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The initial problem (in "perception" if you will) in the feds dealing with child support was the intentional confusion they created between setting the amount of an award and "enforcement." Remember I said earlier that I was forced to study enforcement even though the focus of my research is on properly setting the amount to be awarded. Whenever anyone tried to debate the new system for setting child support award amounts, some bimbo bureacrat or politician would respond with a comment about "enforcement." I sense this discussion is going the same way.

What one concludes about non-payment of support from statistics depends on what statistics one picks. If you see some high number like $20 billion not paid each year, it includes all cases in which paternity has not been established and there is no child support award. We honestly don't know how much child support is being paid in that group. We know that nothing from that group is being paid through the government system. When no child support order exists, there's nothing for the system to "enforce." But taxpayers have been paying around $4 billion dollars a year for enforcement anyway; largely based on use of those statistics to impress people.

Use of similar statistics and intentionally created confusion between setting award amounts and enforcement drove the logic that caused the problem in the first place. Back when this thing started, more than half of all "potential" child support cases were cases in which paternity had not been formally established and no child support order existed. Sure, there were even cases in which paternity was established and the parents didn't want or need an order.

A guy named Ron Haskins, an insignificant psych prof. at U. of North Carolina -- received federal funds from the National Center for State Courts and the Office of Child Support Enforcement, to write a "research report" that says [paraphrased] no problem, just double the amount that those who do pay are ordered to pay. You see, lobbiests liked to use averages based on statistics for the whole group. If you double the amount payers' pay, you increase the statistical average by a factor of two; giving the same result as if twice as many people paid (assuming an equal amount would be ordered from the non-paying group if they were ordered to pay).

Then the National Center for State Court and the Office of Child Support Enforcement hired Robert Williams, a guy who owns a child support collection agency, to write a report "to provide technical assistance to states on development of child support guidelines." Williams didn't have any experience in the complex process of setting awards properly, but the hire the amount that is ordered, the more money his collection agency makes. So Williams used the recommendations made by Haskins. He then became the most popular consultant used by states to review their guidelines and child support laws. Haskins became head staffer for welfare issues on the Republican House Ways & Means Committee on Human Resources. Neither Haskins nor Williams were experts on the subjects they were put in charge of. Their qualification is that they're just both lying cheats.

Because enforcement is the root of the problem. The fed is over involved now because 20 years ago a deadbeat dad could walk away from his child support obligation and face no repercussion. The only possible way to get rid of the current bad fix is to have a better fix to put in his place. But it seems absolutely no one on the fathers' side of the debate is willing to do this, or even listen to proposals. This thread is a classic example of what's going on in this area of social debate. There have been 3 responses to my post where I laid out a possible solution that I think could make both sides happy and not one of them has even mentioned it.