Adam Serwer
does the knowledge. The two most important things to me:
One of the major adjustments of Obama and Bayh's Responsible Fatherhood
Act is that it prohibits state and federal government from taking money
from child-support payments -- what is essentially a "tax" on a
parents' earnings -- and ensures that all of it goes to the family. It
also expands the Earned Income Tax Credit to provide an additional
credit for non-custodial parents who keep up on their payments, thus
encouraging fathers to keep legitimate jobs and avoid the underground
economy.
And:
In addition, the Obama-Bayh bill addresses the issue of incarceration.
The legislation prevents the government from treating time spent in
prison as "voluntary unemployment," a practice that can leave a parent
re-entering society with a mountain of child-support debt based on his
or her income prior to incarceration. The bill sets aside federal
grants for transitional jobs and prisoner re-entry programs. The
Justice Center, a think tank focused on criminal justice, estimates
that more than 7 million children may have a parent in prison or jail,
or under parole or probation supervision. The bill also requires each
state to review and make adjustments for debt of men who were
incarcerated or otherwise unemployed when the debt was accumulated.
Obama can use the bully-pulpit to push fatherhood all day long, so long as there is work behind his words. One thing I noticed when Obama gave his Father's Day speech--a lot of men felt slighted, But I didn't hear from too many single mothers dealing with deadbeat Dads, worried that their ex-dudes were being scapegoated. Try doing that shit for a few weeks. Stereotyping will be the last thing on your mind.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Am I reading this right? If I stay married to the mother of my children, then I pay full freight? But if I walk out, my child-support payments are tax exempt?
Where do I sign up!
Tony:
I don't believe you are reading it right. I think the concern is that it is somehow subject to double taxation; i.e., father's pay tax on the income earned, but the government should not get a piece of the money that is distributed to the mothers for child support.
Bout time they did something about the jail thing.
Like freighting an ex-con with years of back child-support is going to help anyone.
Any way to get dead beat dads to pay is a good thing. I couldn’t care less if some men felt like they were scapegoats. My father left my mother when I was two years old. He never ever paid child support. My mother was on this strong woman thing where she felt like she didn’t need any help. Sadly to this day she continues to pretend like he was a good man. By her not pursuing her legal rights of enforcing the child support order cost her children the most. We suffered from her ego and his ignorance. I say make them pay!
Right. If I'm married to the mother of my kids, the two of us get taxed when I earn my paycheck but we don't get taxed a second time when I hand it over to my wife to buy stuff for the kids (as if that's what she spends it on). But if we're divorced, it's the same income as before but now we're being taxed twice.
This reminds me a bit of the OJ case.
OJ was railroaded...but he also had something to do with it.
It's a sign of how far off our politics are that this bill is lauded as progress. Yes, being a single mother is hard as hell. But simultaneously black men are being railroaded here. Just the spatial mismatch between concentrated populations and jobs alone lead to the types of stressors that make it difficult for families to stay together, and difficult for fathers to make things work on their end.
i note that the two "experts" cited were charles murray and john mcwhorter--both subscribers to the black cultural dysfunction school of thought. i don't much care for william julius wilson's work, but at times like this a "when work disappears" for dummies would be a good thing.
Hear hear Ann, my bro and I were in the same boat, cept his dad paid and mine didn't. But it's tough for poor mothers to pursue deadbeats. They already have to pay lawyers and whatnot, which is basically a tax when they get money. Reducing legal costs would help.
Like Lil' Dap says, make em pay
The EITC thing is a big deal if both parents are relatively low income people like my ex and I were. My ex and I had a decent relationship--never went to court over things like visitation and child support, even when my daughter came to live with me for a while--but it still would have been nice to have been able to claim an EITC for the child support I paid, since it was a significant chunk of my earnings every year.
I just gained respect for Evan Bayh. Didn't see that coming when I got up this morning.
If I stay married to the mother of my children, then I pay full freight? But if I walk out, my child-support payments are tax exempt?
No, no. Right now, if you're married and you have a kid, your income gets taxed, but when you spend it on caring for your kid, you and your wife don't have to report it as income again. If you split up, and had to pay child support, she'd have to report it as *income*, even though you were already taxed on it.
As I understand it, this just eliminates the second tax.
Finally, something for people who don't have high-priced lobbyists.
Lester Spence, could you explain in a bit more detail why you think "black men are being railroaded here?"
Men regularly walk out of Family Courts with child support garnishments that leave their weekly take-home pay in the low two figures.
Having kids at all is a dubious move from an ecological point of view, and tends to be financially disastrous for low-income people (which means almost everybody), but our society, culture, economy and religious organizations keep pushing us to multiply.
It’s fine to blame the ‘deadbeats’, but blame isn’t a solution. In this season when we're about to give a mega-subsidy to the Wall Street lending institutions, we should recognize that housing, medical care, child care, and education must be subsidized. They can’t be purchased with the typical paycheck.
This act would be fantastic for separated families. We do tons of family law work, and the way child support is set up in this country damages children and the relationship between non-custodial fathers and their children. Low-income fathers especially end up paying out far more than is ever actually seen by their children (or the children's mothers) because the government or child support collection agencies take a huge chunk out for themselves.
Supportive fathers want to know their money is actually going to help their kids, not to pay governmental or business overhead, and taxing child support money is unjustifiable.
Elena is so right. The states make big money if only on the interest between the time they recieve payment and disburse the monety to the custodial parent. It's a huge racket. It gets worse when states insist that single mothers name a father, any father, and then the sates go after random men who have no connection to the child, or to the woman for that matter.
Want to push fatherhood? Then privilege it the same way we do motherhood. Make equal parenting the presumption in cases of divorce in your state. Criminalize interference in visitation rights. Criminalize and actually enfore the penalties - with hard jail time - against abusive, false claims of sexual abuse and DV.
Want to push fatherhood? Stigmatize intiation of divorce when there are children presence as child abuse. Hell, stigmatize mothers for bringing in abusive step-fathers, boyfriends and "uncles' at the same level as the abusers who are present only because the mother is responsible for their presence.
That would be a start. It would be a revolution, actually, and it still would be a only a few small steps.
I have a somewhat different take on this--namely, that fatherhood should not be framed as a problem to be solved--which you can read over at Daddy Dialectic
hy, Do something for help the hungry people in Africa and India,
I made this blog about that subject:
on http://tinyurl.com/6p6lb8