Support the Child Support Protection Act of 2007

Guess who's going to be paying off a chunk of the federal deficit? You are! This according to The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was signed into law back in February of 2006, but will begin next month to cut into the pockets of single parent families across the country.

How? Primarily by cutting into the funds available to your local office of child support enforcement.

Here's a breakdown of how The Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) will directly impact local child support enforcement programs, and - ultimately - the single parents and children they serve:

1. By eliminating the opportunity for state-run child support enforcement offices to receive federal match dollars on incentive payments


2. By reducing the federal match rate for laboratory fees related to genetic (paternity) testing


3. By imposing a mandatory $25 annual per-case fee, which most states are passing on directly to their clients - the very moms and dads asking for help collecting unpaid child support!

As a result of these changes, it is believed that billions of dollars in child support will go uncollected. Just how many billions of dollars? Well, according to a report released by The Lewin Group (which was contracted by The National Council of Child Support Directors to determine just how the cuts would impact local child support enforcement programs), at least $11 billion dollars will be lost in the next ten years - and that's a positive outlook for the future of child support enforcement, based on the hope that individual states might be able to come up with one-half of the lost federal dollars on their own.

While this isn't good news for the moms and dads who depend on monthly child support payments to pay rent or buy groceries, and it certainly isn't positive for those custodial parents who might have used that $25 annual fee to pay for a necessary prescription or buy their child a pair of eyeglasses, there is something you can do.

You can show your support for The Child Support Protection Act of 2007, a bill which would restore funding to your local office of child support enforcement.

How do you do that exactly? It's simple. You can show your support for the Child Support Protection Act of 2007 by contacting your local representative, which you can do quickly and easily, right here online, when you visit the The National Women's Law Center.

Related Resources:

• Read "The Anticipated Effects of the Deficit Reduction Act Provisions on Child Support Program Financing and Performance," prepared for The National Council of Child Support Directors by The Lewin Group and ECONorthwest


• Read "Child Support Provisions in the Deficit Reduction Act," by the Center for Law and Public Policy


• Track the progress of The Child Support Protection Act of 2007