Ted Poe: “I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), my friend, for this amendment and not only this, but his hard work on…”

“I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), my friend, for this amendment and not only this, but his hard work on victims' issues, even before he came to Congress, in California, being the author of the concept of the three strikes and you are out rule that is in California and many other States. I want to congratulate him on this. Madam Chair, the VOCA fund, Victims of Crime Act fund, is a great idea. What it is is, when criminals are convicted in Federal court, Federal judges impose fees and fines on that criminal, and that money goes into a fund that is designed to go to victims of crime. Great idea, let those criminals pay the rent on the courthouse, pay for the system they have created. $10 billion is in that fund, but less than 10 percent of it gets spent every year. Why is that? Because more money keeps coming in; those Federal judges are nailing those criminals, and more money keeps coming into the fund every year. It is $10 billion. Now, we are only spending a little bit of it for victims services. The reason is--this is my opinion--fuzzy math in the accounting procedure. If more money is spent, for some reason, that is counted as an increase in spending, even though it is not taxpayer money. The money belongs to victims, funded by criminals; so, because of the accounting procedure, we are only able to spend a fraction of the money each year. We want to spend more of the money because more keeps coming in. Victims deserve it.…”