“It’s implementation of federal law, backed by 10s of billions in federal money.”
Your scale is a bit off; the figure you quote is roughly the total $ passing through the child support system nationwide, not fedgov’s impact.
“Currently, the federal government pays states incentive funds based on their level of child support performance. These incentive payments are capped at $458 million in fiscal year 2006 and divided among the states according to their performance on five measures.”
Again, your basic point has merit (the states get paid incentives to establish orders) but the feds don’t dictate insanity like this nor is the scale of fed money 10s of billions.
California’s share of incentive payments back before the recall was about $50 million. I remember quoting Gray Davis. That’s just the incentive part, however, if states do not implement and enforce all the federal mandates they lose all related funding; which amounts to closer to $10 billion a year.