Please vote no on HB 2263, which would raise Virginia child support levels above those of surrounding states, such as North Carolina, and above the vast majority of the 50 states.  There is no reason why Virginia should have unusually high child support levels.  Please vote instead for Del. Bolvin's alternative, HB 2817.  I understand that these bills are expected to come before either the full Courts of Justice Committee or a subcommittee on Wednesday.

The backers of HB 2263 argue that the child support review panel's findings support the increase, but they are mistaken.  The economist selected by the panel made the mistake of double-counting expenses because his method for deriving the proposed child support schedule treated as child-rearing costs expenses parents would have even if they never had kids.  As the panel's report shows, the "average use vehicles" approach was used, which looks at actual expenses incurred as a result of children only for a few categories such as vehicles while arbitrarily assuming that other household expenses are attributable equally to parents and children alike -- even if they would have been incurred in the same amount by even a childless couple.  For example, the economist the panel selected admitted that couples with one child have housing expenses only 1 percent greater than couples with no children, yet he attributed a third of such housing expenses (33 percent) to the child, massively inflating child-support levels.

An employee of DPB, in drafting the fiscal impact statement, both erred and failed to adhere to DPB's tradition of neutrality on pending legislation in attaching to item 8 the claim that the bill would "bring support awards into better alignment with today's cost of raising children."  That is nonsense, since the current child support schedule, adopted in 1988, is self-adjusting for inflation, for three reasons: (1) they increase child support awards as the parents' income increases; (2) inflation is disproportionately accounted for by the categories of expenses not included in the child support schedule but awarded on top of it -- such as medical expenses and health insurance (citations for what I have just said are found in Murray Steinberg's dissent to the child support panel's report, which cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where I used to work).  If anything, the current schedule should be reduced, given that (1) the personal exemption for the custodial parent has risen; (2) the earned income tax credit and child tax credit have risen faster than inflation; and (3) tax rates on the non-custodial parent rose under the administrations of the elder Bush and Clinton as part of deficit reduction packages.

Even a bar representative on the child support panel conceded in a letter in response to panel dissenter Murray Steinberg that inflation is not a justification for increasing the guidelines.  That representative said that while he supported the increase, he was not doing so on the basis of inflation -- as DPB contends -- but because he simply thought the current guidelines passed by the Legislature were not generous enough.  He was honest enough to admit that inflation did not provide a justification for changing the guidelines.  By contrast, the other bar representative on the panel, Cynthia Ewing, believes the current guidelines are much too high, and joined the panel dissent.

I should also note that HB 2263, in setting child support levels above the actual cost of raising children is harmful to the institution of marriage, since economists have found that it is correlated with decreased rates of remarriage by both men and women after divorce, and since it is a contributing factor to a stubbornly high divorce rate.

I am a lawyer and economist by background, currently practicing law (I receive no money from the practice of family law, and don't pay or receive child support, so I am unbiased on this issue), with a little training in accounting.  I see the negative effects of divorce in the course of my job, and I think that HB 2263's proposed child support schedule will aggravate them.

A fuller explanation for why the panel report on which HB 2263 is based is defective is contained in a letter which I sent last year to the Honorable Jane Woods, the Health and Human Services secretary.  A copy of it can also be obtained from Murray Steinberg, who dissented from the child support panel's proposed increase.  He is with the Family Resolution Council in Mechanicsville near Richmond.

I should note that that letter (and a similar letter I sent certain legislators last year) was written in November, before some final modifications to the proposed child support schedule now contained in HB 2263.  As a result, one of its many objections may no longer apply -- specifically, the objection that the proposed schedule contains a massive disincentive for low-income child support obligors to work.  After I wrote my letter, I was provided with a final version of the proposed schedule that reduced the marginal child support rate borne by certain low-income obligors.  Under a prior draft, certain obligors actually had their post-tax incomes decline as their pre-tax incomes rose, as a result of a very heavy marginal child support rate (at certain income ranges, they paid about 90 percent of each additional dollar in child support.  Coupled with social security and income taxes, that actually made them poorer the harder they worked, creating a massive disincentive for work).  That is no longer the case, since the marginal child support rate contained in the final draft of the schedule does not appear to reach 60 percent at any point on the schedule.

For other reasons given in my letter to Secretary Woods, however, I believe the negative fiscal impact of this bill will nevertheless be substantial over the long run, far more than the small figure given by DPB.

Thanks,

Hans Bader

(I have an economics degree (from U.Va.) and a law degree (from Harvard).  I'm not divorced, and I have no children).