Voices on child support

Ron Haskins

Senior Fellow Emeritus, Brookings Institution (no role is given on the graphic)

Attributed - unverified Critique

Someone else attributes these words to the speaker, but we could not find them in any primary source. Do not cite them as a quotation.

"The child support system has morphed from a safety net for children into a revenue-generating machine for states"

Source

Attributed by StlMarkLudwig.com: Graphic attributing these words to Ron Haskins (shared with BMD; not found on the site when we checked), StlMarkLudwig.com (Mark Ludwig, advocacy), undated (graphic). Checked 2026-10-13.

Context

This wording circulates on an advocacy graphic credited to StlMarkLudwig.com. We could not find it in any Haskins testimony, article, book excerpt or transcribed interview, or anywhere else on the web, and the graphic itself was not on the site when we checked. What Haskins is on the record saying is close in subject but different in substance: that cost recovery was the program's original idea, that retained welfare collections helped finance state programs, and that more collected support should go to families. Read his verified statements below rather than citing this one.

What Ron Haskins is on the record saying

• Verified "When we started the child support program way back in the 1970's, the main idea was cost recovery. We were trying to reimburse taxpayers for paying for welfare. That is still a worthy idea, but since then, our welfare system has changed dramatically, and now we emphasize to a great extent people becoming independent of welfare." - U.S. Government Printing Office (via govinfo.gov), 2001-06-28
• Verified "The average state receives about 30 percent of the funds necessary to run its child support program from retained collections in welfare cases and former welfare cases. In the case of current welfare cases, states keep virtually 100 percent of child support collections in exchange for taxpayer-provided welfare benefits." - Brookings Institution, 2001-06-28
• Verified "These arrearages serve as a disincentive for fathers to seek employment and to establish, often for the first time, a pattern of routine child support payments. Something must be done about these big arrearages." - Brookings Institution, 2001-06-28
• Verified "Meanwhile, the major favor the welfare law did for fathers was to pursue them ever more relentlessly for child-support payments. In fact, the law may have intensified the already substantial problems faced by poor fathers." - Brookings Institution (Commentary), 2006-08-19
• Verified "Although these strong child support reforms were fully justified, the combination of doing little or nothing to help poor fathers work while squeezing them relentlessly for child support payments drove many of them underground." - Brookings Institution, 2007-02-22
• Verified "I don't think anyone thinks it's double dipping, especially because one of the major goals is to get more money to the mother so she can stay off welfare." - The New York Times (Erik Eckholm), 2007-12-01

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