Quit Playing Games With Our Kids

{Steps onto soap box.}

An email came across my desk at work last week.  It noted $20 million in funds for the Victims of Child Abuse Act that had been excluded from the FY13 budget as proposed by President Obama.  For the first time since 1994, there was to be no funding for the National Children's Alliance, which means a cut in program support for every accredited children's advocacy center in the country (including the Children's Assessment Center, which is my day job) and virtually no funds allocated for emerging centers in counties where they don't yet exist.  Then, on Monday evening, another email came through.  This one stated that the FY13 budget further proposes to reallocate $365 million in funds from the Victims of Crime Act, which would mean cuts to--and possible elimination of--services for crime victims all across the country.  In Kent County alone that means a number of cuts to children: victim witness programs, domestic violence shelters, and the Center's counseling and victim advocacy services.  The real kicker is that the funds are paid through criminal fines and penalties and don't affect the size of the federal budget at all.  It is proposed that they will be used to pay for other line items in the budget outside of true crime victim services.

As we talked about it internally and formulated our response, our pleas to Representative Amash and Senators Stabenow (who has signed on to save the Victims of Child Abuse Act funds at least) and Levin, and our rallying cries to our donors, one thing kept coming up. 

"You know this is just a game, right?  It's political gamesmanship.  It's an election year.  Nobody is really going to cut our child victims of crimes out of the budget this year--but they will use them to get other earmarks they want."

I know this is likely.  I know it has been proposed before (by Bush, so let's not get too self righteous, friends), and there were no cuts.  But I also know that if we lost all of our funds from these two sources, that would mean eliminating our counseling and our victim advocacy and limiting our forensic interviews.  It would mean hacking out a third of our budget.  It's too big of a risk to take.

So I spent most of Tuesday formulating all of our responses and rallying everyone I know.  Every other email on the NCA listserv has been updates on who signed on and who didn't.  We've had conversations about face-to-face meetings with our representative and whether it is more likely that our senators will read a letter or an email.  We've also talked about whether we should combine the issues into one email or leave them separate and just send two responses to each person.  We should have been spending that time on our kids.  On raising new money.  On making new donor contacts.  On completing paperwork from another interview with a child who had been sexually abused.  But instead we spent hours on this--and have continued to spend hours more--because we can't take the risk that this is just gamesmanship.

Ridiculous.  Appalling.  Quit using our kids as pawns in a game that they don't care about.  They just want help.  They want the bad guys to be locked up.  They want to sleep safely at night.  They want their nightmares to go away.  They want to laugh and play like children should.

If you want to help, please do the following:
* Send your representative a letter asking him or her to sign the House Dear Colleague letter sponsored by Rep. Danny Davis (D-7th) of IL to fund the Victims of Child Abuse Act at $20 million for FY13.

* Send your senators a letter asking them to sign the Dear Colleague letter sponsored by Sen. Kerry (MA-D) and Sen. Baucus (MT-D) in support of funding the Victims of Child Abuse Act at $20 million for FY13.

* Send your representative and senators a letter asking them NOT to use money for victims of crime as a revenue base for its FY13 budget by asking for a $1 billion VOCA cap in FY13. Because the Crime Victims Fund comes entirely from criminal fines and other penalties—not taxpayer dollars—this cap DOES NOT ADD to the national debt or deficit.

{Thanks you for your time, and steps down from soap box.}