[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9390]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             VOCA: CRIMINALS PAY THE RENT IN THE COURTHOUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, every day throughout the United 
States, criminals commit crimes against good people. Some of those 
cases make the news. The news usually spends a lot of time talking 
about the defendant. There is a trial, justice occurs, and the world 
moves on.
  But many times, unfortunately, in our culture, there is a victim in 
that crime. And the victim after the trial is just ignored in some 
cases. Some of those victims are sexual assault victims. Back in the 
day when I spent 30 years at the courthouse in Houston as a prosecutor 
and a judge, I saw a lot of them. In fact, I keep up with some of them 
today. The crime affects them a lot of ways. Some of them lose their 
jobs. Some of them are hurt physically and emotionally, and they don't 
have any money.
  And this is not a new concept. Years ago under the Reagan 
administration, Congress recognized this problem, this issue about the 
fact that many victims, after the crime and after the trial, they just 
disappear into lives of quiet desperation, and culture and community 
doesn't keep up with those people. So during the Reagan administration, 
Congress decided here's what we're going to do: We're going to make 
criminals who are convicted in Federal court pay into a fund, and that 
fund is used to help crime victims. What a great concept--make 
criminals pay the rent on the courthouse. Make them literally pay for 
their crime by putting money into a fund that goes to crime victims. 
And that's the Victims of Crime Act that passed--VOCA as it is called.
  And the Federal judges, God bless them, they are nailing those 
criminals. They are taking a lot of their money away from them and 
putting in about $2 billion a year into that fund. Today, we have a 
situation where the fund is over $11 billion, money criminals paid to 
help crime victims.
  But here's the problem: that money isn't going to crime victims. 
Crime victims only get about $700 million a year out of that fund of 
$11 billion, with $2 billion coming in every year. And then the 
government gets an 8 percent cut, that makes it even less. And there's 
a cap, and government sets the cap on that money. Remember, this is not 
taxpayer money. It doesn't belong to anybody except to the victims of 
crime. That money is used and offset for other purposes. It goes to 
other programs in commerce, science and justice--probably good 
programs.
  And now with sequestration, we hear that that fund may be completely 
cut off this year for crime victims because of some squirrelly math 
somebody's using saying sequestration should apply to the crime 
victims' fund. That's nonsense.
  Meanwhile, throughout the country, victims organizations, shelters, 
groups like CASA, who represent kids in the courtroom when their 
parents are not doing the right thing by their kids, and many programs 
are barely keeping the lights on because they don't get enough money 
from VOCA even though money is available and it's just sitting there, 
or being offset for other programs.

                              {time}  1030

  So what needs to happen is this: one, raise the cap every year. Two 
billion dollars is coming in every year. We ought to at least allow the 
victims to have a billion of that, maybe $2 billion of it because it 
keeps coming in.
  And more importantly, what we ought to do is take that money and put 
it in a lockbox concept. It's a very simple concept; that the criminals 
pay into the fund, and the funds should go only to crime victims and 
crime victims' programs. It shouldn't go to other programs in the 
Federal Government, even if they're good programs, because it was 
designed by Congress, approved by the administration, to go to those 
silent, quiet victims who are still, today, hurting because of crimes 
that are being committed against them. And it just seems nonsense to 
me.
  We have the money available. It's not taxpayer money. We can help 
victims of crime get their lives back together, and it's not happening 
because somebody else wants crime victims' money. So let's put this in 
a lockbox.
  Mr. Costa from California and I have sponsored legislation to say, 
look, it's not the government's money. It's victims' money, and it 
ought to all be spent to help victims and victims' programs throughout 
the country, groups that are doing a great job to help rescue crime 
victims because of crimes that have occurred against them in the past.
  That is justice. And, Mr. Speaker, justice is what we do in this 
country.
  And that's just the way it is.

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