The Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (MOCADSV) urges House and Senate leaders to prioritize the passage of the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act H.R 8061 (CVFS Act) to prevent further cuts to the Crime Victims Fund (CVF). The CVFS Act will redirect excess, unobligated funds from the False Claims Act (FCA) into the Crimes Victims Fund (CVF) to prevent catastrophic cuts to domestic and sexual violence service providers across the country. This legislation responds to a Fiscal Year 2024 40 percent cut to VOCA funding, forcing service providers to reduce or eliminate services, lay off staff, and, in some cases, close their doors.

---

Urge Congressional Leaders to Pass the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act This Year!

National and state organizations are working hard to get the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act (CFVS Act) in an end-of-year bill, but we need your help. More than 200 cosponsors in the House have supported H.R. 8061, and a growing number of bipartisan Senate cosponsors have supported S.4515.

Call, text, email, and make social media posts to your members of Congress and ask them to cosponsor and call upon leadership to bring for a vote and pass the CVFS Act.

You could use the drafted message below to ask for their support:

I am calling on behalf of [your organization and on behalf of xxx survivors] to ask [Representative ____ or Senator ____] to urge congressional leaders to include the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act in the Continuing Resolution (CR) or any end-of-year package. Congress must finish work on this before the end of the year. Victims in Missouri can’t wait.

If you call the offices of Representatives Cleaver or Wagner, thank them for their work. Representative Wagner coauthored the bill and Representative Cleaver was an early cosponsor.

You can find your Senator at https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact and your Representative at https://ziplook.house.gov/htbin/findrep_house?ZIP=.

To contact your Senators and Representatives by phone, call the US Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or find their phone numbers on their websites.

To contact your Senators and Representatives by email, go to their website and click on the ‘contact us’ link. If you know someone in your Senators’ and/or Representative’s office, contact them directly.

---

Background

The Crime Victims Fund provides Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants to state, territorial, and local agencies that provide lifesaving services to more than six million victims of all types of crime annually. This funding supports almost 6,500 direct service providers, including domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers. In recent years, deposits to the CVF have reduced significantly. Further reductions in VOCA funding could mean catastrophic cuts in services available to survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and their children. The prolonged decrease in funding of the CVF has led to a devastating $600 million cut in funding compared to last year. Further decreases in funding could result in limited availability of services as providers are forced to triage their services or close.

Representatives Ann Wagner (R-MO), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Jim Costa (D-CA), and Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), and Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced the Fund Stabilization Act (H.R. 8061/S.4514). The bill would temporarily redirect excess, unobligated funds from the False Claims Act to the CVF while ensuring payments to whistleblowers and defrauded government agencies will not be affected. MOCADSV partnered with Representative Wagner and her Congressional staff, as well as the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence and National Network to End Domestic Violence to raise national awareness of the need to stabilize the Crime Victims Fund.

To read the National Network to End Domestic Violence’s (NNEDV) CVFS Act press release, click here.