Parents, trapped.

• Author: Bergo, Sandy

Like most political reporters, we here at The Washington Monthly devote a fair amount of space to criticizing politicians and bureaucrats when they do a bad job. So, it's only that we let our readers know when those politicians and bureaucrats make a real effort to fix things. Nearly two years ago, the Monthly reported on widespread problems at the state agencies charged with collecting and distributing child-support money. (See "Money for Nothing," October 2002.) It turned out that, while those agencies had gotten much better at collecting child support firm deadbeat parents--through payroll deductions, seizures of 'tax refunds, and other methods adopted during the late 1990s--they weren't very good at getting that money in those for whom it was intended.

All told, hundreds of millions of dollars were sitting around in bank accounts, a casualty of outdated information technology, understaffing, and plain old indifference. And despite evidence suggesting that matters could be greatly if the federal government put pressure on the states to audit and improve their child-support systems, officials at the Department of Health and Human services told the Monthly they were reluctant to intervene and that the states should fix the problem on their own.

But once our article appeared, Congress began to take a closer look. In December 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee which oversees federal child-support enforcement--ordered the General Accounting Office to examine the problem of undisbursed child support. Released dais past April, the GAO's final report confirms many of the problems to which the Monthly had originally drawn attention, resulting in millions of dollars in payments delayed or never reaching families. Moreover, the GAO found the states' accounting of undistributed funds to be woefully inaccurate and unreliable. Gerri Jensen, president of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support, says the report paints a picture of a system that is "50 percent broken"--collections are up, but distribution isn't. "They're supposed to just keep records and transfer the money. I don't know if anybody understands, but that is their whole job," she says. "It's appalling."

Moreover, the GAO found that some of the federal agencies which are supposed to help make sure that child support gets where it's supposed to haven't been doing a very good job. Take the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OSCE)...