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Ken Paxton: “The same was true for child support. It took me years to get…”

Featuring: Ken Paxton, Republican | Attorney General of Texas

Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee

Published January 28, 2025 | Video Starts at 55:57

And sometimes a public hearing is the victory because it puts sunshine on that particular issue. And getting it all the way across the finish line is a whole other experience and gratifying. But you're accomplishing the thing. The same was true for child support. It took me years to get the changes I wanted. I had so much pushback. No one really wanted to change it. Let's just leave it alone. I knew it wasn't right, Senator Zephyr. (55:57–56:02)

CLAIM

Asserts that Ken Paxton faced challenges in implementing changes to child support policies.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Ken Paxton

“My office is currently litigating almost 32,000 cases through pre-litigation advice and the rigorous defense of the state's laws.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 00:59-01:08
“We have recovered almost 6.8 billion for the taxpayers. 1.8 billion of this was in 2024 alone.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 01:19-01:28
“I was able to secure 1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company's practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 01:35-01:50
“The OAG's legal divisions raise substantially more revenue than they do they need to operate, providing a direct return of almost $3 for…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 02:05-02:14
“My office has collected nearly 44.2 billion in child support.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 02:23-02:28
“Our Child Support Division [is] officially ranked the best, the most effective and efficient child support agency by the federal government…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 02:27-02:36
“In the State of Texas, outside of Dallas and Houston, the only state agency responding to new allegations of child pornography via the…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 03:44-03:56
“LBB staff made a substantial error in OAG's budget that decreased funding to child support, Medicaid fraud investigations and crime victim…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 04:28-04:37
“The historic $1.54 billion meta settlement and this payment to outside counsel.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 04:57-05:03
“Pfizer... said it was 95% effective. We think it was significantly lower, and they knew it.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 05:08-36:41
“Funding for the payments was specifically secured as part of the settlement and is available to be distributed today.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 05:38-05:44
“We developed some of these cases against Google, which we had five cases, Meta, TikTok and others.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 07:19-07:26
“We didn't have appropriations to do all this.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 07:35-07:38
“We had authority to use an outside council contract.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 07:54-07:58
“We can give these attorneys up to 35%.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 08:07-08:12
“This one for Meta turned out to be 10.2%.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 08:20-08:24
“We didn't up front any of these expert fees or any of the costs which amounted to millions of dollars.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 08:35-08:41
“We have cases that we need to pursue immediately or getting a legislative appropriation or permission is a long process and may never occur…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 09:41-09:54
“We did a complete restructure [of the child support program].”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:07-25:09
“It's become a lot more decentralized [the child support program].”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:10-25:13
“I used to get more complaints about child support than all the other things combined when I started.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:20-25:25
“In the last two years I get one [complaint about child support] maybe every six months.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:26-25:30
“Our technology's gotten better thanks to Tina and to Ruthanne.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 25:46-25:51
“I think we are far down the road in improving child support delivery.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 26:31-26:37
“We lost a lot of attorneys in the last month to the Justice Department and to other Washington that pay more.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 27:31-27:38
“We are a profit center.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 27:39-27:42
“We also prevent huge losses to the state by, by defending cases where we could have huge losses.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 28:08-28:16
“We also just generally represent the legislature and other agencies in all kinds of way that, that I think if you have the good talent, we…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 28:16-28:25
“Our basis for this claim was a state law claim.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 35:58-36:02
“We think this district judge is wrong and is saying that this federal law stops us from going after fraud.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 36:16-36:24
“It was 6.8 billion, was a total for 10 and 4.4 for the last four years.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 37:12-37:17
“These numbers are significantly higher than has ever been generated by our office.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 37:34-37:39
“We are the only line of defense to stop some of these big companies from abusing our constituents.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 38:13-38:20
“The state had literally no risk. That's part of the reason we did it.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 38:45-38:49
“We're losing lawyers to obviously Washington right now that higher salaries.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 44:42-44:48
“We won over three quarters of those cases because we had good people, really good people going toe to toe with the Justice Department.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 44:59-45:06
“I sued Donald Trump when he became president.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 45:26-45:30
“The difference, though, when I suit him is he actually wanted to know why and we had a discussion and he actually switched sides.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 45:44-45:50
“I agree with you. And I do think that needs to be addressed because I've seen it and there's almost no consequence.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 46:37-46:44
“I've already talked to the president a couple times since he's been sworn in.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 52:42-52:47
“My office has a great relationship with Tom Holman, who's in the middle of all this.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 52:49-52:54
“We now have similar goals to protect our border.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 53:03-53:06
“I'd seen Illinois pursuing this and you know, we have bipartisan meetings and I thought, what a great [idea].”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 54:53-54:59
“I found that we had a statute that was similar.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 54:59-55:03
“Some of the people working for you, didn't really think this was a good idea. They told me it was a loser.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 55:08-55:13
“I had to fight in my own office to get [the change] done.”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 56:10-56:10
“It took a long time because you're working on so many other things at the same time and staying diligent on something that needs to be…”
Ken Paxton Testifies At Senate Finance Committee | Uploaded January 28, 2025 | 56:14-56:22