WASHINGTON, DC – With Mother’s Day fast approaching, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is calling for action to relieve New York’s single moms from a $25 federally-imposed administration fee for receiving child support.
The Senator, in a conference call to reporters Tuesday, said the penalty was a remnant of the Republican Congress’ 2005 Deficit Reduction Act that “attempted to balance the budget on the back of single mothers.”
Gillibrand said she learned about the penalty, which is automatically deducted from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) checks, while campaigning in Warren County last year. A single mother of three making $20,000 a year told her the amount would be enough for a week’s worth of school lunches for her children.
“That weighed very heavy on my mind. I can’t fully describe how distressed they were,” she said. “It’s very undermining for these mothers who are already doing their best to provide for their kids.”
To protect these families, Gillibrand has introduced the Elimination of the Single Parent Tax Act, the first piece of legislation she authored in the Senate, which would eliminate the penalty.
Every state has the option of picking up the TANF administrative fee or passing it through to parents. New York State has passed it on at a cost of about $65 million for the 200,000 families affected from Sept. 2008 to March 2009. In Chenango County, 911 families are potentially affected and 607 paid the fee.
Gillibrand said the goal if the legislation is to have the federal government pay the administrative charge out of state assistance money.
“This is not a time to push this off to the state government,” she said. “Twenty-five dollars may not seem like a lot of money, but if you’re living on $20,000 a year with three kids, that’s diapers for a week, baby formula, school lunches.”