Political Quotes

“Mr. President, before we proceed to a vote on final passage of the VOCA Fix Act, on which I teamed up with Senators Durbin, Graham, and other members of the Judiciary Committee, we first will turn to the Toomey amendment. This amendment is loosely based on a bill introduced by Senator Toomey in 2015. That 2015 measure, entitled the ``Fairness for Victims of Crime Act,'' would have created a budgetary point of order against legislation that required the Crime Victims Fund to disburse less than the average amount collected by the Fund over the previous 3 fiscal years. The Senate held a field hearing on this legislation, which was introduced by Senator Toomey, the same year. The Budget Committee, of which I am a member, then approved the legislation by unanimous voice vote. I still support the premise behind this bill, which is to promote fairness for crime victims and restore the original intent of the Victims of Crime Act. Some years ago, appropriators placed an arbitrary cap on the amount of money that could flow out of the Crime Victims Fund each year. The imposition of this cap meant not only that billions of dollars accumulated, unspent, in the fund in later years, but also that this sum could be used as an offset to support other projects backed by congressional appropriators. Meanwhile, the availability of so much unspent money in the Crime Victims Fund made it an extremely tempting target for budget dealmakers.…”