Child support fee under fire (thank you Clinton and Gillibrand)

[Muttocracy]

Child support fee under fire

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=752765

$25 annual surcharge draws opposition from Gillibrand, Clinton

By JENNIFER A. DLOUHY, Washington bureau
First published in print: Sunday, December 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — Medical office manager Jodie Varmette counts on the several hundred dollars she receives each month from her ex-husband to help buy new clothes and school lunches for her three sons.

But in September, the single mother in Queensbury, Warren County, learned New York state was going to begin skimming $25 a year off her court-ordered child support payments. The federally mandated fee is now being collected whenever a recipient's payments go over $500 for the year.

...

Now, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Greenport, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., are trying to reverse the 2-year-old federal law that led to the $25 charge. They are pushing Congress to end the new fee as part of an economic stimulus bill that Congress is expected to consider in January.

Gillibrand says the fee is tantamount to a tax levied on some of the most nation's most vulnerable families.

While "the federal government is spending billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street," she said, it is "outrageous . . . that single parents are being taxed on their child support payments."

In introducing the bill last month, Clinton said "these single parents need every penny of their child support income to go towards food, medicine and other important expenses."

...

The new $25 fee had its origins in a federal deficit-reduction bill that President Bush signed into law in 2006.

That measure made changes to the funding for the Child Support Enforcement Program, a federal-state partnership to collect and distribute child support payments. While states help locate noncustodial parents, establish paternity and collect money owed, the federal government gives them technical help and oversees the local operations.

Under the 2006 law, states were required to offset the program's costs either by absorbing them or collecting a $25 fee from any custodial parent who gets more than $500 annually in child support and who has never been on welfare.

Most states, facing lean budgets, opted to charge the fee. New York was one of a handful of states that chose to pay the added cost directly.

But when Empire State lawmakers pared New York's budget this fall, they decided they could no longer cover the child support charges. State officials announced they would begin deducting the fee from child support payments.

In New York, roughly 170,000 families are expected to be charged the $25.

full story at the link...

[madeline_con]

1. $500 annually = $41.60 per month, which is everybody.

This is an outrage! When I was on Medicaid years ago, they used to charge $1 per perscription. It was abolished when many people simply didn't have it, and consequently, couldn't get their medication. :mad:

[Muttocracy]

2. I hate the nickel and diming stuff

It hurts the poor, wastes money on administration... all when the big dollars are in things like the military and corporate tax breaks.

[aquart]

3. Trust Bush to tax moms.

I don't even wanna know the fees for apple pie.

[TooRaLoo]

4. And while we're at it, when do the non-custodial parents get their fees waived?

$5 out of one's check, per paycheck, just for paying like one is supposed to. That's more than $130 per year.