U.S. Crackdown on Child Support Urged : Families: Panel calls enforcement ‘a dinosaur mired in paper.’ House passes bill with interstate flight penalties.

Calling the nation’s system of child support enforcement “a dinosaur mired in paper,” a federal panel recommended Tuesday that Congress make it a federal crime for a parent to willfully fail to pay support.

The House, acting just hours after the U.S. Commission on Interstate Child Support issued its report, passed a bill that would establish for the first time federal penalties for interstate flight to avoid child support payments.

The commission, in its sweeping call for reform, also recommended making increased use of the Internal Revenue Service to enforce child-support orders.

Among other steps, it called for requiring new employees to disclose on IRS W-4 withholding forms whether they have been ordered to pay support, and requiring employers to withhold the support payments from their paychecks. It said the IRS “should be required to give high priority” to requests for collection in delinquent child support cases.

To target the self-employed, for whom wage withholding is impossible, the commission would empower states to suspend professional and occupational licenses, such as a law license or carpenter’s permit, for failure to make support payments. It also would encourage states to revoke drivers’ licenses and car registrations in such cases.

“The child-support system is broken,” said Margaret Campbell Haynes, a Washington lawyer and chairwoman of the panel, created by Congress in 1988 to study the system.

“Today, millions of children in the United States fail to receive the financial support they are owed,” the commission report said.

Panel members contended that the recommendations represent a middle ground in the debate over increasing enforcement of child support payments by divorced or absent parents.

It stopped short of calling for establishment of a new federal child-support system. Instead, it recommended a modernization of the current state-based system and encouraged cooperation between the states to make it easier to enforce civil orders against delinquent parents in another state.

Geraldine Jensen of Toledo, Ohio, dissented from the report, saying it did not go far enough. She urged establishment of a new agency, similar to the IRS, to enforce support orders.

The recommendations come as Congress is considering measures to increase collection of child support payments, both for those whose lack of support has forced their children onto welfare, and for other cases as well.

The House action Tuesday, on a voice vote without recorded dissent, sends the measure to the Senate. It would establish a penalty of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine for crossing a state line to avoid child-support payments, with higher penalties for repeat cases.