C
CCM08
Guest
A recent incident has got me thinking about the whole cult of personal responsiblity, especially as used to shirk social responsiblity. Here’s what happened:
My wife does charity work with a group that helps single parents out with food, clothes, and such. She knows several of the women that come in regularly. As most of you know the Welfare reform of 1996 gave state’s both reason and incentives to get people of all forms of welfare no matter what. So in addition to state manadated child support to force this woman’s children off state medical coverage they’re forcing the father to pay for medical insurance through his employer. Now I know this is were the die hard republicans jump up and chant “personal responsiblity” over and over. The thing is, and I’ve seen the policy, it’s the absolute worst insurance you could imagine. Whereas the state insurance is quite good. Well the little girl fell off her bike and broke her arm, normal childhood injury. Well the co-pay on this insurance is over $800. Now the father can’t afford to pay, and the state says since he’s flipping for the medical insurance he doesn’t have to, it’s mom’s responsilbity. Thing is when you get your canned goods from a charity odds are you don’t have 800 bucks lying around. In another case a woman’s children were forced off the state’s medical plan because technically the father had to enroll them in employer provided medical insurance. However, federal law maxs garnishment at 50 percent of a paycheck. As such the child support judgement is high enough that after they’re done taking it there isn’t enough left over in that 50 percent limit and so the children just have no coverage.
The whole thing got me thinking about the “mircles” of Welfare reform of '96. Sort of the notion that unpaid child support was going to fix the welfare problem. In Californa, for example, less than 1 percent of the state’s uncollected child support is for people that earn $50,000 a year or more. Which in most of Californa $50,000 a year is like $30,000 in most other parts of the country. Now the model Wisconsin uses, at a straight 14% of income, produces the country’s highest child support payments. So if you were making $1,800 a month that would mean you had to pay $252 a month. The economic reality is while it certain is a hardship for someone at that income level to pay 250 bucks a month it equally is not enough to provide any real help to the custodial parent.
Some other issues I’ve noticed, states have a deep financial incentive to collect child support, as such they aren’t interested in collecting it from the right person so long as they are garnishing someone’s wages. It mostly seems the result of compelling women to name a father if they need help. While I don’t condone lose sexual behavior the fact is a lot of these women may not really know who the father is, but they absolutely have to name one. This leads to picking names at random or fingering a name they’ve picked up here or there. If one of these state employees thinks they’ve found the person they send out a notice which gives a grand total of 30 days to file a written complaint against the parternity suit. If the guy is gone, no longer lives at the address, or any other number of reasons doesn’t file a response a default judgement is entered. In LA county last year 2/3 of all such judgements were entered by default. This leaves someone that even with overwhelming DNA evidence on his side is often stuck with someone else’s child support bill. It really seems the personal responiblity cult is more about saving a few percent on taxes and is willing to give up other people’s right to due process to have the extra money.
I’m left with the conclusion that the personal responiblity cult is more about punishing the less fortunate and avoiding social responsiblity than anything constructive.
My wife does charity work with a group that helps single parents out with food, clothes, and such. She knows several of the women that come in regularly. As most of you know the Welfare reform of 1996 gave state’s both reason and incentives to get people of all forms of welfare no matter what. So in addition to state manadated child support to force this woman’s children off state medical coverage they’re forcing the father to pay for medical insurance through his employer. Now I know this is were the die hard republicans jump up and chant “personal responsiblity” over and over. The thing is, and I’ve seen the policy, it’s the absolute worst insurance you could imagine. Whereas the state insurance is quite good. Well the little girl fell off her bike and broke her arm, normal childhood injury. Well the co-pay on this insurance is over $800. Now the father can’t afford to pay, and the state says since he’s flipping for the medical insurance he doesn’t have to, it’s mom’s responsilbity. Thing is when you get your canned goods from a charity odds are you don’t have 800 bucks lying around. In another case a woman’s children were forced off the state’s medical plan because technically the father had to enroll them in employer provided medical insurance. However, federal law maxs garnishment at 50 percent of a paycheck. As such the child support judgement is high enough that after they’re done taking it there isn’t enough left over in that 50 percent limit and so the children just have no coverage.
The whole thing got me thinking about the “mircles” of Welfare reform of '96. Sort of the notion that unpaid child support was going to fix the welfare problem. In Californa, for example, less than 1 percent of the state’s uncollected child support is for people that earn $50,000 a year or more. Which in most of Californa $50,000 a year is like $30,000 in most other parts of the country. Now the model Wisconsin uses, at a straight 14% of income, produces the country’s highest child support payments. So if you were making $1,800 a month that would mean you had to pay $252 a month. The economic reality is while it certain is a hardship for someone at that income level to pay 250 bucks a month it equally is not enough to provide any real help to the custodial parent.
Some other issues I’ve noticed, states have a deep financial incentive to collect child support, as such they aren’t interested in collecting it from the right person so long as they are garnishing someone’s wages. It mostly seems the result of compelling women to name a father if they need help. While I don’t condone lose sexual behavior the fact is a lot of these women may not really know who the father is, but they absolutely have to name one. This leads to picking names at random or fingering a name they’ve picked up here or there. If one of these state employees thinks they’ve found the person they send out a notice which gives a grand total of 30 days to file a written complaint against the parternity suit. If the guy is gone, no longer lives at the address, or any other number of reasons doesn’t file a response a default judgement is entered. In LA county last year 2/3 of all such judgements were entered by default. This leaves someone that even with overwhelming DNA evidence on his side is often stuck with someone else’s child support bill. It really seems the personal responiblity cult is more about saving a few percent on taxes and is willing to give up other people’s right to due process to have the extra money.
I’m left with the conclusion that the personal responiblity cult is more about punishing the less fortunate and avoiding social responsiblity than anything constructive.
: we still have free medical insurance for everyone in Serbia, no matter what happens.
p), and of course those who hold those signs proclaiming the big lie: “will work for food”.
Or you could forego any tax deductions and just give them the money directly.