PERSPECTIVE ON CHILD SUPPORT : Send the IRS After the Deadbeats : State collection programs don’t work. To stop parents’ mass defiance of court orders, tap their paychecks.

Twenty years ago, we were warned that America’s growing number of out-of-wedlock births and rising marital divorce rate would result in declining living standards for millions of Americans, particularly children.

Today, the full extent of our nation’s family crisis is emerging as America’s adolescents give life to a new, larger and poorer generation of single-parent households. In 1960, 6 million children--9% of all youngsters--lived in single-parent families. In 1990, the number had risen to 15.9 million, 25% of all children.

For a single mother raising two children, the odds are good that she is living near or below the poverty line. If she is entitled to receive any form of court-ordered child support, the odds are 1 in 2 that she is not receiving all of what her children are legally owed.

The fact that we have hundreds of thousands of people ignoring obligations to pay court-ordered child support is very troubling. In addition to the economic hardship felt by the children of broken homes, what does this trend tell us about the effectiveness of our legal system when so many people thumb their noses at judicial orders?

It’s time to simplify the administration of child-support collection in order to assure that benefits are getting to the children who need it most, and to eliminate the running and hiding of those who seek to break the law.

Our current arrangement of having each of the 50 states administer its own child-support collection program--financed by federal tax dollars--is failing miserably, despite the hard work and dedication of some well-intentioned, albeit frustrated, people. In fairness, some states, including Virginia and Washington, are moving rapidly to reform child-support laws. But as well-intentioned as these reforms may be, they are doomed to only mediocre success because parallel reform proposals are languishing in other states. More than one-third of all child-support cases are interstate cases, requiring the participation and cooperation of agencies in two or more states.

Last month, the two of us, a Democrat and Republican, set forth a comprehensive proposal to address this nettlesome issue. Our “child-support enforcement and assurance proposal” places responsibility for collecting child support squarely in the hands of the Internal Revenue Service. Using wage-withholding laws, the IRS would have the resources to dramatically improve the rate of collections.

The proposal would also create a minimum assured child-support benefit of $2,000 to $4,000 a year, paid for by increased support collections, and by a new dollar-for-dollar reduction in traditional forms of welfare such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Unlike AFDC, the assured benefit would be paid regardless of a custodial parent’s income--so a mother, for instance, would have every reason to find productive employment rather than be trapped in the all-too-common cycle of dependency. It is our belief that the need for an assured benefit would ultimately shrink as the IRS increased the effectiveness of its collection efforts.

Our proposal also tackles the tough job of establishing paternity--an essential element in promoting parental responsibility. State courts would remain the venue for divorce and custody cases, but judges would be armed with a uniform set of federal guidelines to ensure that fair and adequate child-support orders were established.

And finally, our proposal reaches out to non-custodial parents who take seriously their obligation to pay support, but who can’t because they have little or no income. About 300,000 public-service jobs, financed by Washington and administered by the states, would be created to help non-custodial parents in most cases men--pay a share of their children’s burden.

Next week, a House Ways and Means subcommittee will begin a series of hearings on this proposal. Supporters and critics alike have been invited to testify. From these hearings will come legislative language ready for formal introduction in the House of Representatives early next year.

The benefits of this proposal are clear: Children would have an assured source of support, reducing the level of poverty for many; parents with custody of children --usually women--would have new flexibility to break the cycle of welfare dependency, and parents without custody would have a new urgency to assume responsibility and with it, we would hope, a renewed sense of urgency to participate in a constructive way in their children’s lives.