| Office
of Child Support Enforcement |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2000
Contact: Michael Kharfen, (202) 401-9215
CHILD SUPPORT TO RECEIVE VICE PRESIDENTIAL AWARD
HHS Secretary Donna
E. Shalala announced today that the HHS Office of Child Support Enforcement
received Vice President Gore's Hammer Award for its success in collecting
delinquent child support payments through the National Directory of New
Hires.
In its first year
of operation, the National Directory of New Hires located 1.2 million
parents who were delinquent in their child support payments, a figure
that more than doubled to 2.8 million in fiscal year 1999.
"We are very
proud of the success of the National Directory of New Hires and the dedicated
federal staff who make it work everyday to help children," said Secretary
Shalala. "The directory is now indispensable to the child support
enforcement program because it assures that children receive the support
they need and deserve."
The National Directory
of New Hires, proposed by the Clinton administration, was a key provision
of the child support enforcement reforms contained in the 1996 welfare
reform law. Under the program, the nation's 6.4 million employers report
information on newly hired employees to the state child support agency.
States then forward the information, along with quarterly wage and unemployment
insurance records to the National Directory of New Hires, an automated
centralized repository of employment information. The information is used
to quickly locate a parent so that child support assistance can be obtained
for children.
"Receiving
the Hammer Award is a tribute to an incredible partnership, including
the team that worked so hard implementing a complex system on time and
within budget, and to the millions of employers who make it work everyday.
Without the help of the nation's employers we could never have done it,"
said Olivia A. Golden, HHS assistant secretary for children and families.
"But, knowing that we are helping children is the greatest reward
we in the nation's child support program can ever receive."
Nearly 30 percent
of the nation's 19 million child support cases involve parents who live
or work in a different state than their children. Also, as individuals
move from state to state it becomes more difficult to locate parents who
are delinquent in their child support payments. In fiscal year 1998, information
from the National Directory of New Hires was provided to states on nearly
1.2 million noncustodial parents in interstate cases. The number of parents
found more than doubled to 2.8 million in fiscal year 1999. Approximately
60 percent of all child support is paid through automatic wage withholding
by employers.
"I am very
proud of the nation's child support workers and the nation's employers,"
said David Gray Ross, commissioner, HHS office of child support enforcement.
"Together, we successfully implemented the National Directory of
New Hires on time, thereby helping our ultimate customer, children in
need. This is a government-private sector partnership at its best, truly
achieving results Americans care about."
The President announced
in his State of the Union address new enforcement initiatives that will
collect nearly $2 billion for children over the next five years. These
measures include booting the cars and intercepting large gambling winnings
of delinquent parents, denying passports to parents who owe more than
$2,500 in past due support (lowering the amount from the current $5,000),
prohibiting Medicare participation by providers who owe support and requiring
more frequent updating of child support orders.
In 1999, $15.5 billion
was collected for children by the child support enforcement program, nearly
doubling the amount collected in 1992. The federal government collected
a record $1.3 billion in overdue child support from federal tax refunds.
A new program to match delinquent parents with financial records found
662,000 accounts since August 1999 with a value of about $1 billion. Nearly
1.5 million men acknowledged paternity in 1998, an increase of 12 percent
in one year alone and three times as many as in 1992. The Passport Denial
Program has collected more than $2.25 million in lump sum child support
payments and is currently denying 30 to 40 passports to delinquent parents
per day.
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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are
available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.
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