[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 69 (Monday, May 23, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3762-H3765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
METHAMPHETAMINE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren of California). Under
the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from
Nebraska (Mr. Terry) is recognized for 60 minutes.
General Leave
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and
include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Nebraska?
There was no objection.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, the subject of my Special Order this hour is
how meth is ravaging our communities in the United States. Yet in our
budget, in our appropriations, it is called on to eliminate what are
called Byrne grants and the HIDTA program reduced by 56 percent.
Let us talk a little bit about what meth does. I have a picture here
from the Des Moines Register of a 13-year-old Iowa girl, a very pretty
little girl. Unfortunately, she became hooked on meth. This is the
before. This is within a year later. It is kind of a grainy picture,
but you can see a stark difference. Unfortunately, even though her
mother tried rescuing her from this life-style, this little girl
committed suicide. Meth is just an incredibly difficult drug to try and
break free from.
In my home State, Duaine Bullock, the captain of narcotics unit in
Lincoln that the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry) represents,
gave a sobering assessment of the growing meth problem in Nebraska and
just said pointblank, we have got a gigantic problem. He is right on
the mark. According to Nebraska Attorney General John Bruning, 60
percent of the inmates in Nebraska jails have a problem with meth. The
number of people in Nebraska jails for possessing, selling, or
manufacturing meth has more than doubled since 1999.
When we talk about this fight against meth in our communities, the
front line of this war, of our war on meth and drugs, the fastest
growing drug in the Nation, meth has produced a wider and more
extensive array of problems than any other narcotic we have ever faced
before. It is no longer just a rural or Midwestern issue. The Byrne
grants that I mentioned casually goes directly to our front line
warriors, our local police and our sheriff. It is those folks that are
going to know where the drugs are located, which houses perhaps in a
certain community have meth labs or will see some of the
characteristics within that family unit or that home that can lead them
to the conclusion that perhaps a meth lab is in operation there.
And so it makes no sense to me, Mr. Speaker, that we have a proposal
in front of Congress to completely eliminate the Byrne/JAG grants which
are the dollars that go to local police departments to help them become
prepared and enter into task forces all the way up to the Federal
level. What we are seeing is a system of centralization of our war on
drugs away from our front line warriors to the Nation's capital. While
I certainly can maybe not respect, but at least understand, why a drug
czar, a department, would want to consolidate its own power, I think is
doing it against the best interests of this Nation.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce another gentleman from
Nebraska (Mr. Osborne). Frankly, he has been on the front lines
bringing this issue to the attention of just about anyone that will
listen over the last 3 years. It is my pleasure to introduce my friend
and colleague from the Third District of Nebraska.
Mr. OSBORNE. I certainly thank the gentleman for yielding. Obviously,
I have the worst affliction that a politician can have. I have
laryngitis. I am playing hurt tonight. This is an all-Nebraska deal, it
looks like. I really appreciate the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry)
organizing this. This is a very important issue. Probably half the
States at the present time have a serious meth problem, but the ones
that do not have it are going to have it. We think the whole country
needs to be aware.
I would just like to provide a little background here.
Methamphetamines first came into prominence during World War II. Quite
often the Japanese kamikaze pilots were given meth. It gets you in such
a euphoric state that you will take off in an airplane with not enough
gas to return and think you are still going to make it somehow.
It obviously has a powerful pull. It is the most highly addictive
drug that is known to man. In many cases, one exposure to
methamphetamine renders the victim permanently addicted. Sometimes
people take methamphetamine without even knowing what it is they are
getting into. It provides a high that will last from 6 to 8 hours. It
dumps a huge amount of dopamine which makes you feel good and, of
course, eventually the next time it takes a little bit more and a
little bit more and so on. It provides increased energy. Many working
mothers, people working two jobs, will eventually get drawn into meth,
truck drivers that want to stay out on the road for 48 to 72 hours.
Some people on meth will stay awake for a week, sometimes even 2 weeks.
It does provide some energy. It also will provide the ability to lose
weight, which is very attractive. On top of that, it is relatively
cheap. In any place where you have a problem with cocaine or with
heroin, meth will fix the problem, because it is cheaper, it is more
powerful and almost without exception when meth comes in, the other
things begin to decrease but the meth problem is so much worse that
obviously the community is much worse off.
Whatever goes up must come down. I guess that is a law of physics,
and so the accompanying emotions to meth abuse are anxiety, depression,
hallucinations. Sometimes it is psychotic behavior. Violent behavior is
often a side effect. Most meth addicts have what is known as crank
bugs. They have the feeling that there is something crawling under
their skin, and so they try to pick them out. We could have shown you
some very graphic pictures tonight of people who have tremendous
lesions on their skin. Maybe the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry)
has some of those.
Methamphetamine abuse always causes brain damage. Every time it
destroys brain cells. A young person, maybe 18, 19 years old, who has
been on meth for a year, will have a brain scan that will look almost
identical to an 80-year-old Alzheimer's patient. You cannot distinguish
the two. There are so many brain lesions, so much damage to the brain.
It is very common, obviously, in rural areas because if you are going
to manufacture methamphetamine, the odor is very distinct and so people
seek out abandoned farmsteads. Sometimes they have mobile labs where
they make it in the back of a van or something like that, but they
usually like to stay out away from people.
{time} 2200
The ingredients in methamphetamine are somewhat startling and a
little bit bizarre. Pseudophedrine is, of course, the one ingredient
that they have to have. In addition, oftentimes they use lithium
batteries, drain cleaner, starter fluid, anhydrous ammonia, and iodine.
So it is a tremendously toxic brew that is developed; and as a result,
it costs about $5,000 or $6,000 to clean up a meth lab. It is very
expensive. In some parts of the central United States, I believe Iowa
had about 1,500 meth labs year; Missouri, around 2,000. So that is
about $10 million just to clean up the meth labs alone. And, of course,
most of those funds come from the Byrne grants and the HIDTA grants
that we were talking about.
If we think about the cost of methamphetamine abuse, in our area most
of the child abuse, most of the child neglect, most of the infant
death, young people death, foster care are caused by methamphetamine
today. So it is a very difficult situation and very costly.
The gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) has already mentioned the
Federal prison cells and the jail cells. So the last comment I will
have today is simply this, that we are not saving money by cutting the
Byrne grants. We are not saving money by cutting HIDTA because the
average meth addict in Nebraska commits 60 crimes a year. So if we have
10 meth addicts in a community, that is 600 crimes.
The line of first defense is those law enforcement officers that the
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry)
[[Page H3763]]
showed. And these are the people who rely almost exclusively on the
Byrne grants and on the HIDTA grants, the HIDTA grants are high-
intensity drug traffic grants, and we have a huge amount of
methamphetamine coming up from the southwest part of the United States
and Mexico, going across Nebraska on Interstate 80. And the only way to
intercept that and the only way to handle those drugs is with HIDTA. So
we would urge Congress, other Members in this body, to support our
efforts to restore those funds.
And I would again like to thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr.
Terry) and the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry), who will
speak shortly, for their efforts in this regard. We have approached the
Speaker. We have talked to the appropriators, and we are making every
effort that we can.
I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the gentleman's time in
playing hurt. I am sure there have been times when he was coaching that
he encouraged people with sore throats to get out and take one for the
team; so I appreciate that.
The gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) raised several good points
that I will take some time on. He talked about some of the rather toxic
ingredients. In fact, where I live in Valley, Nebraska, at least for
the next day or two before we moved, the Saturday night before last
there was a meth bust just about a half mile outside of town, and it
was rather interesting in driving by and seeing the number of fire
trucks and Hazmat units that are there. And what people do not
understand, although the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) outlined
the recipe in some of the ingredients, including bleach and anhydrous
pneumonia and other ingredients, it is highly toxic but it is also
highly flammable, which is why it is incredible to me that during some
of these meth police busts they raid these homes and there are toddlers
in these homes.
So it has an impact not only on our police departments but our fire
departments who have to coordinate these drug busts where they find
these labs. And as the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) also
mentioned, we can find them just about anywhere. In fact, in a very
affluent area of west Omaha just a few months ago, they made a drug
bust of a mobile lab literally in the trunk of a car at a department
store. So there are people that will build them in any place they can.
As I introduce the gentleman from Lincoln, Nebraska, I want to
explain to anyone who is listening here tonight when we talk about the
HIDTA grant, it is an acronym for high-intensity drug trafficking area.
That is the grant that comes to local police departments to train them
in how to handle a situation. Obviously, as we talked about the very
volatile toxic explosive nature of a meth lab, since it is the local
police departments that are on the front line that will be reading that
particular house, that will be making the arrest, they want to make
should that they understand the totality of the circumstances they are
engaging in and how to protect themselves.
Also, as the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) pointed out, it is
such an intense high under meth that these folks literally do not know
or understand what they are doing, and they have a high propensity for
violence. But yet sometimes they look completely normal for that
particular instance that a policeman could be walking by. So they have
to be trained in the subtleties of what to look for to see or determine
if someone is under the influence of meth and in understanding that
even though that person may appear calm for that particular instant in
time that that person becoming violent is just inherent to the nature
of the drug. So they have to train them how to handle that violent
situation with a person under the influence.
Also, part of the HIDTA grant trains them how to work with other law
enforcement agencies. In fact, HIDTA is set up into territories where
they can literally have agencies across jurisdictions, whether it is
Douglas County and Lancaster County official working together or our
local police departments or even into Iowa, the gentleman from Iowa's
(Mr. King) district, who wanted to be with us here tonight but, like
our colleague from the third district, is suffering from the same
ailment. So it allows them to learn how to put the task forces together
and share each other's talents and resources.
With that, so he can get on with his evening, let me introduce the
gentleman from the First District of Nebraska in his first year here
but nonetheless is jumping right into the issues that are affecting the
people of Nebraska the most and the deepest. So I appreciate his
instantly getting involved in the meth issue of Nebraska.
Therefore, I yield to the gentleman from the First District of
Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry).
Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the honorable gentleman from
the second district for bringing attention to the severity of this
problem in our State and throughout many parts of America as well.
Mr. Speaker, let me tell the Members when I am at home with local law
enforcement, I ask a simple question: What is going on, sheriff? And
nearly every time the answer is the same, a single word, ``meth.'' And
methamphetamine, commonly known as meth, as we have discussed, is a
potent and highly addictive stimulant; and it is taking a terrible
human toll across rural America. In fact, my hometown sheriff, Terry
Wagner, recently recounted a story about a boy who had been addicted to
meth for 9 years, and it is this prolonged exposure to these toxic
chemicals that has caused such severe brain damage that it has given
this young man an irreversibly wasted brain of an advanced Alzheimer's
patient.
In Butler County, Sheriff Mark Heckler estimated that 90 percent of
the prisoners he sees in jail have been involved with meth either as
dealers or users or cookers.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I had read from our State
Attorney General Jon Bruning, who is doing a fantastic job in that
position, that it is 60 percent. But I did too have a local law
enforcement officer that suggested it is higher than that, at least
when we add the totality. He said, first of all, there are many of the
folks in our State prison that are there because they are involved with
meth; that they are dealing, cooking, distributing; or that they
committed a crime while high on meth or, getting up to about that 90
percent figure, they are out burglarizing, robbing, plundering to get
money to buy the drug. So many of our local officers feel that it is as
high as 90 percent, whether it is directly related to the distribution
or cooking of meth or just that they are so hooked that they are out
robbing money to get it.
Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TERRY. I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska.
Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, their ramifications are certainly
widespread. Butler County, as I just mentioned, is a serene place, a
farming community, a wonderful place to raise a family. And yet this
shocking statistic of 90 percent is very real and disturbing. The
sheriff also reported the same problem that the gentleman from Nebraska
(Mr. Osborne) mentioned, that he finds small portable labs for
production even in the back of cars. So meth is a particular threat to
our rural communities, partly because it can be cooked in this way from
small batches from readily available ingredients such as chemicals
commonly used in fertilizer and cold medicines, as has been mentioned.
Something else to mention, though, is that concocting meth is itself
a toxic activity, and it requires a combination of deadly chemicals at
high temperatures. Hazardous fumes are produced, and poisonous fires
and explosions are common, as the gentleman is aware. Toxic waste is
invariably dumped, which spoils the environment and requires dangerous
and costly clean-up, another adverse impact of this problem.
Let me tell the Members, as well, that in 2000 Nebraska law
enforcement discovered 38 labs. In 2004 they dismantled over 300, and
one search for a missing person in a wooded area actually turned up 15
meth labs in a 3-square mile area. And, of course, many go
undiscovered.
I would like to add a few comments about what can potentially be done
about the tide of meth sweeping the
[[Page H3764]]
country, and I think there are three approaches that do deserve our
attention. First, State efforts to control the spread by controlling
the access to its component chemicals, I believe, should be applauded,
and smart controls on the sale of cold medicines are also a reasonable
idea that may be considered at the Federal level. Second, and the
gentleman has mentioned this additionally, the antidrug task force has
maximized the effectiveness of law enforcement, particularly with
overlapping jurisdictions. And I believe lawmakers, as he does, in
Washington must listen to those who are on the front lines in the
battle against meth and give them the tools they need to protect our
communities this week, this month, this year.
Third, we must also recognize the national scope of the meth problem.
It is estimated that 85 percent of the meth in Nebraska comes from
large out-of-state labs in Arizona, California, and Mexico. These
superlabs do not get their chemicals from the local drug store, but
depend on multi-state and multi-national suppliers. This is why we also
need a focused and multi-national, a coordinated national, strategy to
stamp out meth. And I believe it is the job of the Federal Government
to keep meth and its chemical precursors from crossing State borders.
Existing regulations on the sale of meth chemicals should be enforced;
and the development, again, of alternative compounds in cold medicines
could also be determined and encouraged.
Mr. Speaker, finally, let me add that meth is clearly addictive and
deadly; and I urge all to avoid it. There is no future in meth.
And again I want to thank the gentleman from the Second District of
Nebraska for his willingness to spend this evening discussing this very
difficult issue for our State, but a difficult issue as well for many
other areas that are facing this widespread problem.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for
his efforts in this.
I too have a police and sheriff task force like he has put together;
and it is amazing, just 2 years ago when we met, asking what the most
significant issue was facing them on a daily basis or what some of the
trends are. They said, well, definitely meth. But we are not
necessarily seeing it in the inner city of Omaha, the gangs there that
are still running the traditional drugs of cocaine, crack, and
marijuana.
{time} 2215
Mostly what we are seeing is they were telling me 2 years ago is that
the meth is more of a rural issue, but it is starting to come in
through the suburbs and they are seeing a great deal of the problems as
we had just mentioned, the crime that is associated with the addiction,
whether it is crimes committed while high or crimes committed to get
high.
When I met with them probably about 9 or 10 months ago again I asked
the same question. They said the drugs the gangs are running are almost
exclusively meth now. They are coming from two different directions. We
still have the rural issue, where some of the ingredients are so
readily available and you can go to your corner drugstore and get the
pseudoephedrine out of Sudafed and other materials to make it, but the
gentleman mentioned that that is incredibly important in our fight
here.
Meth has become basically a war on two fronts. You have got the labs
that are being operated by individuals, because they are so easy to put
together, the ingredients are very accessible, although in Nebraska our
State legislature, fortunately, is dealing with it, and probably by the
end of this week we will have Sudafed behind the counter. It is too bad
we have to do that to our local retailers. But that is one border.
Traditionally what we have tried to fight is the pop-up labs,
particularly in rural areas, or mobile labs. But now you have the super
labs in Mexico that are running the drugs up, and it is the same
pattern we have seen with cocaine others. It comes from Central America
into L.A. and Phoenix and the other gang headquarters and through their
distribution schemes throughout the rest of the United States. That is
where we are seeing it come into Nebraska now, and that is why it is
becoming an inner-city drug as well. Now it has just infiltrated every
part of our community in the last few years.
The gentleman mentioned something else, the brain damage that is
caused from this. You begin that deterioration of the brain cells, as
the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) mentioned, with the dopamine,
the rush that gets you. It is such an intense rush of that chemical
that it literally fries the synapses and cannot be restored. You are
literally frying your brain. Those cannot be absorbed.
The first area that goes is your ability to make decisions. That is
the first part of the brain that is affected by meth. That is why we
see an incredible tolerance to the drug. You start craving it and
craving it. The Catholic Charities in Nebraska, when I toured them
about 3 years ago, it was all alcohol and some cocaine. Now it is
almost exclusively, 90 to 95 percent, meth cases that come in there
now. They told me when I toured a few months ago they cannot cure them.
Even those that have only smoked or ingested or injected or however
they used it a few times, it has done enough damage to the decision-
making part of your brain that you cannot reason; you cannot say this
is bad for me, so I am going to quit. You just lost that ability. So
you have a drug that forces you, I should not say forces you, but you
have lost that ability to say ``no'' to it anymore.
This is what happens. This poor little girl was 13-years-old. The
gentleman has a daughter that is only a couple years younger than her
and I have a son a couple years younger. I think of the gentleman's
daughter and my son as just little kids, but yet they are being exposed
to this.
Mr. Speaker, getting back to cutting the Byrne grants and HIDTA, this
statistic shows how our local law enforcement officers working in task
forces with the Federal agencies have been able every year from 1999 to
2003 to steadily discover and demolish a vast number of meth labs. But,
as you see here, even though this is not full reporting, it is going to
be pretty close, in 2004 a slight drop.
I think the slight drop can be accounted for in two ways: Number one,
I would say that the Byrne funding was working and helping our local
law enforcement find those labs, but also then as I mentioned with the
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry), we are seeing now this has
become in drug trade like cocaine, where it is imported through Mexico
into the major cities and then distributed through the gang
distribution system.
Now, let me get to a couple of final points here. In the White
House's fiscal 2006 budget that was delivered this year, it requested
to eliminate the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants Program, which
provided $634 million to law enforcement agencies nationwide, including
almost $2.2 million for Nebraska.
The Nebraska State Patrol estimates that nine of eleven State
antidrug task forces that were created with this Byrne grant funding
would have to be dismantled. The White House's budget also recommends
reducing the HIDTA program by 56 percent. Again, those are the multi-
State and local drug trafficking meth training programs. For Nebraska,
ours is located in the Kansas City region.
The Byrne and the HIDTA programs are the primary tools through which
the Federal Government integrates State and local law enforcement into
the national drug control strategy. Tom Constantine, a former head of
the Drug Enforcement Agency, recently testified to Congress that he
could not recall a single case during his tenure that did not begin as
a referral from State and local law enforcement, including many through
Byrne and HIDTA task forces. So when we talk about the centralization,
pulling the power from the local enforcement agencies to the Federal
Government, you are talking about really emasculating our drug
enforcement policy. Tom Constantine said every one of their referrals
started at the local level.
There is a clear link between drugs and violence that I think we have
covered fully here tonight, and these Byrne grants are providing cities
and counties with the resources that are necessary to share the
information and dismantle regional drug distribution rings. And before
Byrne and HIDTA, by the way, when our local police members were out on
their own, they did
[[Page H3765]]
not have the power to work with the Federal agencies and task forces to
take the meth and trace it back to their origination and be able to
dismantle these incredible drug rings.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude this tonight with a couple of
somewhat lengthy, but I will read fast, the works of some of our local
police officers.
I will start with Police Chief Melvin Griggs in Gering, Nebraska. He
said: ``I am the police chief of a city of 8,000 people. We are
bordered by a town of 13,000. In 1989, the increase in the cocaine drug
traffic prompted us to start a drug task force. The wealth of the
people dealing allowed them to purchase property, semi-trucks and
farms. They were becoming very powerful. They were also starting to
challenge each other for control of the drug trade.
``One family we put away caused a drop of all criminal activity by 33
percent. Within a year, people were already starting to fill the void.
But before they could reach the power base, we were always able to stop
them because of the task force.
``Meth replaced cocaine. I have lived in this area for 60 years. We
did not have murders, and now we have several every year. Our drug task
force also helps investigate violent crime. We have seven agents highly
trained. They have been able to solve most of these crimes. If we had
ever been able to increase the task force, they may have been able to
stop some of them. Yet the task force has remained the same.
``It has taken years to develop this team, to develop the cooperation
and expertise. Taking away the funding to keep it going will defeat the
progress in a matter of months. The dealers will again gain strength,
and by the time our leaders realize the mistake they have made by
taking these funds, many communities will have developed catastrophic
results. Then the leaders will return the funds. It will take years to
develop the level of response we now have, and we may never get it, as
the problem may have well become beyond our reach.
``I have talked to other police chiefs, and we are not the only
community facing this problem. Maybe we have not been vocal enough. We
have seen this every day, it is in all of our newspapers, it is on CNN.
It is hard for us to believe that anyone cannot understand this
problem. It is hard for us to believe that they really plan on a
significant reduction in funding. It is hard for us to believe that
whoever wrote this article on task forces being ineffective has any
idea what a task force does. I hope reason prevails. Reducing this
funding is a serious mistake.''
Another Nebraska police chief, Stephen Sunday of David City, heads up
a 12 county, 28 agency multi-jurisdictional drug task force funded with
Byrne dollars. He told me, again it is a rather lengthy quote, ``Those
grant dollars are the only, and I mean only way the task force was able
to form as a group. In South-Central Nebraska there are nothing but
small, rural law enforcement agencies that cannot afford to deal with
drug investigations to the degree that we are able to do with Federal
grant funding.
``Our primary goal is to investigate the individuals who are dealing
drugs in our communities. The drug of choice is meth, and I am here to
tell you that meth is a killer, a killer of families, of lives and of
health. Health costs for dealing with meth users is terrific. Families
cannot afford it.
``The drug task forces are the only effective means of going after
the drug dealers. On our own, we cannot handle it. The first problem is
that most of the drug dealers in rural Nebraska know all of the law
enforcement officers by name and know that we are spread thin. Working
with undercover investigators, our task force is able to get next to
the drug dealers, but it takes money to have your own separate,
dedicated drug investigators.
``By banding together with the Federal Government through Federal
dollar grants we can fight the drug dealers. The task forces share
intelligence information, which did not happen prior to the creation of
Nebraska's drug task forces.
``The intelligence information is so important to us that if the drug
task forces are shut down due to lack of Federal funding, then we will
be in serious trouble. If the drug dealers find out that the government
is cutting off grant funding and as a result the task forces fold up
and go away, they will be holding a big party to rejoice at this news.
If Federal funding is taken away, the drug task forces in the State of
Nebraska will fold up shop and disappear.
``We cannot fund the task forces by ourself. If Congress wants to
hear an angry outcry from rural America, take away our task force
funding. See what happens. Our Federal elected officials will be eaten
alive by the voters. If Congress wants to be progressive and deal with
illegal drugs, give us back our funding.
``The Federal Government needs to take care of issues at home more
than anywhere else. Public safety needs need to be a high priority. If
the drug task force is shut down from a lack of Federal funding, the
illegal drug problem in rural America will get out of control and you
will pay dearly in ruined lives. Don't take away Federal funding that
was coming from the Byrne grant dollars.''
As the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) mentioned in his talk a
few days ago myself, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), the
gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the gentleman from Indiana
(Mr. Souder) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble) met with
the Speaker to express our frustration with any proposed cuts to Byrne
grants and HIDTA funding. The Speaker was completely knowledgeable and
empathetic with this and promised to help us work with it. So I really
appreciate that the leadership in the House of Representatives shares
the concern that the speakers did tonight during this special order, as
well as the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Souder), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble) and
the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), who could not be here tonight.
____________________