Congresswoman Gwen Moore Applauds Ways and Means Committee Passage of Her Legislation to Improve Child Welfare System and Support Child Support Enforcement

Congresswoman Gwen Moore Applauds Ways and Means Committee Passage of Her Legislation to Improve Child Welfare System and Support Child Support Enforcement

Today, the Ways and Means Committee marked up and voted out of Committee the Strengthening State and Tribal Support Act, which would support child support enforcement. The Committee also approved her legislation that aims to improve the child welfare system. These bills were part of a package of bills which aim to improve to Title IV-B of the Social Security Act. Title IV-B supports funding for child welfare programs through states, territories and tribes that work to protect the health and wellbeing of children and prevent abuse and neglect. As Chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, she secured critical enhancements to Title IV-B. In response, she released the following statement:

HR 7906, the Strengthening State and Tribal Support Act wouldamend Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code to allow Indian tribes that operate child support services programs to access limited tax information for the purpose of child support collection and would also allow state and tribal contractors to access the data.

"Child support payments are critical to child well-being and development. They also help contribute to fighting child poverty and keeping both parents engaged in supporting their child. Over four million parents received child support in the form of cash payments in 2021. In FY2022, the Child Support Services program collected $26.3 billion in child support in support of families and served more than 12.3 million child support cases. But just because you are awarded child support, doesn't necessarily mean you end up getting it. About 7 in 10 custodial parents (69.8 percent) who were supposed to receive child support in 2017 received at least some payments. The aggregate amount of child support that was supposed to have been received in 2017 was $30 billion; 62.2 percent of that amount was actually received.

States and tribes have several tools for enforcing child support orders, like income withholding. Accessing federal and state tax refunds is also an important tool. Appropriate enforcement is a crucial part of our efforts to ensure that families and children actually get the child support they are entitled to, including through intercepting federal tax refunds, when necessary. Currently, only state child support collection agencies and their contractors can access the offset program that authorizes the Department of the Treasury to withhold from tax refunds amounts owed for past due child support payments. Tribes were excluded even though at least 61 out of the 574 federally recognized tribes run child support programs. Denying Tribes the ability to directly request that tax refunds be garnished for child support, as states can do, is a direct affront to Tribal sovereignty, and continues to hamper their ability to use their child support enforcement tool. This legislation before us today would provide a long overdue and permanent statutory fix which tells our tribes, we respect your sovereignty and your ability to have the same authority as states to help ensure that families and children get the support they are entitled to.

It's important to recognize that this bill also advances a fix for states that use contractors to operate enforcement pieces of their child support programs. Many states have IRS audit findings related to the unauthorized disclosure of federal tax information to contractors- audit findings that are currently suspended so that the States that use contractors can temporarily continue to operate their programs. Given that State programs have come to rely on access to this information, we have a duty to ensure that these child support payments continue to flow to families that need them - while ensuring that confidential taxpayer information remains safeguarded.

At the end of the day, we must remember the greatest beneficiaries of our action today will be the children. I am grateful that this legislation has garnered strong bipartisan support and will continue to work to get it enacted expeditiously."

The Protecting America's Children by Strengthening Families Act (H.R. 9076) is a bipartisan reauthorization of Title IV-B programs.

"I am grateful to the Chairman and Ranking Member for including provisions of standalone bills. H.R. 9076 includes provisions from my Preventing Child Welfare Entry Caused by Poverty Act (H.R. 8813), which I introduced with Chairman Smith, that would allow child welfare agencies to deploy short term resources under the existing Title IV-B program to address the acute needs of families living in poverty that might otherwise lead to investigations for neglect. This includes resources to address housing, food insecurity, or other concrete needs that may help prevent families from being separated. These provisions also require states to have policies in place to ensure that simply living in poverty, absent abuse or neglect, is not a reason on its own to separate children from their parents."

"I have long championed efforts to revise policies in order to prevent the needless and traumatic separations of children from their families. Instead of separating families solely because of poverty, we need to ensure we can connect families with the resources they need to remain whole. The inclusion of these provisions builds toward that goal and help struggling families with emergency support when they need it most."

H.R. 9076 also includes the provisions of my Youth and Family Engagement in Child Welfare Act and would require states to consult with youth and families with lived experience in child welfare services when developing their state child welfare plans that they must develop to receive federal funding.

"I am also thrilled that we are moving to lift up those with lived experiences and ensure their voices are reflected in our state and federal child welfare policies. These efforts are how we can ensure the child welfare system is truly meeting the needs of some of our most vulnerable children."

H.R. 9076 passed committee unanimously and now heads for consideration in the full House.

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