WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will sign an executive order intended to help states track down members of the military and other federal workers who do not pay child support or have avoided efforts to establish their paternity, administration officials said yesterday.
The directive, to be issued today, will affect at least 105,000 federal employees, including 74,000 in the military, whose names have been provided to the government, the officials said. It will give the government more power to assist states in finding federal workers wanted in child-support or paternity cases and in garnishing the wages of those who are delinquent in making court-ordered payments.
The order would apply to nearly 3 percent of military personnel and 1.3 percent of federal workers, and administration officials said it would put new pressure on them to make delinquent payments or agree to participate in proceedings to establish paternity.
In speeches and other public statements, Mr. Clinton has long put a high priority on the strict enforcement of child-support laws. His proposal to overhaul welfare, submitted to Congress last year, would create an information network to help states find delinquent parents.
But with the new Republican majority in Congress moving to put its own stamp on welfare overhaul efforts, administration officials said Mr. Clinton believed that it was best for political and practical reasons to act now on his own.
Mr. Clinton's decision was first reported yesterday in the Washington Post.
dTC The issuance of the executive order is part of a strategy that officials say Mr. Clinton will use more in coming months as he tries to influence the Republican Congress. They said the order was intended in part to prompt congressional Republicans to add tougher child-support enforcement provisions to their plan to overhaul the welfare system.
The decision also reflects the care that Mr. Clinton has taken in recent months to call attention to the most hard-nosed of his domestic policy views.
As well as pushing for a crackdown on those the White House calls "deadbeat dads," the president has vowed to veto a Republican-backed measure that he says will eliminate financing for the hiring of more police officers.
He also has complained that the legislation favored by his rivals does too little to force welfare recipients to work.
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala is to give a speech today reinforcing that theme and also announcing that the government will grant a waiver to a Midwestern state permitting it latitude to try out a new approach to welfare.
Because the states are the primary authorities in child-support cases, the executive order that Mr. Clinton will sign simply gives the federal government stronger tools for its supporting role, administration officials said.
While the IRS already garnishes the tax refunds of delinquent parents whose names are provided by the states, a request that it do so will now also set off a full-scale search by the federal government to see whether those wanted by the states are federal workers.
The addresses and Social Security numbers of those found to be federal workers will then be made available to state authorities. For federal employees whose wages have been ordered garnished by the courts, the government will cut in half -- to 15 days -- the time it now takes to make the garnished money available to a custodial parent.
The officials said the executive order would also make it easier for state authorities to track down military personnel, whose frequent reassignments have complicated efforts to hold them accountable in child-support and paternity cases.
For the first time, process servers will have access to military bases. The order will also require the Defense Department to establish an office responsible for helping find delinquent parents.