Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The numbers are very troubling to government and family services officials - 25 million children in the United States, 36 percent, live without their biological fathers in their lives.
Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) have authored legislation they hope will stem the tide of fatherlessness in the country and the resultant social problems that causes. The bill carries an estimated cost of $270 million per year over the next five years.
"People are forgetting the importance of fathers in the lives of children," Bayh said Tuesday. "Children who live without contact with their father are five times more likely to live in poverty; twice as likely to commit a crime, abuse alcohol and drugs, drop out of school or be abused; more likely to bring drugs or weapons into the classroom; or become pregnant as a teen-ager."
That's what Bayh and Domenici are trying to reverse with SB 1364, The Responsible Fatherhood Act of 1999. The bill has two sections.
Title I seeks to raise public awareness and community involvement on the issue of absentee fathers and the importance of two-parent families through a state-by-state media campaign, state block grant for fatherhood programs and the creation of a national clearinghouse to share the best practices.
Title II seeks to remove federal barriers to responsible fatherhood and two-parent, married families through increased opportunities to move unemployed fathers into jobs through the Welfare to Work Program, direct child support payments to families and state incentives for programs that promote maintenance of two-parent families and responsible fatherhood.
"When it gets right down to it, being a good parent is a personal responsibility, not the government's," Bayh said. "But the federal government can and should encourage men to be better fathers and to assist the states with the programs that can help them do that."
Title II removes certain restrictions on federal funds, allowing the states to use Welfare to Work funds on a broader group of low-income, custodial and non-custodial fathers, and provides fewer federal eligibility restrictions to encourage states to increase the employment and parenting skills of eligible low-income fathers.
"Another thing this bill does is to make the $8 billion per year in federal funds available to the states that are most successful in maintaining the two-parent family structure," Bayh said. "Women are heroic in their efforts to raise our nation's children. But this bill recognizes that the best chance for our kids to succeed is to promote stable, two-parent families."
Bayh added the legislation has strong bipartisan support and fully expects Congress to approve the measure this fall.
"The prospects for action on this are reasonably good on a bipartisan basis in both houses," he said.
The bill's Senate co-sponsors include senators Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), John Breaux (D-La.), John Edwards (D-N.C.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Chuck Robb (D-Va.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio).
The bill also has received the endorsements of the National Fatherhood Initiative, The National Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families, the National Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership, The Hudson Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute.
