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Apr. 22nd, 2015 09:19 pmEstimates put the number of people incarcerated for unpaid child support at roughly 50,000, and this disproportionately affects African-American men.
Once again, I was a little disappointed with Brian Lehrer’s lack of familiarity with the salient issues here. But it’s worth listening to for David Pate.
The basic issue is that under TANF (part of Clinton era welfare “reform”), single parent’s have to identify a child’s other parent so the government can go after them for child support payments. These payments do not increase the money the custodial parent gets; the non custodial parent is paying the government back for TANF. It’s a giant mess that most people (if Brian Lehrer is at all representative) are unaware of, and poor African-American men that are not making enough money to make the payments get tarred with the same brush as rich dead-beat dads.
