John Washington III Says the Child Support System Was Built to Feed Itself — Not to Help Parents
John Washington III argued Friday that the child support system serves its own interest before any parent's — that states are paid by the collection, that a parent who falls behind can lose the driver's license he needs to work, and that the money, in his words, belongs to the kids. His fix: rebuild the system around the children, and give a parent who falls behind a path back.
John Washington III took on the child support system directly on Friday, arguing that it was built to feed itself rather than to help the families it passes through. The system, he wrote, does not have the parents' best interest at heart — not the mother's, not the father's. It has its own interest at heart, he wrote, and the State of Texas does not care, because Texas benefits from the system exactly the way it is.
His case runs on the money. The federal government pays states bonus money based on how much child support they collect, he wrote, and it picks up most of the cost of running the program — so the more money the system pulls out of parents, the more money flows back to the state. Parents are not the customer, he wrote. Parents are the product. A system that gets paid by the collection, he argued, will always choose collection over common sense.
The enforcement tools are where his argument sharpens. When a parent falls behind, he wrote, the state comes after the driver's license — the one thing that parent needs to drive to work and earn the money to pay. The late balance then grows, and Texas charges interest on top of it, six percent on money a parent already could not pay. And in cases where a family needed public assistance, he wrote, the state can keep collected support to pay itself back first. The children, he wrote, wait in line behind the government.
John Washington III was careful about who his argument is not aimed at. He is not talking, he wrote, about parents who refuse to take care of their children: a child deserves support, and a parent who can pay should pay, because that money belongs to the kids. What he described is a machine that profits from struggle and punishes people out of a paycheck. His proposal, stated as what he would do as President, rebuilds child support around one rule — the money goes to the children, and a parent who falls behind gets a path back: work, a fair review, and a real chance to catch up. Keep your license, he wrote. Keep your job. Keep supporting your kids.
