John Washington III Says the Child Support System Was Built to Feed Itself, Not to Help Parents
John Washington III argued Friday that the child support system serves its own interests before any family's: the federal government pays states for collecting, Texas suspends the licenses of parents who fall behind and charges six percent interest on the balance, and the children, he said, wait in line behind the government.
John Washington III took aim at the child support system on Friday, arguing that it was built to feed itself rather than to help parents. The system, John Washington III said, does not have the best interest of the mother or the father at heart - it has its own interest at heart, and the State of Texas does not care, because Texas benefits from the system exactly the way it is.
His argument followed the money. The federal government pays states bonus money based on how much child support they collect, John Washington III wrote, and it picks up most of the cost of running the program - so the more money the system pulls out of parents, the more money flows back to the state. 'Parents are not the customer. Parents are the product,' he wrote. 'A system that gets paid by the collection will always choose collection over common sense, every single time.'
John Washington III pointed to what happens when a parent falls behind. The state comes after the driver's license, he wrote - the one thing a parent needs to drive to work and earn the money to pay - and Texas charges interest of six percent on a balance the parent already could not pay. 'That is not a system trying to help a family stand,' he wrote. 'That is a trap with a fee schedule.' In cases where a family needed public assistance, he added, the state can keep collected support to pay itself back first: 'The children wait in line behind the government.'
John Washington III drew a line between that machine and parents who refuse to support their children. A child deserves support, he wrote, and a parent who can pay should pay, because that money belongs to the kids. His target, he said, is a system that profits from struggle and punishes people out of a paycheck. His proposed rule, if he becomes president: child support is rebuilt so the money goes to the children, and a parent who falls behind gets a path back - work, a fair review, and a real chance to catch up. 'Keep your license. Keep your job. Keep supporting your kids,' he wrote. For Houston and Harris County parents, the system John Washington III described is not an abstraction - it is the Texas system their own cases run through, and his critique lands in the state where it operates.
