Issue Position:Summary of Fatherhood Bill

Issue Position

Julia Carson Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2015

Danny K. Davis (D-IL) and André Carson (D-IN)

Fathers play a significant and under-appreciated role in the development of their children, with research demonstrating that a supportive and involved father strengthens a child's emotional, physical, intellectual, and behavioral development. Children with positive relationships with fathers -- even if they do not live in the same household - have stronger mental health, economic success, and academic achievement with lower rates of youth delinquency, school drop-out, and teen pregnancy. Father engagement does not depend on living in the same house as one's child, with many non-residential fathers being actively-involved with their children and supportive of their children's mothers. However, low-income fathers experience multiple challenges to contributing financially and emotionally to their children due to limited education and job skills, unstable employment opportunities, child support enforcement policies, incarceration, and strained relationships with their children's mothers.

The Julia Carson Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2015increases the upward economic mobility of custodial and noncustodial parents so they can actively participate in financial support and child-rearing as well as maintain positive, healthy, and nonviolent relationships with their children and co-parents.

· It reforms the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to promote critical education and employment skills so parents can secure family-sustaining wages by: prohibiting unfair treatment of 2-parent families; encouraging education and job training by making education a core activity, lifting the 30% cap on education, and doubling the length of vocational programs to 2 years; providing additional employment and training opportunities for recipients who have not successed in finding employment by focusing the Contingency Fund on subsidized employment with a state option to fund sectoral training; and clarifying states can provide non-custodial parents the same work supports as custodial parents.

· It improves the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to allow noncustodial and childless workers to escape poverty and provide for their families by: permanently reducing marriage penalties and enhancing the credit for workers with 3 or more children; expanding access to childless workers from age 21-67, with foster youth eligible starting at age 18; increasing the maximum credit to equal 20% of earnings to allow quicker relief; raising the phase-out to $11,500 to allow greater support as incomes rise; allowing workers who fail to provide a Social Security Number for a child to claim the childless EITC rather than denying any assistance; and allowing eligibility for the childless EITC for workers living with extended family who do not claim a qualifying child living in their household.

· It modernizes the child support enforcement program by: directing child support to families rather than to government; prohibiting treatment of incarceration as "voluntary" unemployment; establishing a demonstration grant and evaluation for state supervised employment programs for non-custodial parents at risk of incarceration due to non-payment; prohibiting recovery of Medicaid costs for births; requiring states to review, and if appropriate, reduce arrearages if the non-custodial parent is unable to pay; requiring states to assess and report barriers to employment and financial support of children, including modification of obligations for low-income parents and state practices related to ex-offenders; and establishing a grant to review report findings and suggest possible legislative changes to state laws.

· It adjusts the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to ensure that child support payments do not result in loss of food assistance for families by requiring states to disregard 20% of child support enforcement in determining net income eligibility, as is done with other earnings.

· It enhances the fatherhood and healthy marriage grant program by: ensuring voluntary participation; promoting healthy relationships and marriages; focusing funding on low-income non-custodial parents who are ineligible for TANF; and creating a new grant for partnerships between domestic violence prevention organizations and fatherhood and marriage programs for staff training, domestic violence services, and dissemination of best practices.

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