[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 50 (Thursday, April 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3625-H3632]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




MILLER EXPRESSES CONCERN REGARDING TONGASS AND REPUBLICAN MASQUERADING 
                              ON EARTH DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Petri). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the Tongass National Forest in 
southeast Alaska is one of the jewels of the American forest system. It 
is America's only temperate rain forest that is intact, that can be 
protected and that can be preserved. It is also the subject of a rider 
on the appropriations bill to do great damage to the Tongass, contrary 
to the law that was passed a couple of years ago to reform the forest 
practices on this forest.
  The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], the chairman of the 
Committee on Appropriations, has asserted that the provision that is 
now in that legislation in fact is a decrease in the number of board 
feet eligible for cutting from 450 million board feet to 418 million 
board feet. The fact of the matter is that that is not accurate. The 
Tongass Reform Act of 1990 eliminated the 450 million board feet 
mandate for these lands and protected over 1 million acres from the 
forests for logging, reducing the amount of old growth timber that is 
eligible for harvesting by 51 million feet annually.
  The number of board feet eligible for cutting is currently 399 
million board feet. The rider would increase that by 19 million, to 
418, which is over 100 million board feet above the average cut in the 
last decade.
  The fact of the matter is that the rider is very detrimental to the 
future of the Tongass forest. It asks for cutting that is not 
sustainable, that will ruin this forest, that will put it into history, 
and far exceeds what the Forest Service just came out with today in 
terms of its preferred plan.
  In fact, what it is, the Forest Service preferred plan, after going 
through the planning documents and how to sustain this forest for 
future generations and continue to be able to timber it, is 172 million 
board feet less than the 418 that the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. 
Livingston] is talking about. That is because the rider is proposed to 
circumvent the public planning process, the public input into this 
process, and have the legislation dictate that cutting no matter 
whether it ruins the forest or not.
  They say they are green, they say they honor the environment, they 
say they want to protect it, but do not look at what they say, look at 
what they do. This is another example. The law does not do what they 
say. In fact, it is very detrimental in this case to one of our prized 
national forests.
  That is why today earlier Minority Leader Gephardt and many of my 
colleagues issued a warning, warning the American people to beware of 
Republican candidates coming to your hometown between now and election 
day saying that they support environmental protection, but who in fact 
have voted repeatedly in this Congress against environmental 
protection. These are Republicans practicing ecofraud. The only thing 
green about these Republican candidates is the camouflage they are 
using to mask their antienvironmental record and the money they take 
from special interests to gut environmental measures of this Nation.
  To the Republican leadership and to those who follow them in this 
Congress, today we issue the following challenge: Stop your assault you 
are leading on the environment, stop the masquerade you are playing out 
on Earth Day to appear environmentally friendly, and work with us to 
protect those environmental laws that protect this Nation and to 
improve those that do not.
  But do not pretend that because you bring to the House floor two 
minor bills that everybody supports, when you have voted in the past to 
destroy the basic environmental laws of this country, that somehow you 
are now pro-environment. You are not. Do not pretend that planting 
trees or cosponsoring a trails bill or a 1-day cleanup of the beach, as 
your campaign advisers have told you to do, makes you an 
environmentalist. It does not.
  You cannot vote day in and day out, as you have in the Congress of 
the United States, to gut the Clean Water Act, to gut the Clean Air 
Act, to bankrupt the Environmental Protection Agency, to destroy the 
national parks and the public lands, and the forests of this Nation, 
and to give away those resources that belong to the taxpayers and the 
people of this Nation to the special interests. You cannot do that and 
then for 1 day dress up and pose as an environmentalist.
  The fact is you will not get away with it. You will not do well on 
Earth Day. and you certainly cannot come to the well using the 
Republican Environmental Task Force to provide you cover, when the 
average environmental vote of the members of that task force is only 18 
percent. That is the average vote. Think of how low you had to start at 
the top to get down to there.
  The people will judge you by what you do and not what you say, and 
what you have done so far to lead the most comprehensive assault on 
environmental protection. The American people hold these values dear. 
They hold the protection of our air and our water to be very important. 
They will not give it away to a 1-day masquerade on Earth Day by the 
same forces who have gutted the essential environmental protection laws 
of this Nation.

[[Page H3626]]



          CONGRESS ATTEMPTS TO COMBAT SCOURGE OF ILLICIT DRUGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, first I yield to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the distinguished chairman of the Committee 
on Government Reform and Oversight.
  Mr. CLINGER. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding to me, and 
I would just, No. 1, commend him for holding this special order, and 
the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff] and the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. Souder]. You are three of the four Members who 
participated in what I consider to be perhaps the most significant and 
important congressional delegation of this year, certainly in terms of 
the work of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. This was 
an enormously important and very, very revealing, I think I might say, 
congressional delegation.
  You visited five countries, and each one of them for a very specific 
purpose. In Mexico, because 70 to 80 percent of the drugs that enter 
this country come across that border, I think it is something that we 
need to be focused on. How can we do a better job? What are the 
problems that we are facing there, and how must we deal with them?
  You visited Panama, which has major money laundering problems, and 
shares an uncontrolled jungle border with Columbia. And of course 
Colombia, which is the world capital, if you will, in terms of the 
supply of cocaine worldwide; Bolivia, which is the second largest 
producer of cocaine after Columbia; and Peru, which produces two-thirds 
of the world's supply of coca leaf. I know, because the gentleman from 
Illinois has briefed me very thoroughly, as has the gentleman from New 
Hampshire, on this trip.
  I must tell you I have been dismayed and really disappointed at some 
of the media coverage of this trip. If we indeed are going to assume 
that no congressional travel has any merit, and that is what seems to 
me that the press is deeming in this case, this was an incredibly 
active, vigorous CODEL. You did not engage in, quote, junketeering. I 
think it is fair to say you were all exhausted by the time this trip 
was over, because it was very intense, very focused and extraordinarily 
productive.
  I look forward to the report that will come out of this matter, and I 
look forward to perusing the results of this special order. I again 
commend the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert] as a leader of the 
delegation for the very excellent work that was done on behalf of the 
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  One of the things that we wanted to look at is what are the 
contributing causes to something that would kill 10,000 people in this 
country, many, many of them our youth, our college students, our high 
school students and yes, even some of our junior high students. One 
hundred thousand deaths because of some unseen, unknown culprit, $300 
billion in the 1990's alone, the cost and the deaths that have resulted 
by this phenomenon.
  What is the phenomenon? It is drugs, it is speed, it is crack, it is 
cocaine, it is heroin. Where does it come from? Why is it here? Those 
questions are pretty relevant, especially if you are a family across 
this country that has had a child involved in drugs or a death in your 
family because of drugs, or you have had your home burglarized or your 
person held up because some drug addict had to get money to get a fix. 
Then you are drawn into this whole idea of where drugs come from and 
why they exist and what is the whole issue and mechanics that move 
drugs from South American countries and southeast Asian countries into 
our borders.
  If you live in a neighborhood that you are imperiled to go out at 
night because you are afraid you might be mugged, held up, or somebody 
is on crack cocaine or on heroin and you feel that you or your family 
may be accosted, the reason is that we have drugs in this country. We 
are the demand source for literally billions and billions and billions 
of dollars of drug trade.
  In our emergency rooms every year, in our hospitals, and we have just 
moved a health care bill through here, but clearly 500,000 emergency 
room incidents in this country alone come from drug abuse. There are 
250,000 Americans serving time in our prisons, both in our Federal 
prisons and in our State prisons, because of drug law violations. 
Unfortunately, drug use is involved in at least one-third of all our 
homicides and assaults and property crimes.

                              {time}  1600

  Now, something that would cause, and we do not have the exact numbers 
because it is pretty fluctuating, but something that would cost between 
$70 and $90 billion to the people in this country every year, the net, 
and that cost piles up day in and day out, that is pretty important.
  I think it is pretty important for this Congress, who initiated a 
pretty strong drug policy in the 1980's and has gone from a Just Say No 
policy to ``just say nothing'' government over the last few years, I 
think we need to examine ourselves. We need to examine where the cause 
of this problem is, examine our problems in trying to stop the demand 
in this country, but, most of all, we need to find out where this comes 
from and stop the growth of coca leaf, the growth of heroin poppies, 
the manufacture of speed or methamphetamines. That is what this 
endeavor was about. Where does this come from? What do we do? How do we 
find out about it?
  This chart right here shows the toll of drug abuse's estimated cost 
in the United States. The cost of illness is over $8 billion. The cost 
of death is over $3.4 billion, if you can put a price on death. The 
cost of AIDS, $6.3 billion, AIDS that people get through use of 
intravenous needles and passing those needles around from drug addict 
to drug addict. And the direct medical costs in this country are $3.2 
billion. But the big cost is crimes and misdemeanors to the American 
people because of drug use is over $46 billion.
  Now, if you want to count all the victims of crime and people who 
have been assaulted and people who have been beaten up, then you can 
move this cost of nearly $66.7 billion probably up to $97 billion. It 
depends on the accounting method you use.
  But if we are going to do something and impact upon the value and 
quality of this life this country is going to have, then we are going 
to have to start doing something about one of the main reasons that 
this problem exists.
  Now, when you start to look at what the costs are to the American 
people and look at what the costs are to what this Congress is trying 
to do, let us take a look. Some $13.2 billion expended. Where does it 
go? State and local assistance, almost 10 percent. Other law 
enforcement, the FBI, DEA, others, about 2.5 percent. The research and 
development to find out what drugs do is another 4 percent. Drug abuse 
prevention, which is a good program and certainly gets into our 
neighborhoods and schools, it is almost 14 percent. Drug abuse and 
treatment for those people who have been into drugs and need to be led 
back and hopefully on a path that will rehabilitate them, although it 
does not have very good results, 20 percent of our budget. Interdiction 
of drugs, where we go out and try to catch the drugs moving through 
other countries, coming into this country, and drugs moving in this 
country, is roughly under 10 percent of our budget. Regulatory and 
compliance 0.38 percent, investigations, 13 percent, international 
involvement, 2.3 percent.
  Now, remember, almost 90 percent of the drugs coming into the United 
States of America come from other countries. Our international 
involvement is 2.3 percent. Prosecution, it passes a lot of money, it 
takes prosecutors and district attorneys and States attorneys to 
prosecute drug thefts and drug crimes, 6.4 percent every year. 
Corrections, the costs that we have in this country to keep people in 
prisons, is 15.5 percent. Intelligence, to find out on the street where 
the drugs are coming from, who is selling them, where it is being put 
together, where drugs are manufactured, are 2.3 percent. And the State 
and local assistance we give to cities and States is nearly 10 percent. 
So that is almost $3.5 billion that every State and municipality has to 
dole out to find the reason, to find the solutions.

[[Page H3627]]

  Now, why did we take this trip? It is a good question. I think we 
need to answer it. Because in this country, when we look at Mexico, and 
if we would take Mexico as a V or triangle and look over here in 
Mexico, we have four huge drug cartels. Coming up through the area of 
the Gulf State area, it comes into southern Texas. We have the problem 
of drugs coming up through the cartel zone in Sonora, which is along 
our Arizona border. We have drugs coming up along the Tijuana cartel 
that comes up into California. We have drugs coming up into the Juarez 
area, it goes into El Paso, TX, and up through that area.
  So we have four huge cartels. Where are they? Not United States 
cartels, they are Mexican cartels. So nearly 70 percent of all drugs 
that come in, that are grown in Peru and grown in Columbia and 
manufactured in Colombia and grown in Bolivia, come up either through 
Colombia or up through the airways and land in those cartel areas in 
Mexico.
  Well, we had a meeting with the Mexican Congress, and we stressed to 
them that it was important that in Mexico, we better start doing 
something, they better started doing something, on a cooperative basis.

  What should be done? Well, we need to have good legislation, and the 
Mexicans understand that, and they are stating to do that. So they have 
money laundering legislation so that they can start to find the money 
that comes in these cartels, and they can start to trace where it comes 
from. And it does not just come from Mexico, folks. It comes from New 
York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. So we can 
start to stress where that money comes from, because if we can take 
money out of the drug equation, that is the most important thing to the 
drug traffickers and the drug pushers and the cartels and the Mafioso 
and the street gangs that all make their money off drug trafficking. If 
we can take that money away, find the way that they launder that money 
we can begin to solve the problem. We can begin to deny those people 
from the end results, from all the trouble they get in with drugs in 
the first place.
  We also need to have wiretap authority so those criminals who do the 
drug deals, especially in Mexico, that Mexico has the ability to tap in 
and find out who they are and what their deals are.
  We need to have anticospiracy legislation and antiorganized crime and 
asset forfeiture. If you find a drug cartel or pusher that is moving 
drugs up into the United States, so that they can take their planes and 
automobiles and haciendas and those things away, deny them the tools 
that they use to move drugs into the United States. And we need to 
aggressively pursue the naroctraffickers.
  These are things we stressed to the Mexican Congress and things they 
pledged to us they will begin to work on in the next year.
  Mr. ZELIFF. I would just like to first, Mr. Hastert, thank you for 
the leadership that you provided to this effort. Our overall leadership 
asked us to put this thing together. We have worked on this effort now 
for a year and a half on the drug issue, and started back in March 9, 
1995.
  Before I get into what we have done as a committee, I would just like 
to mention one other thing in Mexico. As you know, the Clinton 
administration just certified Mexico and decertified Colombia. So one 
of the things we looked at down there and some of the things that were 
brought out, the President of Mexico has made a major commitment that 
drugs and crime are now their No. 1 issue, their No. 1 threat. I think 
we are starting to make some progress. We are starting to see the 
beginnings of a process. When the President of Mexico starts to send 
that signal all the way through they are going to get serious on it, 
then we are starting to turn the corner.
  The other thing I would just like to mention in addition to 
certification and the President, we talked about NAFTA has an impact 
here, economic development has an impact. But there are many things we 
looked at throughout all these countries.
  If I can, can I just mention a few things that the committee has done 
as we led up to this trip.
  We started out with Nancy Reagan and her effort back in the Reagan 
administration on ``Just say no.'' That, of course, affects the demand 
side. We had Judge Robert C. Bonner, former Director of the Drug 
Enforcement Administration, testify; Bill Bennett, Co-Director, Empower 
America; Hon. Lee Brown, former Director, National Drug Control Policy, 
testified; Thomas Hedrick, vice chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-
Free America; Mr. James Copple, national director of CADCA; Mr. Robert 
Heard, director of program services, Texas War on Drugs; Adm. Paul 
Yost, former Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard under the Reagan and Bush 
administrations.
  We have had several hearings with Dr. Brown. I traveled to Boston 
with him. We went into Framingham Prison for Women. That certainly is a 
scary effort, where we talked to several women who hit the bottom due 
to drug abuse and alcohol abuse. We have learned a lot from that as 
well.
  We went into treatment centers, and we have done a trip with this 
subcommittee with the Coast Guard in the interdiction zones. If you 
want to use an example of a narco democracy where the country has lost 
control, take a look at St. Kitts. That is what the problem here is. 
Mexico is starting to realize if they do not get serious, they can lose 
control of their country. The same thing with Peru and Bolivia and 
other countries we visited.
  I would like to also just, if I would, mention Bob Kramek, the 
Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard. What a great job they have done.
  One other thing is we are working very closely with Barry McCaffrey, 
the new drug czar, former 4-star general in the Army, doing a great job 
in putting this thing together.
  We are just very encouraged that we are starting to get our arms 
around this thing, but we cannot do it from Washington, DC. We have got 
to get out on the front lines and see what is working and what is not 
working.
  Manchester, NH--Peter Favreau, the chief of police in Manchester, NH, 
had Operation Street Sweeper. He recognized how serious this issue was. 
He called in help from the Attorney General's office. We also got help 
from Federal, State, and local police forces that all worked together 
as a team. They are getting crack off the streets. They are closing 
down crack houses. They are sending drug sellers to jail, getting them 
off the streets. They are taking back their streets, taking back their 
community. We are starting to see evidence of people starting to wake 
up and realizing the significance of how important this thing is across 
America, across all these countries and throughout the world.
  Mr. HASTERT. Before you stood up, I wanted to congratulate the 
gentleman and his subcommittee work on the intervention and looking at 
the oversight. You have the oversight responsibility in the Committee 
on Government Oversight. You have done a very good job. You have set up 
the premise on this action and this joint teamwork we are going to do.
  The first step is, of course, laying out what the problem is. The 
second step is to take a look at it and try to find some solutions to 
it. You also were instrumental in bringing the former ambassador of 
Colombia with us, and he paid his own way to be a part of this, to try 
to solve the problem; former ambassador Morris Busby, who did an 
invaluable service trying to lay out what the predicate was and trying 
to move through this whole process.
  But I commend the gentleman, and you certainly have done a good job. 
But we have a lot of work to do.
  Mr. ZELIFF. We sure do. I would throw out one other thing you have 
been a big help with. We started a congressional breakfast, where we 
have 40 to 50 Members of Congress working with Charlie Rangel, both 
sides of the aisle, from New York. He has been a big leader in this 
effort as well. We have had meetings with Louis Freeh, Director of the 
FBI; Tom Constantine, DEA Administrator. We have great respect for both 
of those gentleman. Now, Barry McCaffrey most recently. We are going to 
keep our Members updated. There was a lot of concern and a lot of 
commitment. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. HASTERT. I would like to wrap up a little bit what we did and saw 
in Mexico. We have done five countries. I would like to yield some time 
to the gentleman from Indiana first.

[[Page H3628]]

  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I briefly wanted to say here at the 
beginning, too, I wanted to thank Mr. Zeliff, the chairman of the 
subcommittee, for raising the issue of the drug war and the battle that 
we need to do, because we had abandoned it for some time, and say what 
a privilege it has been to work on his subcommittee, to do the hearings 
over time, and to initiate this trip.
  We really had a strong team. Mr. Mica, who had experience as a 
staffer, as an international businessman, and on the plane we could 
work together, and in your skill as a Representative of leadership and 
for them to know that they had the subcommittee chairman of multiple 
committees.
  It was amazing as we went into some of these countries, they heard of 
Mr. Zeliff. They said, ``Oh, yes, he is the person who has brought 
drugs back in front.'' I heard several leaders of those countries take 
them aside. Your smoothness when we went into Mexico, it was a 
difficult situation. They had just had the immigration border incidents 
that we were there on a narcotics mission, but in fact it turned into a 
very touchy diplomatic mission as well in a lot of these countries.
  I want to commend the gentleman as to how he smoothly handled that as 
we met with the Members of Congress there for dinners and President 
Zedillo and the foreign minister, because these turned, in Colombia and 
other countries we will talk about here, and particularly in Mexico, 
into potentially explosive international incidents that we were able to 
help facilitate.

                              {time}  1615

  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman for his contribution. I would also 
like to recognize our good friend and fellow traveler, Mr. Mica, from 
Florida.
  Mr. MICA. Well, I want to, first of all, Mr. Speaker, thank Mr. 
Hastert for his leadership. When this trip was originally planned, 
about 11 people indicated they were going to go; and as it turned out, 
Mr. Hastert, Mr. Souder, and Mr. Zeliff, and myself were the only 
Members that went.
  I want the Speaker and my colleagues to know that, and listen to 
this, despite cables indicating 22 deaths from terrorist bombings on 
April 10, that is just before we left, in Columbia, and the discovery 
of dynamite at the Colombia Supreme Court, also on April 10, codel 
members stood by their commitment, and those who stood by their 
commitment are on the floor.
  This trip is a culmination of some of the efforts that I and a few 
others, Charlie Rangel, Bill Richardson, on the other side of the 
aisle, have attempted to get the attention of this administration and 
this Congress on this issue. In the last Congress I had over 100 
Members sign a letter to the former Democratic chairman of the 
Government Operations Committee asking for an oversight hearing on our 
national drug policy, and two farcical abbreviated hearing were held. 
Nothing was really held, until Mr. Zeliff took over this position. Mr. 
Clinger and Mr. Hastert have also shown their leadership.
  I would say that required reading, and I have seen on the floor for 
this, this committee is taking this very seriously, and they have 
produced a document that every American parent, every Member of 
Congress, and every member of the media should look at, and this 
details the epidemic drug situation in this country. It is not just 
with adults, it is with our children. Every single drug, marijuana, 
cocaine, heroin, designer drugs, are absolutely just going off the 
charts. This is a national tragedy. We have 70 percent of the people in 
our jails and in our prisons that are overloaded with people who are 
convicted of crimes that have some drug relation to it.
  We have an epidemic in this country and no one, except some of these 
Members, is paying any attention. And these Members risked their lives 
and also time with their families to go on this visit to see firsthand. 
The first codel in my memory in the last 3 or 4 years, and certainly in 
this administration.
  Then, also in required reading, I ask everyone to get a copy of this 
trip report, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues. This is an unclassified 
report. I know the media could not care less about it, but it details 
what is going on in the drug war and where we are. We have the report 
that details the failure, we have the report that details this 
delegation's travel to these countries and why they traveled to 
Bolivia, to Peru, to Colombia, to Panama, and to Mexico.
  First of all, in Bolivia and Peru, they have nearly 100 percent of 
the cocaine being produced. If my colleagues want to hear some shocking 
news, we learned in Colombia, which was originally a transit zone, even 
though now they are producing some cocaine, but every American, every 
Congressman, and the Speaker of the House should be concerned about 
this, there are 10,000 hectares of poppies being grown there. Heroin 
will be on the streets of this country in tremendous amounts.
  What is another concern, we learned from some agents that we met with 
that for the first time in Peru they found some cultivation of poppies. 
So we can see that we have a long way to go.
  Part of the history of how we got in this situation is the 
administration shifted most of its resources to drug treatment, which 
is at the far end. Anyone who looks at the problem of drugs in this 
country knows that we must have a four-pronged approach. It must be, 
first of all, interdiction, which is dramatically decreased in these 
countries. We must have enforcement. In this administration the number 
of prosecutions has dropped dramatically in drug prosecution. We must 
have education and then we must have treatment. But it must be a four-
pronged approach, and we are losing the war.
  These people met with the leaders and other people who are involved 
in this war. And I must take just a minute, too, if I may, to tell the 
Members of Congress, Mr. Speaker, and the American people, that we have 
some dedicated people out there. I am still itching from bug bites. Our 
staff, almost all the staff got sick. The DEA agent that traveled with 
us had to almost be hospitalized by going into some of these areas, 
getting sick and bitten, but we came back. The good news is we came 
back.
  The other news that everyone should know is that we have hundreds of 
dedicated Americans, our ambassadors, our Department of Defense 
employees, these young men and women who are out there in the jungles 
working with these people that are dedicated young Americans, committed 
to this fight. The Department of State employees in the narcotics 
assistance unit.
  I am one of the biggest critics of AID, Agency for International 
Development, and a lot of their programs was wasteful, but down in 
these countries they are trying to work with crop substitution and 
other programs where we should be putting our emphasis, not on giveaway 
programs where we can make a difference.
  And the DEA people. I met a DEA agent who has been in DEA for 12 
years, 6 years in South America, his name is Bill, and he is a 
committed person. And I cannot single out all of them, but we have 
dozens of these people who are out there in the jungle working every 
day trying to stop this narcotics trafficking, when sometimes the 
administration or Congress undermines their efforts. So there are 
American heroes, our Customs people and intelligence agency people, 
that are also involved and should be recognized.
  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. MICA. So that is the problem, that is where we are, and I wanted 
to shed that background of what we are trying to do and what some 
people are doing out there in the field.
  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman. What I want to do now is take a 
few minutes and sort of let the Speaker, and the Members of Congress 
know exactly what we did, where we went, what we found during that 
period of time, and we will try to move through that as quickly as 
possible and then come up with wind-up remarks on this.
  As I started out and talked about Mexico, I think the key thing is in 
our meetings with the President of Mexico and with the Ambassador, Mr. 
Jim Jones, a former Member of Congress, that we found out in 
discussions with the President, that he thinks that the drug problem, 
the trafficking problem up through Mexico is really Mexico's number one 
problem, because it is a

[[Page H3629]]

false indicator on their economy. The money laundering, which only 
forces legitimate people out of business, and the tremendous amount of 
drugs that move up through Mexico really cause violence and shooting 
and some guerrilla activity.
  For instance, in the last few years, deaths in Mexico because of this 
grew 145 percent, and there were over 2,000 speed or what we call speed 
or methamphetamine-related deaths between 1991 and 1992, even in the 
borders along Mexico, in Los Angeles, and San Diego, and San Francisco 
alone.

  So the incidence of increase and literally trainloads of marijuana, 
thousands of pounds of cocaine and crack, and literally thousands of 
pounds also of heroin that is moving up through Mexico is not only a 
United States problem, but the Mexican President in our discussions has 
admitted it is the number one problem in Mexico as well.
  The next place that we stopped was in Panama, and we met with 
Ambassador Bill Hughes and the new Ambassador to Colombia and the 
country team there. Then we met with the SOUTHCOM, which is the U.S. 
command that is out of Panama City, that is literally the source that 
we can send our AWAC planes down to Colombia and off the Andes area in 
Peru and Bolivia and we can actually see foreign flights coming up and 
the flights that deliver and drop--pick up the cocaine or coca paste 
and bring them up north either into Colombia or then into Mexico to be 
processed. That is a very sensitive place.
  But Panama itself has a problem because they are in a very precarious 
position and a vulnerable position. The city on the north coast, on the 
north part of the Panama Canal that empties into the Atlantic Ocean, 
has the free trade zone in that area, has virtually been overtaken by 
Colombians, and literally hundreds of tons or pounds of cocaine and 
coca leaf and coca paste move through that area; and they understand a 
country without a military, with just a police force, that they have to 
do a better job of cracking down on that.
  Also, Panama has over 400,000 shell companies or paper companies that 
are used as fronts to launder illegal drug profits. In talking with the 
Vice President of Panama, he admitted this and said this is one of the 
most important things that they need to do and they need to try to 
control. They know that Colombia is a primary drug transit zone.
  The United States is currently in the process of turning over 
military bases to the Panamanians, and that is a sensitive thing to the 
United States. I think Howard Air Force Base, where we base our P-3's 
and our helicopters, and is the repair base for many of the operations 
in South America, was very important to the United States in drug 
control. So that is something else the United States has to deal with 
in the next couple of years.

  But Panama has no military. It has not been eligible for the military 
sales systems. And in the last couple of days we have passed a piece of 
legislation in this Congress to allow the Ambassador to be able to use 
some of that money to work on the counternarcotics in Panama. Panama 
can and will be likely the gateway for the overtake of the narcos if we 
do not get something done there and if we do not beef up our 
activities.
  Now, people talk about, well, how come we are sending money to Panama 
or Mexico. We are not sending money, we are sending people; those 
people who on the ground can make a difference. We are sending 
intelligence officers, members of the DEA, so that they can actually 
get in and find out where the source is of the storage, where the 
transshipment is, where the manufacturing of these narcotics is, and 
they are doing a good job. But we cannot shut that faucet off, because 
if we do shut that faucet off, we will see a huge increase of infusion 
in drugs added to the drugs that we already have in this country.
  I think the next place that--I know the next place that we went was 
Colombia, and I would like to have Mr. Mica from Florida give you a 
little bit of a review on what we found in Colombia.
  Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding and, again, we wanted to 
trace the trail of illegal narcotics coming into this country. As you 
know, Colombia traditionally has been one of the major transit areas. 
We have had a program to eliminate some of the kingpins, and the 
Colombians have been very aggressively pursued, destroying both the 
Cali and the Medellin cartels.
  In Colombia, under some pretty heavy security I might add, the 
Congressmen and the other members who traveled with us of our staff met 
with our Ambassador Myles Ferchette, who again I commend on his 
efforts, his incredible living conditions; as well as Defense Minister 
Esguerra, and Commander of Armed Forces Delgado.
  As I mentioned, too, nearly several dozen police officers had been 
killed just prior to our arriving, and I understand another several 
dozen people have been killed in incidents down there just the past few 
days, plus other terrorist activities. So you can imagine the 
conditions that our representatives and Ambassadors are under.
  It was necessary for this tight security to meet in our embassy. We 
met there and conversed with our DEA agents and others who were 
involved in the various projects.
  Two of the Colombian leaders, and I must say that there are questions 
surrounding some of the drug relationships to the current President of 
Colombia. There are 109 members, I understand, of the Colombia's 
Congress, over 100 members of the Colombian Congress that may have some 
problems, and there are some investigations going on there.

                              {time}  1630

  But we met with 2 stars in their drug war, who have done an 
incredible job, and one is the national police chief, Mr. Serrano. He 
told us that they have lost over 3,000 officers in this war.
  As you know, the drug cartels have killed judicial members, they have 
killed members of congress, they have killed hundreds, literally 
thousands, of police officers in their struggle.
  We also had an opportunity to meet with defense minister and 
commander of the Colombian Armed Forces Admiral Delgado. So we had an 
opportunity to hear firsthand what they are doing, some of the 
problems.
  I might say that one of the problems that we had is in 1994 this 
administration reversed its policy on the drug shootdown policy. They 
stopped giving information and intelligence and radar to the Colombians 
in the Andean countries through a liberal interpretation of one of the 
attorneys in the administration.
  As you may know, Members of Congress, Mr. Torricelli, Mr. Rangel, 
others on the Republican side, Mr. Gilman, raised extreme concerns with 
the President, the vice president, the national security adviser. 
Congress did amend this, and there have been some changes. But some 
damage was done in the program.
  The Colombians do not shoot the planes down out of the skies with 
drug traffickers, but they do shoot them when they reach the ground. 
One of the problems that we have now is that some of the shipments are 
being shipped around Colombia directly into Mexico, and Mexico is now 
one of the greatest transshipment areas.
  Another problem that we have are these small cocaine producers. With 
the drug cartels being destroyed, we now have small producers. And they 
discussed that problem. They do need our assistance, continued 
assistance in this war, additional equipment and supplies. There are 
people there that are willing to fight, and they have seen how it has 
destroyed their country.
  So those are a couple of the things that we saw in Colombia.
  One other thing that I must mention again is the alarming news of 
10,000 hectares of poppy growing, and they are now producing heroin 
there. And as you know, they have a great flower production, probably 
the flower capital of the world, and poppy is another flower.
  So they have an unbelievable capacity to produce a new, inexpensive, 
illegal narcotic, and it is flooding our schools and our communities 
and our society, and we will probably see even more of it.
  So those are some of the folks that we met with, some of the heroes I 
talked about, and some of the leaders in Colombia who are helping in 
our effort.
  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from Florida. We also want to 
mention that in our time in Mexico, we

[[Page H3630]]

were joined by Senator Coverdell of Georgia, who also has taken, in the 
other body, a great interest in this issue.
  Now I would like to yield some time to our good friend from Indiana, 
who has done a great deal of work on this narcotics issue, Mr. Mark 
Souder.
  Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for yielding.
  I want to first just sketch a little bit of the problem. The United 
States is basically up here in relationship to this map, with Mexico 
and Panama and Central America coming down into Colombia, Peru and 
Bolivia. It does not take a genius to figure out what is going on here.
  One hundred percent of the cocaine coming in from outside the United 
States is coming from here. Roughly 60 percent is now coming from Peru, 
which we will hear more about in a minute. About 30 percent of the 
growth is in Bolivia, with some in Colombia. Not only that, it is 
coming from basically two places just on the other side of the Andes in 
Peru and in Bolivia. Bolivia has been growing; Peru has been slightly 
declining.

  Furthermore, we are seeing more of the processing. As the pressure 
goes on in Colombia, the processing starts to move to these two 
countries in these two valleys. Not surprisingly, as you put the 
pressure on, and this is a chart that shows some of the success in the 
Chapare region of Bolivia, that they have had. You can see that they 
seized aircraft, they have seized coca leaf, they hav seized coca-based 
paste and base. They have eradicated crops. They have made a major 
effort in this zone to try to crack down.
  If you look at this third chart, what has happened, and this shows 
the Mexico through Central American areas we were in, as they put the 
pressure in the air, it starts to move to maritime.
  What we were in was literally the jungle, the rivers areas that were 
feeding into the Amazon River Basin. It was very disturbing, quite 
frankly, as somebody who, in spite of the earlier comments, does care 
about the environment, and I am a Republican; it was very disturbing to 
see how the rivers were being killed by the chemicals from the cocaine 
labs and what that was doing to the wildlife.
  We hear a lot of times about cutting down the Amazon rainforest, and 
we get many letters from schools. But we could see it burning in 
different places, and we could see it being cut so they can put cocaine 
labs in.
  I want to show, if I can have the pictures now, what we did in 
Bolivia. After we had our country team briefing, we flew up in a C-130 
Vietnam-era transport plane up into the Chapare region to meet with the 
Puma powers, the soldiers who are busy working in the fields. We did a 
helicopter, a Huey helicopter, overflight where you can see they have 
had success in converting things into banana production, pineapple 
production and others.
  You could also see that they were hedging their bets, and some places 
underneath the banana plants you can see the coca. But they were 
working to eradicate that. They passed tougher laws.
  Then they took us back in after we had had lunch. They landed us in 
helicopters. We took four-wheel-drives. We went back down dirt roads. 
The day before, they had a tip, and they took down a primitive lab.
  Here what you see is the lab where they are turning it into paste. 
Here you see we got to witness them blowing up a lab, watching it burn. 
This is very dark because it is a jungle. It is the literal Amazon 
jungle. You cannot see it from an airplane overhead. They find six to 
eight of these a day that they destroy in the jungle that these troops 
are going through.
  Here you see leaf that has been pulled up, green leaf that is 
planted.
  Later on in the day we stopped at a local market, walked in and there 
the coca leaf was for sale in those markets, not converted to cocaine 
where we were.
  Here you see the coca field that is feeding into this particular lab 
and the soldiers destroying it.
  In the back part of this field there was a small area where the 
little coca plants were planted that would then continue to feed this 
field.
  In my home area in Fort Wayne, IN, there are kids dying. You do not 
see the blood on the coca plants, but there are kids dying; they are 
shooting each other; they are destroying each other because of the coca 
plants that are coming in from these countries.

  What they are telling us, however, is also it is not all our 
problems, you can see their troops here, you can see their airplane 
flights and crops being destroyed. We listened to their governments.
  It is their police that are dying as we heard in Colombia how many 
are dying. And they are saying, you know, we would not have this 
problem if you were not consuming it all in your country, too, and you 
are bringing the problems into our country. It is twofold. We need to 
stop the interdiction, we need to put more money into these efforts, 
because our kids and people are dying in our country, and back up the 
people there, and at the same time we need to work at the demand 
reduction on our side.
  Mr. HASTERT. I appreciate the gentleman yielding back for a second, 
but he makes very important points that the reason we are doing this is 
our children. Kids in the streets of the United States and our 
neighborhoods, both middle-class neighborhoods, upper-class 
neighborhoods, lower-class neighborhoods, are being effected by this.
  If a kid uses crack cocaine, he only has to use it twice, and he 
gives up his free will for the rest of his life. Now that is something 
that is pretty important. I think parents and teachers and community 
leaders need to understand that.
  Only two times do you need to use the crack cocaine, the pictures 
that Mr. Souder showed us, and a kid is hooked for life, and what an 
expense, what a waste of human life, what a waste of the human vitality 
that we have in this country and the potential that every kid has in 
this country to be a better person, to make a living, to raise a family 
and to be an American.
  So that is really the issue there, and, Mr. Souder, we really 
appreciate the work you have done on this.
  Now I would like to yield to the gentleman who really has been at the 
crux of this whole issue, driving it forward for a number of years and 
working on his committee to bring this issue forward, and certainly a 
great American, somebody that we have all looked up to on this issue, 
Mr. Zeliff of New Hampshire.
  Mr. ZELIFF. I feel awfully good that as we have come back and renewed 
our commitment, we are pleased to have the opportunity to talk to 
Members of the House, both the Senate and the House, talking to Barry 
McCaffrey, the drug czar, and hope to visit with the President, as 
well, and get his commitment.
  We need to renew the commitment to the drug war because it is vital, 
it is the most important single thing that we have facing us. Crime, 
drugs, and terrorism are all one, and it is costing us far too much in 
terms of the next generation.
  I just would like to talk a little bit about Peru. Saturday morning 
we met with the President of Peru, quite a guy; our Ambassador Adams in 
the country team in Peru. We met with them all day Saturday afternoon 
and evening. What a guy; the President of Peru is totally committed. 
Two-thirds of the world's cocaine is produced in coca leaf form right 
here, and this photo right here, these are the coca fields, this is a 
plant, and these are the coca leaves themselves. But the field is two-
thirds of the world's cocaine, produced in Peru.
  Now, what has happened with his policies, frankly, it is called a 
very effective shootdown policy. If they have intelligence that a plane 
is loaded with cocaine, they will address that plane, send two fighters 
up, have the plane be warned, have them bring it down. If they do not 
come down, they shoot it down.

  Now, what happens is that the 50 percent pure flights on the air 
bridge, and you got now, you have got in Bolivia, you got Peru, Bolivia 
and Colombia. The air bridge goes through all three of those countries 
in terms of bringing the product up. So we basically have closed down 
50 percent fewer flights in the air bridge and are now forced to do 
alternate routes, either into Brazil or boat by boat, up along the 
tributaries of the Amazon. We now have to ship policies and resources. 
There are small boats, small craft, and we need now to make sure we can 
fight the fight on the water as well.

[[Page H3631]]

  The pilots before were making $25,000 a flight to fly a planeload of 
cocaine. Now, because of the shootdown policy, it has grown up to 
$200,000 a flight. And what is happening, by keeping the pressure on, 
the farmers have abandoned 20 to 40 percent of the coca fields in Peru. 
Peru and the United States have a delicate window of opportunity, while 
prices of coca are down and the risk of production is high, to get 
farmers out and start working with alternative crops. And this is true 
of Bolivia as well.
  One of the things that I have to say is I was pretty biased, based on 
the GAO reports that we read, and we were told that programs and source 
countries eradication programs were badly managed and were not 
effective. Well, this may have been true a few years ago, but I 
believe, and I think all of us agree, that we are starting to see some 
signs, some light at the end of the tunnel, where programs are 
effective.
  Mr. HASTERT. I think an important point that you started to bring out 
is that not only did the Peruvian campesinos or farmers start to 
abandon their fields, but the price of cocaine in Peru went down 
tenfold, and all of a sudden it was so cheap that they could not afford 
to grow other solid anymore.
  So I think that is an important issue of the whole supply and demand, 
but it was directly because of Fujimora's actions.
  Mr. SOUDER. He is a real hero in our books. I think we are all very 
impressed when we left, and we told him that.
  And I think the other thing that we have to look at, an AID program 
and foreign policy programs need to be geared toward economic 
development, infrastructure improvements. And what is happening here is 
that if you leave it to their devices in working with the jungle, that 
is where the terrorism is. If the towns and the regular government give 
up the area, then we lose the war.
  Let me just trace a very interesting article in the Union Leader back 
in February 26, an article, and I give him a lot of credit for bringing 
this out, and I believe that they are committed to this in a very 
strong way, Sissy Taylor, ``Cocaine's Deadly Journey, Trip to New 
Hampshire Long and Costly.'' Just go through a little bit of how it all 
works.

                              {time}  1645

  I will go through a little bit of how it all works. Coca leaves are 
bundled. Again you have the field. Coca leaves are bundled into bags. 
The bags are brought to pits where the processing begins.
  This is the pit. This is about 4- by 12-foot long. The bottom is 
lined with a filtering canvas. They dump the leaves in, add lime and 
kerosene or diesel fuel, sulfuric acid, then grind them together with 
the leaves. A paste is then formed and dried and then washed again with 
either ether, diesel fuel, or kerosene and then washed again. At this 
point it becomes coca base.
  Then the base is bundled and flown or transported into clandestine 
air strips in Colombia. It is then transported to processing 
laboratories in the jungles. It then undergoes another chemical process 
before it becomes cocaine hydrochloride or powdered cocaine.
  It is packaged into kilos, kilo bags, weighing a little bit more than 
2 pounds. The farmer gets about $2,500 a hectare, and a hectare is 2\1/
2\ acres, so he does not get much for growing the crop. Then it goes 
into Bogota as processed cocaine, worth $500 a kilo. Then that is 
transported either to New York, Miami, or Manchester or other cities 
around the United States, and it could reach as much as $20,000 a kilo.
  There is so much money in it. What is happening here in each of these 
countries--President Fujimori of Peru, the President of Mexico, a lot 
of the areas in the Caribbean, and I want to mention the great Governor 
of Puerto Rico and some of the fine work he has done--but what happens 
here is they are afraid of losing control of their countries, losing 
control of democracy, losing control to drug traffickers, and frankly 
the drug traffickers are the scum of the Earth. We have got to wake up.
  Let me just read a note. I met with the Governor of Puerto Rico 
yesterday, who is leading a valiant effort. We are going to be doing 
two more hearings, one in Puerto Rico in July and one in the district 
of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder], in Fort Wayne, and one in 
the district of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], in Chicago 
that day if we can work it out. We need to get on top of it.
  What he said:

       I want to say a few words about Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, 
     along with Mexico, is a major transshipment point for Latin 
     America's illegal drug cartels. Eighty percent of all the 
     drugs that get into Puerto Rico end up in the continental 
     U.S.

  There is no customs. It goes right through.

       But Puerto Rico is ahead of the curve under the Governor's 
     leadership. In 3 years, he has shown what a good Governor can 
     do. He has implemented an effective prevention and law 
     enforcement strategy, and rescued 23,000 public housing 
     units. He has used the National Guard effectively, and 
     brought 16 different State agencies together to make Puerto 
     Rico more secure.
       Governor Rosello's model is key, because other Governors 
     and leaders have to realize that we are now confronting what 
     is clearly a national security threat that has gotten into 
     every State in our Nation.
       I also hope that the Governor's Conference in Puerto Rico 
     this July will focus on the leadership that this Governor has 
     shown. But more--the drug issue must be front and center with 
     all of us.

  If Congress, this President and all of the Governors of the United 
States make this number one, if we can put a man on the Moon, we can 
win the war on drugs.
  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire. I just wanted 
to make another couple of comments.
  When we saw what was going on, the results of President Fujimori's 
shoot-down policy in Peru, what happens is that cocaine piles up there 
and now they are trying to take it out in the river system. So another 
country which has been involved somewhat unwittingly is out in the 
Amazon Basin of Brazil, and so many of those flights now, because they 
cannot fly up through Peru and through Colombia to get into Colombia, 
now what they do is they go around through Brazil. That is a real job 
for our ambassadorial corps and others, to make Brazil aware of the 
problem that they have with drug traffickers moving that cocaine supply 
out of Peru and out of Bolivia and on up into Peru through the river 
system and ultimately through airways.
  Mr. SOUDER. If the gentleman will yield, I want to make one 
additional point on the pictures the gentleman was just talking about. 
To give you the scale of why the best drug prevention program is 
interdiction and as we get into some of the things we need to do, that 
third picture, that is on fire, and the fourth picture. We took down 
around 100 crack houses in Fort Wayne last year. That is how great our 
problem is in a city the size of 300,000, roughly, in the metro area. 
That little fire there would be the biggest drug bust in the history of 
Fort Wayne, and they can make it in those little labs, starting for 
$500. We destroyed the biggest drug bust in the history of Fort Wayne. 
If we can get it there and reduce the supply, it has a major impact on 
our cities.
  Mr. ZELIFF. But if the gentleman will yield, it has got to be 
balanced. We have got to do education, prevention. We have got to do 
treatment, interdiction. We have got to do source country eradication 
programs. If we do not, if we skip 3 or 4 of these pieces, then we 
lose. We have got to do it in a balanced program across the board.
  Mr. HASTERT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. MICA. I want to follow up on what the gentleman had said, Mr. 
Speaker. This strategy has to start right at the top. It has to start 
out at the White House.
  Listen to this. The President has really hardly talked about the 
issue for the last 3 years. Of the seven major addresses to the Nation 
in 1993 and 1994, President Clinton mentioned drugs in none of those 
addresses. In 1993, he gave 1,628 statements, addresses and interviews, 
but mentioned drugs a total of 13 times. In 1994 there were 1,742 
presidential statements and he referred to the drug problem 11 times.

  This has to be a national priority from the administration. We have a 
new drug czar. He has been great to work with so far. We have a great 
working relationship with him. As the other Members have seen and as I 
saw, we need the cooperation of many agents, we need the cooperation of

[[Page H3632]]

many committees of Congress in both bodies and everyone working in the 
same direction.
  We also must look at how we are spending these resources, and when 
you see that most of the drug treatment and abuse programs, at the very 
end, they are failures. Very few of them have any success rate 
whatsoever. Then the international program is 2.34 percent, and you 
dismantle an interdiction program at this critical juncture, you are 
making a mistake as far as your priorities. It has to be interdiction, 
enforcement, education, and there must be treatment also.
  Mr. ZELIFF. If the gentleman will yield further, one of the things we 
are finding out in Manchester, NH, again I cite Peter Favreau, who has 
done a great job along with the Federal, State, and local agencies that 
have worked with him. But we have worked with courageous people in the 
school systems. You can put a policeman in a school yard but we have to 
get inside the schools, work with the kids and be role models.
  It is not just the President, it is all of us individually. We have 
got to get the media to wake up and pay attention to this. We have got 
to start talking to parents. Parents have to start talking to their 
kids. Business people have to be involved, communities have to be 
involved. We have to reconnect with basic values. If we do not, we are 
going to lose big time and we will not have anything left.
  It is time now, and hopefully with the leadership of the gentleman 
from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], you might just describe what we ultimately 
want to try to do here. We are trying to bring it all together to show 
to everybody the importance of this issue, and we really appreciate 
your effort.
  Mr. HASTERT. Reclaiming my time, we have used the word ``balance'' a 
number of times, but this is a balance purely between supply and 
demand. We have to do our part. We promised those Presidents and those 
Congresses in those Central American countries of Mexico and Panama, 
and certainly in the Andean countries of Colombia and Bolivia and Peru, 
that we would work in our country to try to hold down that demand.
  That is partly a result of the government. If we take this chart, we 
can see that from basically 1980 the demand for drugs, the kids' usage 
of drugs in this country had fallen rapidly until 1992. All of a 
sudden, the demand for drugs and the use of drugs goes up.
  This chart here shows exactly what happens. Twelfth graders, in 1980 
the use started to go down. In 1992, it went up. Tenth graders, it went 
up. Eighth graders, it went up. I am sure if you have a chart there, 
you will find that sixth and fourth graders' use went up too.
  We have to change from a government that used to say ``just say no,'' 
and we had good results during that time, to a government which has 
lately just said nothing, and we need to work and develop that as a 
huge issue in this country. Parents, and as the gentleman from New 
Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff] said, everybody has to work together. I am sure 
we can get the job done, but it has to be a country effort. And we have 
to work in those countries that produce this, work with their 
governments, work with their presidents who are willing to work with 
this country and try to eradicate the supply side of this, as well.
  You can see in these charts it is there. They are doing it. They are 
doing it today. Farmers are planting cocaine seedlings on sides of 
mountains, under the brush in Bolivia and Peru, and we have to help 
stop that.
  I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. SOUDER. I am not necessarily known as ``Mr. Internationalist.'' 
In fact, I authored with the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Zeliff] 
an amendment that said unless Mexico worked harder in this effort, that 
we were going to cut off funding and support. I have been critical of a 
number of the trade missions.
  One thing I have seen, and we did not shy away from communicating 
this to them, that all the issues that we are dealing with are related 
to narcotics in our country. At the same time we need to acknowledge 
that we have leaders around the world, as you said earlier, who are 
committed to democracy, who need our support, or we are going to lose 
the best chance for freedom around the world.
  Mr. HASTERT. In closing, I thank all the gentlemen who have worked on 
this, the gentleman from New Hampshire, Mr. Zeliff, who has taken the 
lead in committee, our friend from Indiana, Mr. Souder, and of course 
my friend from Florida, Mr. Mica. I thank the gentlemen.

                          ____________________