Gore Details Child-Support Escrow Plan

Al Gore on Friday proposed a new system to encourage absent fathers to make child support payments to welfare mothers, releasing the latest installment of what he calls his “family agenda.”

Gore’s plan would set up “personal responsibility” escrow accounts to hold most child support money from up to 2 million parents who make such payments, mostly fathers. Parents with child custody could collect the money only after they leave welfare.

Gore said the promise of getting the money would prod welfare recipients into jobs and offer them “extra help in braving the transition.”

Under current law, states intercept the child support payments due to parents on welfare. The federal government takes a portion, and most states keep the rest, a system some experts say discourages fathers from making their payments.

Gore’s plan would offer states incentives to funnel at least $50 a month directly to custodial parents while putting the rest of the child support payments in the escrow account.

The vice president’s proposal was the key feature of a plan he described as “the second generation of welfare.”

“I believe we have a national obligation to insist upon responsible fatherhood everywhere and from everyone,” Gore told several hundred people at the National Summit on Fatherhood.

Gore’s proposal capped a week of efforts by the presumed Democratic presidential nominee for president to lay out his agenda and promote his personal biography.

The vice president has dropped his daily assaults on his presumed Republican rival, George W. Bush, focusing instead on marketing himself while surrogates try to tarnish the Texas governor.

Bush visited Sacramento on Friday to attend a meeting in the Capitol with fellow governors of states on the U.S.-Mexico border. He spent 90 minutes behind closed doors discussing education, the environment, the economy and other issues.

Bush also sent a videotaped message to the fatherhood conference in Washington. He touted his efforts to promote responsible fatherhood in Texas with community forums, workshops and a public education campaign.

The “family agenda” Gore released in recent days included proposals to preserve forests, step up the war on cancer and increase access to treatment for the mentally ill.

At the fatherhood conference, Gore laced his speech with folksy personal anecdotes. He waxed nostalgically about his late father, Sen. Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, painting scenes of his dad fishing, playing the fiddle and sitting “dog-tired in his easy chair at the end of a long day at work.”

“I was lucky,” he said. “For five decades, I had the love and guidance and support of my own father.”

Gore’s child support proposal is his latest to crack down on “deadbeat dads” who fail to make their child support payments. In October, he proposed requiring them to work and pay up or go to jail.

Gore’s new plan for escrow accounts would cost taxpayers $2.3 billion over 10 years, aides said. It would come from the federal budget surplus, they said.

Reaction to Gore’s proposal was mixed among specialists in child support issues.

William Hammonds, a Virginia child support enforcement worker at the fatherhood conference, said custodial parents on welfare would be better served by getting all the money up front.

“The mothers we deal with need that money right away,” he said. “They have expenses like day-care and clothes for kids.”

Vicki Turetsky, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Law and Social Policy, said escrow accounts would require a costly bureaucracy to administer. She too said the money would be more useful if paid directly to the mothers.

But Russell Sykes, vice president of the State Communities Aid Assn., a New York advocacy group for the poor, said escrow accounts “make a lot of common sense.”

“It becomes an asset that Mom can tap when she leaves welfare,” he said. “And Dad has more of an incentive to pay because he knows the money is going to his children.”

The proposal Gore released Friday would also offer states performance bonuses for providing job training and placement assistance to those having trouble paying child support. It would require that such programs collaborate with groups that seek to prevent domestic violence.