaged part of 
their lives.

     No parent in this country who pays child support should feel they 
can just deliver a check and meet their total responsibility as a 
parent.

     Yes, a check will buy clothes and food and shoes.

     Yes, a check will satisfy a legal and moral obligation.

     But a warm arm around the shoulder from dad...a hug from 
mom...that's different.

     Communication with both mom and dad will bring about something 
much more valuable in the long run than money ever will, for our 
children.

     It will help develop and nurture healthy, happy, well-adjusted, 
positive, self-assured children.

     Children who are this nation's treasures and future.