But some Republicans including Toomey say the fund is too often used to pay for programs unrelated to crime victims. Appropriators for years have held back spending some of the fund’s revenue so as to claim it as savings to pay for other programs without busting discretionary spending caps.
But as the fund’s balance has dropped, so has appropriators’ ability to tap it for other spending. In their version of the fiscal 2022 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill, House Democrats are proposing to reverse cuts in Crime Victims Fund programs this fiscal year due to tighter limits they imposed in the final year-end spending law.
The combination of allowing $585 million more to flow to mandatory programs for crime victims, and less money in the fund overall, means House Democrats are left with just $1.29 billion in savings to pay for more fiscal 2022 Justice Department discretionary spending on top of their regular budget allocation. That’s compared with $3.5 billion this year, and more than $10 billion as recently as fiscal 2018.
But keeping that cash out of appropriators’ hands is a feature, not a bug, for conservatives like Toomey who say the Crime Victims Fund has turned into a slush fund to evade spending caps. “If the money doesn’t end up going to crime victims and their advocates, then it frees up additional money to be spent on whatever anybody else wants to spend it on,” he said recently on the Senate floor.
To curb that practice, Toomey has an amendment that would set a minimum threshold for Crime Victim Fund spending. The amendment would require Congress to spend no less than the average annual amount deposited into the fund during the preceding three fiscal years, though the provision could be waived with a three-fifths majority vote.
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July 16, 2021 at 07:12PM
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Crime victims bill logjam ends; may go to Biden's desk next week - Roll Call
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