A real issue

Hey Democrats, if you want to actually accomplish something as opposed to posturing, there is a great issue in the world of welfare reform that you could take on. In the welfare reform of the 1990's, changes were made in the amount of child support that welfare recipients could receive. The states were now able to claim that support as repayment for AFDC support. Wisconsin decided to allow custodial parents to keep 100% of their child support payments. This is the full pass-through. What is happening in states that take the child support is that non-custodial parents are paying less frequently than before the policy change. The theory is that the, let's be honest, fathers don't see their payments directly going to their children so there is no incentive to comply. What Wisconsin has seen is that the fathers now pay at a much higher rate than before. The result is that needy families have more resources at very little cost to the state. Remember, the state is not forgoing any revenue due to the pass-through because the revenue wasn't coming in without it anyway. Now Congress is slow to codify a provision that would allow full pass-through and the feds are acting like they won't renew the waiver that allowed Wisconsin to experiment with the pass-through in the first place. Surely Democrats can get beyond a low-cost policy that has very real tangible benefits.