Despite at least $1 billion in federal help over the past decade, most states have failed miserably in computerizing their programs for collecting court-ordered child support, Rep. Henry Hyde says.
The result: millions of children left in a financial bind.Hyde, R-Ill., has asked the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, to find out why it's happening.
"What have American taxpayers and the millions of children dependent on child support gotten for their money?" Hyde asked in a letter sent to the agency Thursday.
Congress allocated the $1 billion in 1985 to make it easier to keep tabs on parents who ignore court orders to pay child support, especially mothers and fathers who move across state lines.
So far, the only states that have met federal standards are Montana, Delaware, Georgia, Virginia and Washington, said Hyde and Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., who joined him in the GAO request. Twenty-three states expect to have their systems finished by 1997.
Hyde called the automation effort a "well-intentioned and well-financed program gone awry." Some experts estimate that deadbeat parents owe $34 billion in unpaid support payments to 23 mil-lion children, he said.
"It isn't working and the results are pitiful," Hyde said.
In 1994, he said, states collected only 18.3 percent of child support due. Parents trying to get by without the payments frequently must resort to welfare, Woolsey said.
"I know because over 28 years ago, I was a single working mother forced to go on welfare because my children never received the child support they were owed," she said.