Congress sought to eliminate entitlements, or cash welfare, to individuals that were disbursed as part of Title IV-A of the Social Security Act.
Instead, Congress preferred block grants be disbursed to states as part of a program it called TANF or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
As part of this effort, Congress attempted to improve child support collection rates with the hope that single parent families would move off welfare rolls and remain self-sufficient.
None of three committee reports on record commented on the rationale for making passport revocation, restriction or limitation discretionary by using the word "may."
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act also allows liens to be placed on the non-custodial parent's assets to effectuate collection of child support.
[4] The purpose of PRWORA is to reduce federal welfare expenditures, but the enhanced enforcement measures under Section 370 are not limited to TANF.
[5] State child support agencies routinely do this on behalf of custodial parents because federal subsidies and performance incentives included in the bill encourage this practice.
3734 is silent on whether or why Congress intended to extend the federally funded, enhanced collection mechanisms to non-welfare recipients or if it even considered the issue.
106-113 (1999) required the Secretary of State to submit a report to Congress on the feasibility of lowering the threshold amount of an individual's support arrearage from $5,000 to $2,500.
In 2000, the George W. Bush administration proposed reducing the threshold to $2,500 in a bill known as the "Child Support Enforcement Enhancement Amendments of 2000" but it was never introduced.
The enforcement provisions affecting U.S. passports have thus far survived Constitutional challenges in Weinstein v. Albright (2001), Eunique v. Powell (2002), In re James K. Walker (2002), Dept of Revenue v. Nesbitt (2008), Risenhoover v. Washington (2008), Borracchini v. Jones (2009), and Dewald v Clinton (2010).