WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME) and Herb Kohl (D-WI) today introduced the Child Support Distribution Act, legislation that would improve the collection and distribution of child support funds throughout the nation.

"Welfare recipients need all the help they can get as they transition into work and fight to become self-sufficient," said Snowe. "They should not have to worry about states taking a percentage of the child support owed them to provide for their children. Currently, states keep a portion of child support payments to defray the cost of providing services to needy families. Our legislation will allow states to pass all of the child support collected on a family's behalf to that family, and it will step up enforcement measures to ensure that all back child support is paid to parents who are owed."

"It's time for Congress to change the current system and encourage a common sense approach that lets states distribute more child support directly to families. Wisconsin has been a leader in this practice, which has benefited thousands of working families. I worked with the State to institute an innovative program of passing through child support payments directly to families. An evaluation of the Wisconsin program clearly shows that when child support payments are delivered directly to families, non-custodial parents are more likely to pay, and to pay more," Kohl said.

According to Snowe and Kohl, their legislation would give mothers leaving welfare an additional $4 billion in child support collections over the first five years of implementation. It would also lead to voluntary child support payments by states to families while they are still on welfare totaling approximately $900 million over five years.

Snowe and Kohl noted that current law regarding the assignment and distribution of child support for families on welfare is extremely complicated -- depending on when families applied for welfare, when the child support was paid, whether the child support was for current or past-due payments, and how the child support was collected. For example, the 1996 Welfare Reform law required that in order to qualify for Temporary Assistance for Need Families (TANF) benefits, beneficiaries must "assign" -- or give -- their child support rights to the state for periods before and while the family is on welfare. This means that the State is allowed to divide with the federal government child support payments that were owed even before the family went on TANF if these payments are collected while the family is receiving welfare benefits.

"It simply does not make sense to tell a family that is on welfare or trying to get off of welfare that the State is entitled to the first cut of a child support payment," said Snowe and Kohl. "This bill will enable families to keep more of the past-due child support owned to them and it will further the spirit of federal welfare policy by helping families to remain self-sufficient."

The Snowe-Kohl bill would also implement a variety of reforms to improve the collection of child support, including:

• Passport denial for an decrease in amount of child support paid;

• Use of tax refund intercept program to collect past-due child support on behalf of children who are not minors;

• Garnishment of compensation paid to veterans for service-connected disabilities in order to enforce child support obligations; and,

• Mandatory review and adjustment of child support orders for families receiving TANF.

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