Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am pleased to join the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Reichert) in support of the International Child Support Recovery Improvement Act. We tried to do this just about a year ago. In the last Congress, I coauthored very similar legislation that was bipartisan here on the floor. Though we acted here, the Senate was slow to act, and we are hopeful that now, with the leadership of Chairman Reichert and, again, with broad bipartisan support, we can get this measure passed not only here in the House but see prompt action in the Senate. International borders should never be barriers to children receiving the financial support that their parents are obligated to provide nor should a parent be able to shirk his responsibility to his child by just leaving America, but the complexity and difficulty in enforcing child support obligations when a child and the noncustodial parent live in one country and when the other parent lives in another sometimes lets a parent off the hook. The bill before us today would reduce many of the challenges in collecting child support across international borders by fully implementing The Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support. The Senate adopted that Hague Convention as a treaty in 2010, and this legislation will bring us into full compliance and will encourage the State child support agencies to have uniform methods for processing international child support orders.…”