S.C. Bungles Child Support

Uncollected payments hurt poor children

Sunday's story about the state's abysmal failure to build a reliable child-support collection system details bureaucratic bungling that's already cost S.C. taxpayers $49 million and could cost them up to $100 million more by 2010. Because the system allows so many noncustodial parents to blow off their legal child-support obligations, the state collected only a small percentage of the child-support money it's required to collect under a series of federal mandates that began in 1988.

But behind this abstracted tale of ineptitude at the S.C. Department of Social Services and in the governor's office lies a saga of ongoing misery for thousands of S.C. children whose custodial parents (usually mothers) fall below the federal poverty line. The 1996 welfare reform law integrated child-support payments owed to such poor children into the support system for needy families.

In passing this provision, the Republican Congress of the mid-1990s and President Clinton figured that if state governments could induce noncustodial parents (usually fathers) to pay their children every penny owed them, U.S. taxpayers wouldn't have to spend so much to support poor families with dependent children. The federal role in this process was to create a federally mediated computer system capable of tracking deadbeat parents across state lines. The law empowered states to freeze bank accounts, garnishee paychecks and appropriate tax refunds to ensure that these parents took financial responsibility for their children.

This was a great idea that has worked reasonably well in the states where legislatures and social services bureaucracies put together effective systems. But in states that have bungled compliance with this mandate - such as South Carolina - much of that money still goes uncollected. That means even harder lives for youngsters whose parents blow off their child support. There is no longer any "give" in the welfare system to cushion them and their mothers from hardship and deprivation. Indeed, S.C. children are still owed $778 million in uncollected child support - and that's just the tally for the past few years.

None of this is to suggest that there should be "give" in the welfare system. The 1996 reform law is good legislation - not least because it helps people who need public assistance eventually to take responsibility for themselves.

Whose fault is the DSS failure? Agency leaders themselves, of course. But DSS is a Cabinet agency whose budget is legislatively reviewed. It's disappointing that Gov. Mark Sanford and his three predecessors, as well as the General Assemblies of the 1990s and the new century, have not given compliance with federal child-support mandates a higher priority. If they had, South Carolina might not now be on track to become the last state to create a reliable child-support collection system. All South Carolinians should find that a source of shame.