THANK YOU!
We have so much for be grateful for right now - we are grateful for all of you reading this enewsletter, donating, planning fundraisers this month and collecting gifts for the individuals and families in our programs.
Thank you for supporting Hopeful Horizons' work during a very difficult year. We could not continue this work without your help.
Now, we need your help again! Congress will vote next week on the omnibus spending bill - most likely on Wednesday, December 16 – and that vote will decide the fate of Victims of Crime Act funding, which directly impacts services available to victims in our community, throughout South Carolina and across the country. This would follow the proposed one-week extension to the spending bill deadline (which was originally this Friday).
Please Tell Congress: "Don't Cut $1.1 Billion from Victim Service Grants!"
Tell Congress "Don't Cut $1.1 Billion from Victim Service Grants"
The Senate recently released its appropriations bills, and the bill that funds the Department of Justice contains a massive 40% cut to the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) release. This is on top of a 25% cut the prior year. All told, VOCA victim service grants will have beencut 81% from FY’18 levels. The situation is dire!
The reason for this huge cut is that the non-taxpayer-funded pool of money VOCA grants are pulled from (the Crime Victims Fund) is running dry. If deposits into this pool of funding aren’t stabilized, grants for future years will be cut even further. VOCA is funded by monetary penalties from federal criminal prosecutions, and prosecutors are increasingly entering into deferred prosecutions and non-prosecution agreements instead. Congress must shore up the Crime Victims Fund by ensuring federal financial penalties from deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements are treated the same way as penalties resulting from criminal convictions - that they go to serve and compensate crime victims. This fix was included in the COVID-19 relief packages that passed the House in both May and September, and it must be signed into law. Click here to learn more!
We need your help immediately! Congress has an opportunity to save victim service grants by including this fix in their omnibus appropriations bill - the bill that they need to pass this week to keep the government open. Congress should also include the fixes listed above. More than 1,480 victim service organizations, government agencies and prosecutors’ offices have signed their support for the fixes.
Congress is working on the omnibus spending bill right now, so your calls can’t wait. Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them the following:
A $1.1 billion cut to Victims of Crime Act grants would be catastrophic for Hopeful Horizons. Tell them how these cuts would affect Hopeful Horizons' ability to serve this community. The SCCADVASA Fact Sheet gives specific details about the impact.
The cuts are the result of record low deposits into the Crime Victims Fund.
Your Senator/Representative must reach out immediately to their colleagues on the appropriations conference committee and in leadership and tell them to include language in the omnibus appropriations bill to shore up the Crime Victims Fund by redirecting financial penalties from federal deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements that would otherwise go into the General Treasury into the Crime Victims Fund;
This is not taxpayer money, and it is not new money. It’s simply treating monetary penalties from settlements in federal criminal cases the same way monetary convictions from federal criminal convictions are treated; and
Congress must also help shore up state victim compensation funds by matching 75% of what the states put into their funds instead of 60%.
You can find your Senators and their contact information HERE and your Representative and their contact information HERE. If you have specific contacts in your Members of Congress’s offices, please reach out to those contacts!
After you call them, please email them through their websites with the same asks! Please share this fact sheet and this letter in your email.
Thank you for your help ensuring victims of child abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault have access to the life-saving services Hopeful Horizons provides!
