Kenya N. Rahmaan
It is not uncommon to hear child support reform
advocates and parents blame former President Bill Clinton for America’s current child support program. After all, they aren’t entirely wrong. Under Clinton’s administration, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 was passed. Technically, at least in the history books, he is responsible for the current child support program. But when examining how politics are handled in D.C., especially when bills this large are presented to legislators, there are more factors to consider than who is sitting in the Oval Office.
When discussing who enacted the bill that started the strict collection practices executed by child support enforcement, we have to travel back in time to the early 1990s. One of the promises made by Clinton was to ‘end welfare as we knew it.’ The PRWORA promised that and much more. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation or ASPE (1996), reported that the PRWORA was a
comprehensive bipartisan welfare reform plan that will dramatically change the nation’s welfare system into one that requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance. The law contains strong work requirements, a performance bonus to reward states for moving welfare recipients into jobs, state maintenance of effort requirements, comprehensive child support enforcement, and supports for families moving from welfare to work — including increased funding for child care and guaranteed medical coverage.
The introduction of bipartisanship is necessary because negotiations were critical to passing the bill. The PRWORA was specific on welfare reform and how the child support program would change because of these reforms. Distinctively, each state must operate a child support enforcement program meeting federal requirements to be eligible for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grants (ASPE, 1996). There were seven requirements, but Clinton chose these after negotiations with leadership within the GOP.
When the Democratic party tried to reform welfare and ensure that American citizens received some government protection from poverty, the Republican party had written its own legislation. ‘The Contract With America’ included ten separate bills, two of which were the Welfare Reform: The Personal Responsibility Act and the Non-statist Approaches to Social Problems: The Family Reinforcement Act. In the ‘Contract,’ the GOP proposed a few things that were supposed to fix the welfare problem in the U.S. Based on an article by Jeffrey Gayner of the Heritage Foundation (1995)
the Personal Responsibility Act of the Contract sought to fundamentally revamp the role of the state in welfare policy by developing policies to reduce teenage pregnancies and illegitimate births by prohibiting aid to mothers under 18 who give birth out of wedlock and requiring them to name the fathers of their children, who would be held accountable for their actions.
The provision written in the Republican legislation sounds eerily familiar to what happens within the child support program today. Currently, if a custodial parent needs assistance from the government, such as TANF or Medicaid, they must cooperate with child support. In doing so, the custodial parent also forfeits their rights to child support payments. Paula Roberts (2005) explained that one of these requirements is that
person in the family with the legal right to do so must assign to the state any rights they have to spousal support and any rights any child in the family has to receive child support. While the Democratic version of the bill still allows the parent to receive benefits even if they are teenagers with illegitimate children, the parents must sign their rights to support to the state for temporary assistance.
Gayner (1995) wrote that the Non-statist Approaches to Social Problems: The Family Reinforcement Act sought to refocus attention on the family and away from the government as the source of solutions to social problems. In contrast, many Democrats argued that the PRWORA that the government did too little to help families with social issues. In fact, three members of Clinton’s administration resigned in protest of his signing of the bill. According to Andrew Glass of Politico (2018), Peter Edelman said that ‘the welfare reform law destroyed the federal safety net by increasing poverty, lowering income for single mothers, moving people from welfare into homeless shelters, and leaving states free to eliminate welfare entirely.’ Depending on who you ask, both bills were failures, but only one bill became the law of the land.
A critical piece of The Family Reinforcement Act was that it reinforced child support orders issued by courts requiring absent fathers to financially support their children. It is essential to keep in mind that even though individual Acts were not enacted during the Clinton presidency, parts of the Republican plan were included in the PRWORA, thus making it bipartisan legislation. Clinton vetoed two bills presented by the GOP and signed the copy drafted by a former Ohio Governor, John Kasich (R). Additionally, Glass reported that Clinton and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich negotiated over reform legislation in private meetings.
Finally, no one can deliberate welfare reform in the ’90s without mentioning the late Congressman from Florida, Clay Shaw. According to The Institute of Politics at Harvard University (2007), from 1995-1998, Mr. Shaw chaired the Human Resources Subcommittee, where he authored the historic 1996 Republican Welfare Reform bill. The first veto of the Republican proposal occurred after the bill passed both the House and the Senate, but not with a large enough margin to quash the rejection. In support of his blocking the passage of the bill, the former president said, “We must demand responsibility from young mothers and young fathers, not penalize children for their parent’s mistakes.” The politicians went to work devising a better bill to satisfy both parties.
The arguments derailing the camaraderie amongst the parties was not child support enforcement but welfare reform. There was no back and forth or holding out of votes in protest of forcing fathers to repay TANF block grants (not loans). Not one politician held out on their vote because jailing poor people for debt was outlawed. The debates, arguments, and negotiations were for who and how much the government would spend to help struggling Americans.
Mr. Clay was on record saying that “if he thinks he’s going to get a Democratic bill out of a Republican Congress, he’s not looking at it realistically.” Clinton eventually accepted Republican proposals expressly, which would transfer control over cash welfare to the states and provide them with lump-sum “block grants” to help pay for their programs (Baltimore Sun, 1997). For the first time in history, the government implemented time limits for recipients receiving welfare benefits, and the bill added work requirements. According to the Baltimore Sun, officials said Mr. Clinton would not sign a bill that reduced projected spending on aid for abused and disabled children, as the Republican plan would. There were obviously some compromises made in the deal.
Depending on who you ask, the PRWORA was either a great or a lousy law for our country. The majority of people you ask will blame former President Clinton for implementing the current child support system and all that it enforces among the people. Some blame both parties for working together to construct such an anti-family, anti-social net, poverty-laden piece of legislation that has wreaked havoc on the nation for over two decades. When removing partisanship from monumental legislation such as the PRWORA, the realization of the synergy that elected officials indeed share will appear right before your eyes. And now we brace ourselves for a pretend showdown over another horror of a ‘safety net’ bill. https://youtu.be/oGsGIN8ZR3o
Baltimore Sun. (1996, January 10). Clinton vetoes GOP welfare reform bill president says plan punishes children, would ‘violate nation’s values’. Retrieved December 22, 2021, from https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1996-01-10-1996010063-story.html
Gayner, J. (1995, October 12). The contract with America: Implementing new ideas in the U.S. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved December 22, 2021, from https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-contract-america-implementing-new-ideas-the-us
Glass, A. (1996, January 10). Clinton vetoes GOP welfare reform bill president says plan punishes children, would ‘violate nation’s values’. Baltimore Sun. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1996-01-10-1996010063-story.html
The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. (2007). Clay Shaw. https://iop.harvard.edu/fellows/clay-shaw
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. (1996, August 31). The personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996. ASPE. Retrieved December 22, 2021, from https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/personal-responsibility-work-opportunity-reconciliation-act-1996
Roberts, P. (2005, November). Child support cooperation requirements and public benefits programs: An overview of issues and recommendations for change. CLASP | The Center for Law and Social Policy. https://www.clasp.org/sites/default/files/public/resources-and-publications/files/0252.pdf