EDITORIAL

When a spending cut actually costs money

EDITORIAL BOARD

Economy in government is a laudable goal, but sometimes a cut will cost all of us more in the long run.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is warning that this is exactly what will happen beginning next year when the state and the rest of the country begin to feel the effects of the federal deficit reduction bill. The U.S. House slashed $50 billion from Medicaid, food stamps and student-loan programs, budget cuts on a bitterly fought 217-215 vote in the House. Attorneys general across the country are scratching their heads over the billions that will be cut from the agencies that collect child support.

Abbott's exasperation at the prospect of gutting a program built on the simple premise that rather than the state, parents are obliged to support their children, is well-founded. These cuts are brought to you by an administration that says it stands for Americans taking personal responsibility.

Congress has for more than a generation supplemented the national child support program with laws that strengthen the authority of the states to collect child support and make it tougher for parents to shirk their financial responsibility. Among these is the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act of 1998, which rewards states that do the best job of collecting child support with additional federal funding.

Texas is one of those states. By the end of this fiscal year, the state's Child Support Division expects to collect and turn over $2 billion to families. The two field offices in Austin that serve Travis and eight neighboring counties collected $93.2 million. For every tax dollar spent by the Child Support Division it collects $8 in child support, according to Janece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the division. Few government agencies can boast this kind of return on investment.

The attorney general's office has done its job well enough that about $40 million of its roughly $250 million annual budget is paid for through federal performance incentives. Those incentives will disappear with the budget and staff cuts that will be made necessary by the deficit reduction bill and a call by the Legislature for a budget reduction of 10 percent.

According to Abbott, a chain reaction will begin with federal and state aid cuts of $240 million over the next two years, nearly halving the Child Support Division's budget. The division will be forced to close 43 of its field offices and lay off more than 1,800 of its 2,700 employees. The most important reduction, Rolfe says, is the $1 billion a year in the next two years that will not be collected.

"This is money that goes to 900,000 families, to children, many of whom have in the past or currently receive state child support or some other kind of assistance," Rolfe says. Denied their rightful support, many of these families will turn to the state social services system for help. Then, we'll all be paying.

Congress would do well to reconsider a budget cut that shifts the burden of responsibility away from those who ought to be shouldering it. There might be some better way to compel parents who otherwise do not support their children, but the recent history of federal involvement suggests that individual states haven't found it.

Absent a miracle — the sudden and complete moral awakening of scofflaw parents — let's fully fund the agencies we have entrusted to do this job for us.