Herb Kohl: “2 weeks ago, I introduced two bills, the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1997, and the Sunshine in Litigation Act of…”

“2 weeks ago, I introduced two bills, the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1997, and the Sunshine in Litigation Act of 1997. Both address issues that are of enormous importance to our communities and country. First, Senator DeWine and I introduced a measure to toughen the original Child Support Recovery Act of 1992 to ensure that more serious crimes receive more serious punishment. Our new proposal sends a clear message to deadbeat parents: Pay up or go to jail. Current law already makes it a Federal offense to willfully fail to pay child support obligations to a child in another State if the obligation has remained unpaid for longer than a year or is greater than $5,000. However, current law provides for a maximum of just 6 months in prison for a first offense and a maximum of 2 years for a second offense. A first offense, however, no matter how egregious, is not a felony under current law. Police officers and prosecutors have used the current law effectively, but they have found that current misdemeanor penalties do not adequately deal with more serious cases, those cases in which parents move from State to State to intentionally evade child support penalties or fail to pay child support obligations for more than 2 years--serious cases that deserve serious felony punishment. In response to these concerns, President Clinton drafted legislation that would address this problem, and we dropped it in last month. This new effort builds on past successes.…”