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Sunday Morning News

Federal Lawmaker Proposes Plan for IRS to Collect Unpaid Child Support

Aired March 19, 2000 - 8:17 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A federal lawmaker with hands-on experience has proposed legislation to have the IRS collect unpaid child support. The total amount of money owed children nationwide is staggering, $50 billion or more.

Lynn Woolsey is a four-term Democratic congresswoman from California, and co-author of the proposal is conservative Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois. Representative Woolsey joins us live from San Francisco.

Good morning.

REP. LYNN WOOLSEY (R), CALIFORNIA: Good morning.

PHILLIPS: Let's start off with your personal interest in this bill. You've had hands-on experience, like we said.

WOOLSEY: Well, absolutely. Thirty years ago, my children's father was ill, and wouldn't take care of his mental illness. And so he abandoned us. I went to work, but I didn't have enough money to make ends meet, and he did not pay any child support. So we went on welfare, even though I was working.

PHILLIPS: So you felt you had no option. Did you feel the system was failing you, that they weren't doing enough? What frustrated you about the system?

WOOLSEY: Well, what frustrates me about the system is that women today are in the same place we were 30 years ago, and 30 million children are owed $50 billion. And the states are failing them, and the federal government can and should collect child support through the IRS.

The IRS has an 85 percent success rate. The current system has a 23 percent success rate.

PHILLIPS: OK, besides the numbers, what are the other advantages to moving this to a federal level?

WOOLSEY: Well, for one thing, we have 1,500 agencies around, state and local agencies collecting child support. They aren't coordinating with each other. An absent parent can leave the state and can't be found. They can leave one county and not be found in California, because California's so large, it's the size of a country.

So children are losing out. Mothers don't -- particularly, it's mothers, don't know when they will get a child support check or not, and through the federal government, collected through the paycheck, just like FICA taxes or any other deduction from the payroll tax, goes straight to the federal government, and a check will be on its way to the custodial parent.

PHILLIPS: OK, you mention the IRS has a 85 percent turnover rate. But the IRS is so overwhelmed. How are they going to take on child support issues?

WOOLSEY: Well, right now, 55,000 people work in the child support collection system around this country. We could -- some of those people could go to work for the IRS. The IRS has the systems in place. They have the procedures. They -- we would just have to tell them to do it. It would work, it -- all the parent would do is fill out a line on the W4 form every year.

PHILLIPS: Well, do you think this could drive more deadbeat parents underground, and they just won't even file taxes?

WOOLSEY: Well, yes, if they want to have the penalties of imprisonment and fines or both, then they can, you know, not pay their taxes. But 85 percent of owed taxes are paid every year, and 23 percent of child support is paid. And what we need parents -- absent parents to know is that there's three things they can't -- that they know will happen, and that's death, taxes, and paying their child support.

PHILLIPS: My final question. Have you encountered any major stumbling blocks with this? Because the idea sounds great.

WOOLSEY: Well, the major stumbling block is that states want to have control of collecting child support. The federal government pays billions of dollars to the states to carry out this function. And the other stumbling block is the IRS gives people in this nation heartburn. And we know that, and it's going to be hard for legislators to accept the fact that the IRS should do any more than they're already doing.

But it's the heartburn that the IRS causes that shows that they will collect what these children need, and that's their child support.

PHILLIPS: Representative Lynn Woolsey, we'll continue to follow this bill that you've co-authored with Henry Hyde of Illinois. Thanks for joining us this morning.

WOOLSEY: Thank you.

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