Representative Rob Simmons announced yesterday that he would switch his vote and vote against the Budget Reconciliation conference report when it comes back to the House for a revote the day after the State of the Union. This is huge news, an indication that the all-out press led by the Emergency Campaign for American Priorities is not in vain. (Although the same cannot be said for Rep. Simmons' bid to add two more years to his doomed political career.)

There are so many terrible things in the budget bill that it's hard to say what provision is the worst, in terms of consequences. But to my mind, there is one provision that symbolizes all the pointless, wanton, ignorant destructiveness of the last five years: the $4.9 billion in cuts to child support enforcement.

Child support enforcement is one of the great success stories of modern government, and it was a completely bipartisan and cross-ideological success story. The major improvements in child support enforcement were passed in the 1996 welfare reform bill, and both supporters and opponents of that bill praised them. Liberals and conservatives were able to agree that every child should have at least the financial support of both parents even if they live separately, that both parents had responsibilities, and that single parents would be more likely to escape the trap of welfare dependency if they were getting help from the other parent.

A dozen years ago, enforcement of child support was a disaster. Every state had its own system, its own support guidelines, and a different agency in charge. (They still do.) Interstate enforcement -- enforcing an order from one state on a parent who lives in another -- was a complete mess. States were supposed to develop new computer systems with federal money but they were years behind in doing so. A rule of thumb at the time was that a non-custodial parent who moved to a different state and changed jobs every couple of years could easily avoid ever having his wages garnished for child support. As a result less than 18% of child support payments were actually made.

The movement to fix this system begins in the mid-1980s. A bipartisan Commission on Children chaired by Senator Rockefeller made some recommendations, and then in 1988, a commission on interstate enforcement was created, which four years later recommended several hundred changes, many very complex, some very simple, such as trying to establish a child"s paternity at birth rather than years later in a court. The bill creating the commission was introduced by Senator Bradley, so when I worked for him later, I was responsible for getting legislation introduced based on the recommendations, and then getting most of them included in the welfare reform bill of 1996. (That's why I feel so strongly about this, but I should acknowledge that these weren't my ideas and I was not then or now a real expert. I was more or less the temporary caretaker of a set of very important fixes that had been worked out over years and would continue for years after.) This wasn't an ideological fight; it was just a matter of hard, hard work to figure out how to structure the incentives and requirements so that parents got the support they were due.

The most complex changes had to do with the structure of the financial relationship between the feds and the state government. There is an obvious federal interest here, because of the link to the welfare program and because of the problem of interstate enforcement.  A system of matching payments and performance incentives to states was developed in order to force state investment in child support enforcement which, studies show, save government $4 for every dollar spent on enforcement.

And it worked. In 2004, 51% of child support was paid. From 18% to 51% is a huge transformation. I doubt that anyone in the mid-1990s would have predicted that. One study showed that improved child support enforcement was responsible for a quarter of the reduction in welfare caseloads. See this report from the Center on Law and Social Policy for a summary of the success.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cuts in the incentive payments to states will cost families $8.4 billion in child support. Even that estimate assumes that states will make up half of the federal money they will lose; if they don"t, children will lose twice as much in child support.  

The era of bipartisan collaboration on basic problems like child support or health care is long gone. I"ve gotten used to that. What I can"t grasp is why this Republican majority wants to take some of the basic accomplishments of that era, accomplishments that took a decade or more of serious work, and casually toss them aside.