[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10225-H10228]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  COMBATING THE NATION'S DRUG PROBLEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia 
[Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk tonight a little bit 
about the growing debate about the drug war and talk about some of the 
things that this Congress has done to combat the drug problem in 
America and the youth.
  I think there are two things that we need to keep in mind. One is the 
statistics, and the other is the recent salvo of the Clinton 
administration about tobacco. I, like you, have young children. I am 
concerned about my children smoking at early ages and I am concerned 
about the health problems of smoking and so forth. But why did Bill 
Clinton come out so strong now, on the eve of an election, against 
tobacco when he has had the Presidency for 4 years? Why suddenly?
  One of the suggestions that people have, and I think this is a 
legitimate, it goes back to when Bill Clinton was talking on national 
TV on MTV, the music television show which gets a huge audience of, 
say, 13 to 20-year-olds, I will watch it every now and then myself, it 
is good, it is not just those ages; they have some good programs; of 
course they have some other things that are pretty questionable.
  He was asked if given another chance to smoke marijuana, would he 
have inhaled; because, of course, Bill Clinton would have everyone in 
America believing that he never inhaled, which this particular 
President seems to be able to get away with a lot of things but he is 
famous for saying he did not inhale. But when asked by an MTV audience 
full of 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds, if you had it to do again would 
you have inhaled, to which a snickering, laughing Bill Clinton said, 
``Sure. Sure, if I could. I tried before. Ha-ha.''
  So here we are, he is running for the President of the United States 
and at that time, this was on June 12, 1992, he was clearly on his way 
to being the Democrat nominee, standing in front of 13-, 14-, 15-year-
olds, makes a joke about it. So let us kind of say, well, that is what 
happened. Think about that as exhibit 1.
  Now play that scenario again, Mr. Candidate for President Clinton, if 
you had to do it again, would you have inhaled?
  ``You know, if I had to do it again, I never would have smoked 
marijuana. I never would have tried. It hurts your ambition, it hurts 
your grades, it hurts your abilities to do sports. It can be a

[[Page H10226]]

steppingstone drug to other drugs. It could have psychological 
addiction. It is a bad thing. I tried it, it was rampant in the 1960's. 
Do not fall for it in the 1990's. We know so much more about it.''
  Just think, Mr. Speaker, if you are a 14-year-old kid and you are 
sitting on the fence with half your friends smoking marijuana and the 
other half not smoking and you were sitting on the fence, in that 
audience, and you had the soon-to-be President of the United States 
tell you, sure, if I had another chance I would try it, versus, no way, 
hell no, it is bad for you, do not make my mistake, think which way you 
would go if you were that 14-year-old.
  Instead, what happens is we have a passive, I would say endorsement 
on drug use and drug culture.
  So what is the Clinton drug record? Here are some great statistics 
that have just come out. They are not great in the sense that they are 
optimistic by any stretch, but they have just come out. They are from a 
1996, August, 1 month ago, report by the Household Survey on Drug 
Abuse, the Department of Human Services, which of course is controlled 
by the Clinton liberal Democrats. But it says that drug use among 
teenagers has exploded. From 1992 to 1995, overall drug use from 12- to 
17-year-olds has gone up 78 percent. Marijuana use during the 1992 to 
1995 period is up 105 percent. LSD, 103 percent increase. Cocaine, from 
1994 to 1995, 166 percent increase.
  Think about that, Mr. Speaker. That is all during the Clinton 
administration, during the period of time when he was slashing 
interdiction, cutting funding for drug enforcement agents and sending 
these cynical messages to our children about what drug use means.
  I had a conversation with my 13-year-old the other day. We have a 
constant dialogue about this because already in her class, even though 
she goes to a very good school, I know most of the parents, most of the 
kids have gone to that same school all their life, they do not have a 
lot of transplants coming in and out of the system, it is a very stable 
environment, they already have one kid who was smoking marijuana in 
their class.
  If you want some more statistics, and this is something that as a 
parent of four kids I am very concerned about--this is from the Luntz 
Research Co.--by the time the average teenager reaches 17, 79 percent 
of the teenagers have friends who are regular drinkers, 60 percent of 
the teenagers can buy marijuana within 1 day, 62 percent of our 
teenagers under 17 have friends who use marijuana, 58 percent have been 
solicited to buy marijuana, 58 percent know someone who personally uses 
acid, cocaine or heroin, 43 percent know someone who has a personal 
drug problem, and 42 percent find marijuana easier to buy than either 
beer or cigarettes. I think that is very interesting. These statistics, 
Mr. Speaker, as you know, are of major concern.

  This past weekend, the Speaker was outraged when the President had 
the audacity to write a letter that blamed Congress for not fully 
funding his anti-drug program. We know what has happened. His sideshow 
with tobacco has not brought in the poll numbers that he expected, so 
he is going to come at the drug problem now head-on by blaming it on 
Congress. So here are some statistics on that that we want to talk 
about.
  Is Congress to blame? One of President Clinton's first acts as 
President was to slash the staff of the drug czar by 83 percent. He cut 
drug interdiction spending 25 percent below the Bush administration. 
And from 1992 to 1995, 227 agent positions were eliminated from the 
Drug Enforcement Agency.
  Let us talk about the Drug Enforcement Agency, Mr. Speaker. I believe 
the total number of employees at the Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA 
as it is called often, I believe it is around 6,800 people. How many 
people do we have working for the IRS? One hundred eleven thousand 
employees.
  So we have got 111,000 employees who are going to breathe down the 
necks of middle-class tax-paying Americans to make sure that they fill 
out their taxes right. But in terms of cracking down on drug thugs, we 
only have about 6,800 people and 227 of them have had their jobs 
eliminated under President Clinton.
  Drug prosecution. What is going on over at the Attorney General's 
office? They are in on that, too. Drug prosecution has dropped 12 
percent during Clinton's first 2 years as President. And we remember 
one of his key top advisers and Cabinet members had a son who was 
involved and arrested for drug usage and maybe drug sales, I am not 
sure; I know drug usage, and at the time she said, as a good mother 
should say, she thought he had done no wrong; I guess a good mother 
should say, I am still behind my son, I love him, even though he has 
done wrong; but I would say in true Clinton administration fashion; 
blamed it on society. That is the kind of people that we seem to have 
surrounding the President.
  The recent book that came out by Gary Aldrich who was a top FBI 
adviser over at the White House, the name of the book is ``Unlimited 
Access,'' it is an FBI agent who is no longer with the administration 
but who was there during the key periods of time in the administration, 
he talks about the big difference between, say, Bush applicants and 
Clinton applicants. And I am not going to say that this book is gospel, 
I am not going to say that all of this has been verified. Frankly, some 
of it has, some of it has not. I will say this; that if Anita Hill said 
anything that was truth, then this book is gospel compared to Anita 
Hill, but I am not going to get into opinions too much, just read a 
little bit of it here.
  That a minority of Bush applicants, and this is on page 112 of the 
book, experimented and admitted to inhaling illegal drugs. They were 
very sorry. They said, yes, I smoked marijuana once or twice, I was in 
college, everybody was doing it, so I stopped, I stopped using 
marijuana after I left college. I am ashamed that I ever did it, but it 
was stupid and I am sorry agents like you were risking your lives 
fighting drug traffickers and I did not have the guts to stand up to 
peer pressure.
  What Mr. Aldrich does in his book, he contrasts this to Clinton 
staffers. Remember, this guy was there at the time. He said, by 
contrast, Clinton staffers, older or younger, make no apology for their 
illegal drug use, which was much more extensive, with heavy drugs like 
cocaine, crack, LSD. Many were actually in your face about it, using 
the FBI interview to try to debate me, me being Gary Aldrich, on the 
merits of making drugs legal.
  That sets a tone of this White House having certainly, I am not going 
to say a drug culture, but certainly a different view of drugs entirely 
than society; because I think society as a whole recognizes the danger 
of drugs, recognizes that it is not a positive thing, that society as a 
whole does not want to legalize marijuana, which again was one of the 
Clinton Cabinet and adviser things that they brought up.
  Here is another quote, again Mr. Aldrich says incidents like these, 
and it is talking about an incident of somebody who had had some 
marijuana and polygraph problems, but the word had trickled down that 
the Clinton staff system was rigged and there were some paperwork 
problems, that they would blur over people's drug use or whatever like 
that.

                              {time}  1930

  This book goes into great detail about it. It also talks about the 
drug czar and some of the Cabinet members. Originally the drug czar was 
not the gentleman who is drug czar now, who is a fine gentleman and 
doing a very good job over there. I am glad to see that Clinton has 
recognized that, and I am sorry to see it is in the 11th hour of his 
administration.
  But, you know, getting back to what the Gingrich-Clinton discussion 
was about over the weekend, I think it is good to hear what the Speaker 
said in his letter back to Clinton. Clinton wrote that Congress has not 
come up with $640 million in appropriations or his request to spend 
more money on drugs in the safe and drug free school program.
  I am a member of appropriations, as you are, Mr. Speaker. I have 
never been lobbied by anybody except for the new drug czar about 
increasing spending for drug interdiction, enforcement, or convictions. 
I have not had anybody from the administration contact me as an 
appropriations member and say this is what we need. I have had some 
other agencies do that, but they were not acting from the 
administration.

[[Page H10227]]

  The Speaker wrote back: It is an outrage to watch you, to the 
President, to watch you, the President, joke about your own drug use. 
You have eliminated 83 percent of the drug czar's office after being 
sworn in, and you stood by while your Surgeon General called for drug 
legalization and your Attorney General testified against mandatory 
minimum sentences for drug dealers.
  He also contended that Clinton tried to cut antidrug efforts by law 
enforcement agencies, appointed Federal judges who are easy on drug 
dealers.
   Mr. Speaker, let me talk about that. Typical Clinton-appointed 
judge: This was a case where a woman pulled up into a high crime 
district in New York City. She hops out of her car. Four men come out 
of the dark alleyway and put two duffel bags into the trunk of the car. 
When that happened, law enforcement personnel closed in on her. The 
people ran. The police caught them. They arrested them, took them to 
court.
  In court, the liberal Clinton-appointed judge threw out the bags of 
cocaine, which was in the duffel bags, full of, I think, 80 pounds of 
cocaine in each duffel bag, threw that out as evidence. He said in that 
neighborhood running from the police is logical and rational behavior 
because police in that neighborhood are oppressive. That was 
the Clinton-appointed judge who was supposed to be protecting our 
children on our streets from drug thugs and traffickers and pushers.

  That is the kind of mentality we have here. It is just two different 
perceptions of the problem.
  The letter from Mr. Gingrich goes on, and I think it is a good one, 
but he points to a lot of facts. This year, Republicans in Congress 
will provide $173 million for the Drug Enforcement Agency. That is $20 
million more than the President had requested.
  The Republican Congress is increasing funding for INS, $542 million, 
including 400 more Border Patrol agents. That, Mr. Speaker, is the 
Immigration Service. As we know, one of the big problems we have with 
drug trafficking is people coming over the borders from out of the 
country bringing in drugs. If we can crack down on illegal immigration, 
we are also cracking down on drug trafficking.
  Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that 22 percent of the prison 
population in our Federal penal system are illegal aliens, and 80 
percent of them are in jail for violent offenses, and many, many 
related to drugs.
  Republicans are also providing $914 million in the defense budget for 
drug interdiction and counter drug activities. I met with a gentleman 
today who represents a group who is trying to support new funding for 
an airplane for Customs. This airplane has a special kind of radar that 
can be used to detect drug dealers. As you probably know, Mr. Speaker, 
most drugs right now are the ones south of the border and are coming 
from Peru or Bolivia. They are manufactured there, and then they are 
brought to Colombia, where the lab is. Then from Colombia they are 
flown to a ship or flown to another country and dropped off, either 
with a quick landing, or sometimes they have to just drop the stuff and 
keep going.
  This drug interdiction plan would track drug planes and tell the 
people on the ground where they are going to, and so forth, because 
right now, of course, the drug planes are flying without flight plans, 
without running lights and so forth, and they are very hard to detect. 
Drug interdiction planes would be a great help in fighting that.
  We are spending $13 million more than President Clinton requested for 
intelligence efforts against drug cartels, and $9.5 more for 
interdictions on the southwest border. We have increased funding to 
fight drugs in high crime neighborhoods by $10 million.

  Now, we have a philosophical disagreement on some of the spending for 
the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, because some of that was 
frankly getting wasted. But there is a lot of good that came from it, 
because this was a Reagan program. It was part of the Nancy Reagan just 
say no program.
  One of the things that is interesting about Nancy Reagan's program, 
Mr. Speaker, is that as the liberal Washington elite snickered at it 
because it was just too simple, it is interesting that up until 1992, 
drug usage for every drug except for heroin fell up until 1992. Then 
you get a new President, you get a new tone, a new drug philosophy, and 
what happens? Drug usage is right back up.
  So this is something that we have got to keep fighting on. It is 
something where marijuana is more deadly now than it was when we were 
teenagers. There are chemicals and so forth that are mixed into it. It 
is not the same plant that parents say, ``Well, I smoked a little 
marijuana. It will not hurt my 15 year old.'' It might, because it is a 
different drug, and it is a different age in terms of drugs.
  So I think that when you look at the statistics that the Luntz Corp. 
put out, we have got to be very, very concerned.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to move on to a couple of the 
other things that are of great concern in terms of this Congress, some 
of the reforms that we have done.
  This Congress has made a lot of changes. The reforms we have put in 
are all commonsense based. We have given the President the line-item 
veto. That will be effective in January. We have applied the same laws 
to Congress that the private sector has to live under. That goes for 
OSHA, EPA, regulatory departments of all natures that have to govern 
us. This was a Republican initiative.
  We have cut the budget of Congress by $67 million. We have eliminated 
28 committees and subcommittees, and reduced our own staff by 
approximately one-third.
  We have banned most gifts to Members of Congress. There was a time, 
as you know, when the Congressmen could do anything, travel anywhere, 
and collect honorariums. That is not the case anymore.
  We have reduced the franking privileges, that is the free mail we 
get. In my office, and I know in yours, Mr. Speaker, we keep it down, 
because it is running for reelection on the taxpayers' expense.
  We have put term limits on committee chairs and top congressional 
leaders. We have done that because we think that that will put new 
blood and new energy into the committee system, instead of some old 
bull who has been sitting there for 25 years, and maybe he is 
contributing, maybe he is not. Somebody else comes along who has more 
energy and perhaps more intellect, he has only been there 6 years. Let 
him have a shot at it. That is something we think is very important.
  We have moved in terms of reducing the amount of Government. We have 
tried our best to dismantle some of the bureaucracy, not all of it, but 
some of the duplications and so forth. We have reduced the paperwork in 
the Federal agencies.
  One of the things that I have always been amazed at as I go down in 
the basement of the Rayburn Building across the hall is there are rolls 
and rolls of paper, some of them as tall as I am, and it is just paper 
we will use in our Government Printing Office for all our documents and 
so forth. I would venture to say, many of them get processed, printed, 
and thrown away, still unread.
  Just kind of skipping around a little bit, we have eliminated over 
270 unnecessary Federal programs. The number of bureaucrats was reduced 
in 29 of the 39 major government offices. Defense spending was reduced 
as a result of congressional initiatives.
  We have to be very careful on defense spending because it costs so 
much to train somebody to drive a tank or fly an airplane, and that is 
someone's son or daughter in that expensive equipment, and we want them 
to have the best equipment that is available. Also, you never know how 
many fronts there may be a problem on, the Middle East, Bosnia, Korea. 
We have to be ready in America.
  We cut spending last year by $45 billion. We reformed welfare and 
changed welfare to a program that is work-based, and we have put the 
caseworkers back home closer to the decisionmaking process, rather than 
having a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all.
  But, you know the thing that worries me the most, Mr. Speaker, is you 
are working harder and harder and getting nowhere for it. Are you 
worried that your children are not going to be able to have the 
lifestyle that you enjoy? Are you worried that your children are not 
going to be able to enjoy the American dream? Has big government, high 
taxes, and excess of regulations and

[[Page H10228]]

deficit spending, has it stolen or diminished the American dream?
  I think that it has. What this Congress has tried to do is work for 
commonsense reforms. We have tried to balance the budget in a fair way. 
We have tried to put sanity back into our tax system, with such things 
as eliminating the marriage tax penalty. We have tried to make 
government more responsive and operate like a household budget, rather 
than like some kind of Santa Claus fantasy that we can just tap into 
some instant money machine somewhere, and the money just keeps flowing 
and flowing and flowing. We have tried to do this, because balancing 
the budget is about people.
  You know, an individual today owes about $18,000 on the national 
debt. That means a couple working to pay their mortgage is having to 
pay a higher mortgage rate because the interest rates are higher 
because the budget is not balanced. That means a professional woman 
pursuing a career, leasing a car, has to pay higher payments, on buying 
that car, has to pay higher interest rates on that, or the small 
business person.
  It also means that a small baby, like my nephew, Walker Watson, will 
have to pay over $200,000 in interest over his lifetime just on the 
national debt above and beyond State, local, and Federal taxes.
  Balancing the budget is not about numbers, it is about people. It is 
not just about people, it is about a future of children in the American 
dream. I think we can change the system. I think we can restore sanity 
to Washington, Mr. Speaker. We have got to do it in a bipartisan way, 
we have got to do it in a fair way, and we have got to do it outside of 
Washington. We have got to go home, every weekend, and constantly talk 
to the American people about this process, because it is something that 
affects all of us.

                          ____________________