Congressional Record, Volume 151 Issue 77 (Monday, June 13, 2005)

[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 77 (Monday, June 13, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4384-H4391]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

BYRNE-JUSTICE ASSISTANCE GRANT AMENDMENT

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Reichert). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in favor of the Byrne-Justice
Assistance Grant, JAG, amendment that we will debate and discuss in
tomorrow's appropriation, Justice appropriations tomorrow.
This is a grant that our local police and sheriffs have relied on to
form task forces, multijurisdictional task forces to fight our drug
problems in our communities, particularly meth. At least in Nebraska,
the State that I have the responsibility and honor to represent, meth
is by far the number one drug of choice. It started mostly as a rural
drug where the ingredients were fairly easy to get, anhydrous ammonia,
pseudoephedrine from your local grocery store or pharmacies. The
Sudafed that they can break down, the components, and using a variety
of other

[[Page H4385]]

chemicals, even ammonia, they would be able to manufacture in small
labs using basic chemistry sets to make this drug.
This drug has spread throughout the rural communities across our
Nation, devastating these communities, devastating families. The drug
is highly addictive. Part of the symptoms of the drug while you are
high on this drug is the tendency to be violent, staying up for long
periods of time, and in fact, because of the toxicity of this, it even
breaks down your skin. It breaks down your gums and your teeth and your
hair. You can have open sores. As I mentioned a minute ago, the
consequences of this highly addictive drug run deep in our social and
family infrastructure.
I am pleased that we have so many Members on both sides of the aisle
that are coming forward to help our local police and sheriffs with
their part being on the front lines in the drug war.
I have the honor now of recognizing the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Stupak) who represents the Law Enforcement Caucus and is a great
supporter of our local law enforcement, and I yield to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Stupak).
Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr.
Terry) for yielding and thank the gentleman for his leadership on this
issue.
We have had this issue a couple of times come before the Congress,
and each time we have been pretty successful in trying to defeat the
changes and the cuts in the appropriations to the Byrne grants because,
as all my colleagues know, the Byrne-Justice Assistance Grants are of
great importance to all of our States, to our local, our city police,
especially in the fight against drugs because of the drug task force
that they do fund.
Our law enforcement officers who are in our communities who serve and
protect us every day have asked repeatedly that we not cut this one
vital program, which gives them discretion at the State level on where
to put these justice grants, these Byrne grants, if you will, and how
to use them in their States.
Unfortunately, this program is grossly underfunded in the bill that
we will have up this week, and it is going to cut funding from $634
million that was provided last year to $348 million for this fiscal
year. That is about a 40, 45 percent cut.
So, tomorrow, I look forward to joining with my colleague, the
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) and the gentleman from Minnesota
(Mr. Ramstead), my other co-chair of the Law Enforcement Caucus, and
others to offer this important amendment.
Our amendment will ensure that our local law enforcement has the
resources it needs to control and eliminate drug threats, keep our
court systems up and running smoothly and provide funding for anti-
terrorism training. As a former city police officer and a Michigan
State police trooper, as well as the co-chair of the Law Enforcement
Caucus, I understand how much our local communities need and rely upon
the Byrne grants. In fact, we had hearings in the Law Enforcement
Caucus earlier this year about what these Byrne grant cuts would mean
to law enforcement, and law enforcement from Maryland, Illinois and all
over the country came and testified the devastating effect it would
have.
So what our amendment would do to tomorrow is restore the $286
million that is being cut out of the Byrne grants by making a .448
percent cut, that is less than a half a percent, from every agency in
this bill to fully fund Byrne grants. Why should every agency take a
hit? Because this is how important the Byrne grants are to law
enforcement and our continuing fight against drugs in this country.
So I am hopeful that the entire House of Representatives will take to
heart the importance of the funding of the Byrne grant program and vote
for this amendment.
Most of us are well aware that the funding this grant provides is
instrumental to our law enforcement teams, but this Byrne grant does so
much more that is often overlooked.
In fact, the Byrne grants actually provide funding for 29 different
programs, vital programs such as anti-drug education programs,
treatment programs, alternative sentencing initiatives, giving the
States the ability to choose the programs where funding would be most
useful to them back at home.
The Byrne grants also fund programs important to our court and prison
systems. It provides funding to improve the operational effectiveness
of the court process by expanding judicial resources and implementing
court-delay reduction programs such as automated fingerprint
identification systems.

{time} 2100

The Byrne grants provide long-range corrections and sentencing
strategies and fund programs that teach inmates to acquire marketable
skills and to make restitution payments to their victims.
Byrne grants can also be used to implement antiterrorism training
programs, enforce child abuse and neglect laws, improve the criminal
justice system's response to domestic and family violence, and,
finally, the grants can also be used to establish cooperative programs
between law enforcement and the media, such as the AMBER alert system,
which we use when there is an abduction or a missing child or young
adult. We flash it across the highways, the byways, the TVs, and
radios. That is all funded by the Byrne grants. So why would we put a
40, 45 percent cut in that system that we seem to be relying upon,
unfortunately, more and more each day?
As most of us have been hearing from our local drug enforcement teams
back home, and the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) certainly
articulated those needs, we have to provide the funding so our drug
enforcement officers can do their jobs. We can do this only by fully
funding the Byrne grants. We have a list we are putting out, and the
gentleman from Nebraska has worked on this, and all of us who are
supporting this amendment tomorrow. If you look at California, our
largest State, it has 58 drug enforcement teams, task forces. If these
cuts go through, they will be down to 32. They will lose 26 drug task
forces; Georgia, 16; Louisiana, 17; New York will lose 34 of their 76
teams; Ohio will lose 14 of their 32; Texas will lose 21 of the 46 drug
enforcement teams; and Wisconsin, my neighboring State, will lose 15 of
their 34. Basically, of the 828 drug enforcements teams we have across
this Nation, we will lose 373, or 45 percent of them.
So really, if we are to keep our communities safe and drug free, we
really have to fund this. Local drug enforcement teams are crucial to
keeping our communities drug free. If the Byrne grants are funded at
the level currently in the bill, as I said, our teams would not be able
to hire the officers they need to sustain drug enforcement teams. In my
home State of Michigan, we would lose 11 out of our 25 drug enforcement
teams. Losing the task forces would have a devastating and far-reaching
effect on Michigan, especially in rural communities like I represent.
Let me be clear. When it comes to drug abuse, no community, urban or
rural, in this country is immune from the problem. The methamphetamine
problem alone, as the gentleman from Nebraska just spoke of, is
destroying families and taking lives in rural America.
To highlight how important these drug enforcement teams are, there
was a recent article in one of my little local newspapers in the First
Congressional District of Michigan which cites that back 2 months ago,
on April 13, HUNT, the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team, HUNT as we call
them, seized 3,000 OxyContin tablets from one home in rural Presque
County. This critical seizure is just one example of the work our
narcotics teams do each and every day to keep our communities safe.
These local agencies, like HUNT, who do so much for our local
communities, will take the brunt of the Byrne grant cuts. It is a scary
thought, considering that 90 percent of the drug arrests nationwide are
made by States and local law enforcement. Ninety percent of all drug
arrests are made by local and State. And where do they get the bulk of
their money? The Byrne grants.
Our country's drug problems are not going away. In fact, with the
emergence of prescription drug use, methamphetamines, and OxyContin,
some would argue our problem is only getting worse. So my question is
why

[[Page H4386]]

would we, as a Congress, cut the funding that enables teams like the
HUNT undercover narcotics team to exist and combat this problem that is
only becoming more severe?
I know we have other Members who wish to speak, but I am hopeful as
Members take to the floor tonight, they will keep in mind and urge
their colleagues to support the Terry-Stupak-Ramstad amendment tomorrow
to restore the funding to this critical program. Again, we talk about
drugs tonight, but there are 29 different programs. It is one of those
few programs where we say to the States, here is some money, we want
you to do it for law enforcement, and do what is best for your State.
We do not mandate it, but here is a pot of money you can take it from,
and we hope you do what is best in your State. After all, you know what
is best.
The State and Antidrug Task Forces are just one example that we all
deal with day in and day out, and I would hope people would support our
amendment by cutting less than \1/2\ of 1 percent from the other
agencies in this bill to fully fund the Byrne grants.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman and thank him once again
for his leadership on this issue, and I look forward to arguing this
amendment with him tomorrow on the floor.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's assistance and
help on this.
The gentleman from Michigan did make one point that I want to
highlight before I call on my next speaker, and that is the cuts in
funding.
Remember, about 2 years after I got here, we were funding our
criminal justice grants to our local police and sheriffs at about
slightly over $1 billion. In 2005, we condensed several of those grant
programs, like local law enforcement block grants, Byrne and JAG, into
one, and lowered that to 600-, and it was zeroed out. And chairman of
the subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), did a good
job of doing what he could to get 300- of that 600- put back. But as
the statistics that the gentleman from Michigan just read off, that
means even at the current level of funding that will come to the floor
tomorrow, of about $300 billion, a 60 percent reduction, a 70 percent
reduction from just 4 years ago, at the time that meth problems are
increasing in our communities, I cannot fathom the impact it is going
to have to eliminate these drug task forces.
The gentleman also mentioned that local police officers make over 90
percent of the drug arrests. And it just astounds me that we are, in
this war against drugs and meth, taking our front-line people off the
front line. It would be like fighting the war on terrorism by just
funding the Pentagon and not funding the Army and the Marines and the
Air Force and properly equipping them. So I do appreciate those
comments.
It is now my honor to call to the microphone my colleague, the
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), who has been a continuous
fighter in his terms here. He has raised the meth issue and been
consistent in bringing the message to all of us here of how to fight
and why we should fight methamphetamine.
Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, before the gentleman yields to our
colleague, may I comment on one point that he brought up, if I may?
Mr. TERRY. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I yield once again to the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Stupak).
Mr. STUPAK. If my colleague would be so kind, and I appreciate our
colleague, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), being down here
to work with us on this issue.
These local teams understand they are not just getting Federal money,
and the Federal Government is funding the whole thing. Whether it is
Presque County or the little city of Escanaba, where I was a police
officer, or whether it is the big city of Detroit, the local units of
government must put in money. It is a matching grant program. They have
to put in resources. So it is a unified effort between local, county,
and State police working together, and the seed money is really the
Federal Government. Without the seed money, there is no incentive or
urging of the county board of commissioners to fund an officer to work
on the undercover task force team, because there will not be any.
So it is always a fight every year to keep these teams together and
keep them properly funded and staffed with personnel. And if we lose
the Federal funding, a 45 percent reduction, the problems that I am
sure the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) and I have spoken about
will only get 45 percent worse within the year. So I appreciate the
gentleman's leadership and the Members now with us.
Mr. TERRY. And just to take that thought and put it in context for
someone like our colleague, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne),
who represents 68\1/2\ counties, this funds the multijurisdictional
aspects that the local jurisdictions would not be able to fund because
of their rules on funding. So this allows intra-agency and counties in
the district of the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) to actually
work together.
So with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Nebraska.
Mr. OSBORNE. I thank the gentleman, and particularly thank him for
organizing this Special Order and for his leadership on this issue. And
it is great to see my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Michigan
(Mr. Stupak), and any others who will speak tonight.
Just a little background. Methamphetamine first came into prominence
during World War II, and was used probably most prominently by kamikaze
pilots. If you want to put a guy in a plane and give him enough fuel to
hit a target, but not enough to get back, you had to maybe alter his
thinking a little bit. And that is really where methamphetamine was
first used and made prominent. At the present time it is rather easy to
make and relatively cheap.
The good news is that in many areas we see cocaine and we see heroin
decreasing. The bad news is the reason for this is that methamphetamine
is so much more powerful and so much more addictive, it simply runs
those other drugs out of business. So we are really alarmed by what is
happening.
We find methamphetamine is available almost everywhere in our
country. In 1990, California had 20 meth labs, Texas had 20, and the
rest of the country was relatively unscathed from the meth problem. We
will see the progression very rapidly here. In 1998, you can see that
about two-thirds of the country had at least 20 meth labs in each one
of these red States. It was still relatively uncommon on the east coast
and parts of the Great Plains, the northern plains, were not affected.
Now we will look at what has happened more recently, and we see that
in 2004, just a corner of the Northeast was pretty much left unscathed.
And some of these States, for instance, Missouri, had 2,700 meth labs
last year; Iowa, 1,300; Tennessee, 1,300; Oklahoma, 500; Arkansas, 800.
Most of these States had 300, 400, 500, or 600 labs. And the important
thing to remember is that a high percentage of these labs are not
detected. So when we are detecting 400 or 500, that means there are
probably three or four or five times that many out there, and these are
simply indicators of the use of methamphetamine and how quickly this
has spread.
Methamphetamine creates a euphoric state that lasts from 6 to 8
hours. It dumps a huge amount of dopamine, the chemical in the brain
that enables us to feel pleasure, and may create as much as 1,000 times
the amount of dopamine released into the system as a normal pleasurable
experience; like making a free throw or asking somebody out for a date
and being accepted, or whatever it may be.
The reason that people get hooked on this stuff is that many times
you are addicted on the first occasion. And there are quite a few
people who accidentally run into this thing. Maybe they are drinking;
maybe somebody gives them something they are not even aware of what it
is, and they are hooked. And it takes only, in many cases, one time.
People who are ofttimes addicted are young mothers who are
overwhelmed by the chores of taking care of their kids, maybe working
two jobs. Sometimes college students are staying up late at night to
study; truck drivers. And quite often alcohol is the gateway drug. When
somebody is inebriated, sometimes they will take almost anything
somebody gives them, and, as a result, they are hooked.
However, what goes up must come down, and the fruits of the continued

[[Page H4387]]

use of methamphetamine are anxiety, depression, hallucinations, and, in
many cases, it actually results in psychosis. One person who is an
expert in this area said it hard-wires the brain to become a paranoid
schizophrenic. And if anyone knows much about mental illness, they
realize paranoid schizophrenia is probably the most difficult mental
illness to kill.
Ofttimes people experience crank bugs. They assume that there is some
type of a bug under their skin, so they begin to pick their skin,
trying to get the bugs out. So usually people on meth have huge skin
lesions and ofttimes do not look very attractive, and, of course,
ultimately the final end is death itself.
So why is it important to address this at this point? It is so
powerful, it is so addictive, and it always damages the brain. For
instance, if you take a brain scan of someone who has been on
methamphetamine for 1 year, let us say an 18- or 19-year-old young
person has been on meth for 1 year, you will find the brain scan will
look almost identical to an 80-year-old Alzheimer's patient. There are
that many brain lesions that have been created. Unfortunately, in most
cases, those lesions have resulted in irreparable harm. There is
nothing you can do to reverse it.
It is cheap and readily available almost everywhere, and this is the
result of methamphetamine use. This is a young lady who was first
arrested for using meth at about age 30, and then she was arrested each
year for the next 10 years. You see the progression of what has
happened to her. It was along about in here that the police assumed
that she may have began to inject the drug, and from that point she
went downhill very, very fast. Usually, the teeth are gone after a
period of time. This was the final picture that was taken. It was taken
in the morgue. And so she lasted roughly 10 years on this drug, and
that is a little unusual. A lot of people who get into it use it
heavily and do not last that long. So it is a devastating picture.
Just a few other things I would like to say before I turn it back
over to my colleague. Actually, these meth labs are tremendously toxic.
It costs about $5,000 to clean up one meth lab. As we said, many of
these States have 1,000, 2,000, almost 3,000 meth labs a year to clean
up.

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One-third of the homes with meth labs in Nebraska were also homes
where there were children. So almost all of these children suffer some
type of harm from exposure to these chemicals. Much of the child abuse
in Nebraska, I would say at least one-half of the child fatalities due
to homicide are related to meth addiction. And we had roughly 3,000
young people, kids, in our country this last year who were harmed
because they were in a situation where methamphetamine was being
manufactured.
Roughly 40 percent of our Federal prison cells are occupied by those
people who have been involved in the meth industry. In the State of
Nebraska, each meth addict will commit 60 crimes a year to support that
habit. So if a small community has 10 meth addicts, that is 600 crimes.
So a lot of these communities where at one time left your keys in your
car, left your doors unlocked, the whole atmosphere, the whole culture,
has had to change.
I ran into a couple of farmers who called the hotline and said they
were perplexed. They were having a hard time making it in farming, and
somebody dropped by their farm and said if you stay away from your farm
this year, do not show up much, you are going to make more money, we
will pay you more money than you can ever make farming. They were going
to use the barn or a couple of sheds to make methamphetamine. That is
how insidious this whole thing is out in the countryside.
We have talked a lot about meth labs, and meth labs may comprise 25
to 30 percent of the total meth used in the United States. Most of it
comes from super labs. At one time some came down out of Canada. This
has been fairly well shut off, and now most comes from the southwest,
most out of Mexico. It is critical that we get a handle on these
superlabs, and particularly the pseudoephedrine used to make meth.
There are only 7 or 8 countries where pseudoephedrine is made.
In Mexico, there is way more pseudoephedrine coming into that country
than they will ever use in cold medicines. Somehow if we can get a
handle on where that is going, I think we can begin to get a handle on
the superlabs.
Lastly on the Byrne funding, the local law enforcement officers are
the first line of defense. They break up the meth labs, but they also
pick up the methamphetamine that is coming across Interstate 70,
Interstate 80, and I-29. These are the people that have to intercept
and interdict methamphetamine or it is not going to be done.
A lot of rural counties in Nebraska, 70 to 80 percent of law
enforcement dollars are eaten up by the meth issue. It has become
overwhelming. If we do, as is suggested in our upcoming appropriations
bill, if we reduce this spending by one-half, and it was already cut in
half, so we are down to roughly $300 million instead of $1 billion, we
are simply going to be awash in methamphetamine.
I hate to oppose the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Wolf) on this
issue because he has done a remarkable job of working with limited
resources. He has been a great friend of law enforcement, but his hands
have been tied. Maybe at this point the gentleman's amendment is the
only resource that we have, which is to take one-half of one percent of
that funding and at least get back to where we were last year, and we
are still only half of where we were 2 or 3 years ago.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his amendment and thank the
gentleman for hosting this Special Order tonight, and hope we are
successful tomorrow.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr.
Osborne). The gentleman did a great job of laying it out. The Justice
Department provided statistics, and last year we saw a decrease in the
numbers of labs. There is one way of looking at that, that these Byrne
grants have done their job by helping local law enforcement.
The reality is that while it is our local law enforcement that is
finding these labs and breaking them up, and there is one that just
moved away from my house, and a month or so before that they found one
in the trunk of a car at super department store in a very affluent
neighborhood in west Omaha, so these can be anywhere.
But what my local police officers are telling me is while the labs
are a major part of the supply or a significant part of the supply, it
is actually more now from the gang drug network coming in from the
superlabs in Mexico that the gentleman spoke about. So as we are
fighting the good fight and shutting down the labs, the drug dealers
have found a new way to create supply in a different country across the
border. They are using the already existing cocaine distribution
system, and are using our kids to do that, which I think is one of the
most horrible things that has happened in our society.
Mr. Speaker, with that I yield to the gentleman from western Iowa
(Mr. King), also a member of the meth caucus, and has been one of the
loyalists in our fight to protect our families from this horrible drug.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska
(Mr. Terry) for organizing this Special Order tonight. I also thank the
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) for his work on methamphetamines
and drug interdiction, and for his work in this battle for our children
and save and preserve the human resources that are our young people in
this country.
Something that I think brings methamphetamine to the Midwest ahead of
many places in the country is because we have a strong work ethnic. We
have people who want to put a lot of their energy and their time into
working, and they do not feel so guilty about using some drugs to get
behind the steering wheel of a truck or do some other things. We have
cleaned up a lot of that with the commercial drivers' licenses and the
drug testing that is part of it. It is far safer on the road than it
used to be. But the culture remains.
As the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) said, we also have access
to the materials, especially anhydrous ammonia in the corn belt. That
access to the materials to make drugs and that kind of culture that
encourages people to use it has caused us to be more sensitive.

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I watched it come into Iowa 10 years ago. I have spent my life in the
construction business running bulldozers and scrapers and excavators
and loaders and trucks, and out in the sun, heat, cold and rain. We
have some element that comes into that industry that does use drugs. I
have hired a lot of people over the last 28 years that I spent in
business. We were not without a problem or two in our crew. We were not
without a confrontation of me inviting that employee into my office,
closing the door, setting my chair in front of the door and taking a
stand that no one will leave this room until we come to an agreement
that there is going to be some rehab, some therapy, there is going to
be some treatment, and you are coming out the other side of this thing
a productive human being again.

I have invested in this from a human standpoint, from a financial
standpoint, and from a policy and legislative standpoint. In fact, the
one single bill that I worked the hardest on in my entire legislative
career was 2 years in the Iowa Senate to pass a good workplace drug
testing law that we have in Iowa today. It took 2 years to get there,
and it took nearly 12 months out of every year of relentless pounding
to get that last vote, and we passed it by one vote. It has been in law
since St. Patrick's Day of 1998. It allows private sector employers in
Iowa to guarantee a drug-free workplace.
We are invested in this Iowa. We are invested in this in an intensive
way. We understand the loss of human resources. In fact, if I had a
magic wand, if God granted me the power to do a single thing today, and
his message was to pick one thing, cure either cancer or eliminate
illegal drugs, particularly methamphethamines, in a heartbeat I would
say Lord, get rid of the illegal drugs. We will find a cure for cancer
eventually. We are coming along cure by cure; but drugs steal human
potential. They go into a person's life when they are young and full of
potential, and they change the course and direction of that life,
sometimes to the morgue, as the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne)
pointed out. That lady was from Iowa, by the way. And sometimes it
ruins their potential. Their children suffer.
I believe that we need to do a lot of things to bring this drug
scourge under control. One of them is to step up and do the funding
necessary to support our law enforcement in their interdiction efforts.
I brought along this chart, this chart is similar to the chart that
the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) pointed out. It fits the same
numbers. It is a little different way of presenting it, but it works
out like this. The Byrne and the local law enforcement block grants fit
in these categories in these previous years. And then we got to 2006,
rolled them all together under the JAG grant, the Justice Assistance
Grants, cut the funding and rolled them into one grant.
Our President, a man whom I admire, made a proposal that we go to
zero on this. I agree with the gentlemen that the gentleman from
Virginia (Chairman Wolf) has done good work to get us where we are
today. Going from the President's recommendation of zero on up to $348
million is no small thing. But we have a big, big problem all across
this country, and we need to address it with the resources. So this
increase in funding is necessary. It is unusual for an individual like
me to come down and say we need to increase spending, but if it is
invested in anything that provides return on that investment, it is
going to be in fighting and interdicting drugs.
The effect on Iowa would be, as near as we can calculate, this: There
would be 14 fewer multi-jurisdictional drug enforcement task forces.
There would be only 11 left of 25. So there would be 41 fewer counties
that had operations in them, 31 where there are 72 counties today. Out
of 99 in Iowa, 72 have functioning operations. That would cut that 72
down to 31. We would have 57 fewer drug task force officers. That would
be officers, prosecutors, treatment providers and other jurisdictional
personnel.
So we would 36 out of 93. And the volume of illegal drugs confiscated
in Iowa would be reduced by 1.4 tons due to fewer task force operators
and officers, and the law enforcement agencies responses to protect the
public from toxic meth labs would be delayed by 709 cases. All in all,
1,919, a calculated estimated number, fewer individuals would be
brought forward for assistance for substance abuse treatment and
adjudication for their crimes.
We know associated with illegal drugs are a whole series of crimes.
These crimes include larceny, armed robbery, burglary, assault, raped,
domestic abuse, child abuse and homicide. There will be fewer Iowans,
fewer Americans alive a year, 2 years from now if we do not get this
funding back up to where we can provide the proper resources for our
law enforcement personnel.
In fact, I want to say a few words about the Regional Training Center
in Sioux City, Iowa, which has done a magnificent job of training law
enforcement officers. They were first put into place with the
assistance of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham) from the fourth
district, the north central part of Iowa. They have reached out and
done some exceptional things. I bring this sheet along to point out far
the Regional Training Center has reached. They have trained 19,308 law
enforcement officers from 38 different States and several foreign
countries. If you step into that Regional Training Center, there are
arm patches from police departments from all over the country and
foreign countries.
They bring the officers in, teach them the technology, the infrared
technology, the sensor technology, the means to apply their law
enforcement. They put them through the gymnasium. They are working out
in 90 and 95 degrees, working up a sweat, working out the physical part
of their job that sometimes is necessary to arrest and bring the drug
users to justice.
Also, they have implemented a new course there, a new course in the
Regional Training Center that has for years trained law enforcement
officers, over 19,000 of them. They have graduated 10 of the canine
corps. I met all 10 of the canine corps one day. They were all lined up
at attention. The dogs sit at attention, and they speak a foreign
language.

{time} 2130

They do that so they listen to their officers. Their officers speak a
foreign language to them, and they respond to that so no one else can
control the dogs. These dogs all graduated with good records and fine
grades as far as I could tell and by the reports that they gave me.
By the way, the return on drug dogs is the best return on an
investment dollar that I have seen in law enforcement with regard to
dealing with drugs. The dogs are there all the time. They are
essentially available 24 hours a day. It takes an officer to handle
them, an officer to be trained with them. They are not cheap in their
purchase and in their training, but once they go out into the field,
they bring another element to them. They can sniff out drugs, they can
sniff out bombs, they can control violent intruders, and they are
trained to do all of that.
Additionally, there is just the intimidation effect. There is the
effect of when there is a dog there that is sniffing everything you
have, you are not likely to bring drugs through there, and he will find
them.
I am looking forward to the next class to graduate. I understand that
the next class is a class of 20. That will be the size of the canine
corps so we can keep filling up the Midwest and the rest of the
country, if all goes well, training drug dogs continually along with
training officers. We will soon be over 20,000 officers. But that
budget was cut last year from a $2 million previous appropriation and a
$2.5 million cut, was cut down to $250,000. Some thought the decimal
point just inadvertently fell in the wrong place in middle of the night
with a bleary-eyed staffer, but there are not a lot of coincidences.
They need their appropriation. I will be speaking with the chairman
about that.
I want to thank also the chairman for including that line item for
the regional training center at least in the budget, although there are
no earmarks for this budget, and each, according to the way it is
proposed, will have to compete for those grants. I am hopeful that the
Regional Training Center in Sioux City will be able to do that. They
certainly have served 38 countries. It qualifies them as a national
center. In fact, the name has

[[Page H4389]]

just recently been changed to the National Training Center.
Again, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for bringing this subject
before us. I look across at the speakers that have spoken so far and
those to speak yet tonight. You can tell that this is a nationwide
effort that we have. We care about our young people, our human
potential. We want to give the tools to the people that have their
lives on the line protecting us.
Mr. TERRY. I appreciate the gentleman's efforts on this cause. It is
a great training center, by the way. He mentioned the patches. I happen
to know that at least several, if not every one, of the departments
that I have the pleasure of representing from the Second Congressional
District have patches up there.
Mr. KING of Iowa. We will see if we can get those dogs to shake hands
with you.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce the gentleman
from Indiana (Mr. Souder), who also is the head of the Speaker's Drug
Task Force and probably the most impressive person in this body on his
granular knowledge of the war on drugs.
Mr. SOUDER. I want to thank the gentleman from Nebraska for his
continued leadership over the past few weeks in trying to help make the
rest of Congress aware of this and the importance of the votes we have
this week, and to try to address the devastating proposals that came
out of this administration that just flabbergast those of us who are
Republicans, in particular who support this President, have supported
this administration. And it is just unbelievable that a conservative
President of the United States would have proposed to nationalize and
take away the dollars that were going to local drug law enforcement and
the years of effort that we put together to get State, local and
Federal cooperation and, in one budget, attempt to wipe out this by
zeroing out category after category.
First, I want to thank Chairman Wolf for putting some of this back,
but clearly there is a revolution going on in the House of
Representatives, in the United States Senate, that is furious at this
administration's proposals.
Before I make a few comments here, I wanted to make Members and their
staff and others aware that if you want to learn, the best source of
information right now on meth is ironically by a reporter named Steve
Suo from the Portland Oregonian newspaper. He has spent and deserves a
Pulitzer Prize. He has dug into this. He has identified that China and
India are the primary precursor chemical countries, as well as Mexico,
the amount that is coming in from Mexico; details more of this over the
last 2 years; has covered hearings throughout the country, the
different problems around the country. You can get through their home
page a lot of information, the best information that exists currently
on meth.
Also, for Members in their districts, while our national ad campaign
has been very disappointingly silent on meth, silent on meth, the
Partnership For a Drug Free America has, in fact, created a number of
ads that have started to run around the country. They have offered that
any Member who would like to run these in their districts or figure out
how to get them in the schools, they will make those available to any
Member for free, produced by the top ad guys in the country. They are
going to continue to develop additional ads because in spite of the
Federal Government not responding aggressively enough on meth, at least
the Partnership For a Drug Free America is.
A lot of times people say, How come you guys can't work together
across the aisle? Why isn't there bipartisan effort? A few years ago,
probably now about 6 years ago, I would guess, Congressman Doug Ose of
California was the first to raise this question of the superlabs and
meth in California. It was just starting to move. It may have even been
8 years ago now that we had our first hearing. I chair the narcotics
subcommittee over in Government Reform. We had our first hearing in
California. I was not chairman at that time. I think the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Mica) was chairman.

At this point we have held multiple hearings through our committee.
Two Members, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case), which is
historically, along with California, the oldest State to face the meth
problem, and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), which is
arguably, along with southwest Missouri, the hardest hit right now in
the congressional districts with the number of labs combined with the
superlab material coming in, asked for hearings, and we did those, the
gentleman from Hawaii being a Democrat, the gentleman from Arkansas
being a Republican. The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), who is
here on the floor, has asked for a hearing in Minnesota along with the
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), the gentleman from Minnesota
(Mr. Peterson) and the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), four
Members from Minnesota. We are having a hearing in St. Paul at
Congressman Kennedy's request next Monday on meth. The gentleman from
Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security,
has a tremendous coordinated effort to try to address meth and
OxyContin in Kentucky. We are going to be going down there and looking
at theirs. We have hearing requests in from at least 10 congressional
districts on this hearing, including from the gentleman from Oregon
(Mr. Walden) and the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), where we
have a lot of pressure, as well as Washington State.
I say that because this is bipartisan. When you see a bipartisan
effort coming out of the House of Representatives throughout the entire
Nation, why in the world would the President's budget propose to zero
out the meth hot spots program, to zero out the Byrne grants, to zero
out and transfer the money, basically wipe out the HIDTAs and move that
to the Federal Government, to zero out program after program that was
addressing this question and as an alternative propose nothing except
the nationalization and say, well, this problem isn't at the local
level. It is fine to say that, but as we have heard earlier, and this
is from the FBI reports, 95 percent, I heard earlier 90, according to
the FBI, 95 percent of the arrests of drug violators are at the State
and local level, not at the Federal level.
If you think about it, we are working so aggressively on border
security right now, but what happens the other week? A guy comes across
the Canadian border, even though he was supposed to be at a hearing, so
the RCMP said that he should have been held, comes across with a bloody
chainsaw, with knuckles, with knives and guns, and he comes across. How
does he get picked up? The information goes out, but he was not caught
by the FBI, he was not caught by the DEA, he was not caught by the
Department of Homeland Security; he was caught by a State and local
official, because when the Federal Government put out the
announcements, that is who picks them up.
If you are looking for major drug dealers, often you get them like Al
Capone. You get them on some other count. You do not get him on murder.
You get him on an IRS charge.
In the case of drug violators, gang violators, the State and locals
get notified by the Federal system, but ultimately they are the people
to pick them up. But if there are no State and local drug task forces,
if they do not have any money, nobody is going to be picking them up.
And so what if you have a bunch of great task forces sitting here in
Washington. Nobody is going to be out there to coordinate and arrest
them and get the information. You can send out all the bulletins you
want, but if there are not any drug task forces in America, nobody is
going to go find the criminals that you sent your notices out about.
Let me make a couple of comments. We held a hearing on the HIDTAs and
the Byrne grants in my subcommittee. Sheriff Jack Merritt of Greene
County, Missouri, suggested by our majority whip, Congressman Blunt,
his hometown sheriff, said this, that he would not be able to maintain
the joint DEA, State and local antimeth task force in his county if
these funds were cut. Vital equipment such as bulletproof vests and in-
car cameras, which his officers need to protect themselves while
carrying out meth traffic investigations, could not be purchased
because the administration proposed to get rid of the CPOT funding. He
spoke eloquently of the children he and his officers find at meth lab
sites, children

[[Page H4390]]

who are at severe risk. He stated that if his task forces are forced to
shut down, he wonders how many more generations of children will be
condemned to the same fate.
Mr. Mark Henry, president of the Illinois Drug Enforcement Officers
Association in the Speaker's home State of Illinois, said that Byrne
grants help local police departments fill a critical gap which exists
between Federal drug enforcement programs. The overwhelming majority,
87.6 percent, of all police departments in the United States have less
than 50 officers, and Byrne grants play a critical role in supporting
multijurisdictional drug task forces which are the backbone of law
enforcement agencies. So we had asked Mr. Henry, and he came to our
hearing with a list of comments from the State of Illinois that said
the following: If Federal funds under the Byrne program are eliminated,
our unit will lose three agents. The loss of these agents will cripple
our ability to continue effective narcotics investigations. Narcotics
trafficking will go unchecked and spread. We might as well turn the
keys to our communities over to the gangs.
Another sheriff said, Although the local law enforcement agencies,
the business and education community rely heavily on the task force
expertise in combating the fight against drugs, without the existence
of the task force, violent crime and burglaries will likely increase
dramatically.
Another sheriff said, The elimination of the Byrne grant would have a
catastrophic effect on the metropolitan enforcement group of southwest
Illinois.
Another sheriff in Illinois said, Without the funding that we
currently receive from the Byrne grant, our mission would be all but
nonexistent.

Another sheriff said, and this is the Illinois Narcotics Officers
Association polled their State membership, The elimination or reduction
of Byrne funding would force police officers off the street to do
clerical work, eliminate communication equipment such as pagers and
cell phones, and eliminate Federal funding to reimburse a portion of
officer overtime cost.
Yet another department said, The elimination of the Byrne funding
will have a very negative impact on our ability to address the drug
problems in the Lake County area of Illinois. The loss of funding will
cause us to eliminate the staff positions. This will cause the jobs
they now perform to be reassigned to police officers.
Yet another department said, Task Force 6 is the primary drug
enforcement entity in this area and has been a fixture in this area
since 1983. Proposed Byrne cuts will result in the closure of this
unit. Narcotics-related crime will increase dramatically, and drug
dealers will operate at will without the presence of Task Force 6.
Yet another department said, The elimination or reduction of this
grant would have a very severe impact on the task force. At the present
time the funding accounts for 50 percent of the task force funds, with
the remaining 50 percent made up from fines and forfeitures. I strongly
believe the elimination of this funding will force the task force to
close its doors. That is from the Speaker's home State of Illinois.
From my home State of Indiana in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we do not have
a HIDTA. We did not apply for a HIDTA because we have Byrne grants. Our
task force has told me in northeast Indiana, it will shut down without
the Byrne grants. Fifty percent means only 50 percent shuts down.
We have tremendous budget pressures in the United States, and all of
us know we have these tremendous budget pressures. But the people back
home are not telling us, Let the criminals go free. Let's concentrate
on foreign aid. Let's concentrate on all sorts of different programs.
What they believe is the minimum standard out of the Federal Government
is that we should be shutting down crime, controlling our borders,
getting rid of the threats to their daily lives.
It is just incredible to me that a conservative administration would
propose bringing the power to Washington rather than leaving it at the
grassroots where we are having an effect, where drug use in the United
States has been declining. And where is our drug czar? Where is our
administration? As we are making progress, they are proposing to go
backwards.
I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for his leadership and the others
here tonight because we have to stand up and say, you cannot forget the
people back home and say, we are going to turn you loose, and good luck
in fighting all these criminals.
Mr. TERRY. Absolutely. I really appreciate your forceful and
passionate words on the floor tonight and just how staunchly you have
stood on this fight. I thank you for those efforts.
Just one little bit of trivia. You talked about how our own police
officers on the front lines have to be trained to deal with meth. In
fact, one of the new things adopted by the Omaha Police Department,
they are now having the emergency response or the snipers go with the
officers when they exercise a warrant on a meth bust now because
usually when you break into somebody's home or you are smashing the
door down exercising a warrant, these people are so extraordinarily
violent that we have had to go to those level of measures in the
metropolitan area.
Mr. SOUDER. The gentleman brings up a very critical other point. That
is that the map we saw earlier that Coach, Congressman, maybe Governor
Osborne had up here showed all these States where meth has been in. But
it has been predominantly in the rural areas. But what we are seeing is
that it is starting to come into towns like Fort Wayne, a town of
230,000, in Omaha, and if this stuff hits the major cities, if it gets
into Minneapolis and St. Paul, as it comes in from the rural areas and
into the suburbs and into those cities, we are going to see an epidemic
in America like we have not seen in a long time. Things like what you
are talking about with the snipers, in one place in Hawaii, they are
now charging people to go in, I think it is $200, to get their
apartment cleaned before they come in because if somebody has been
cooking in Honolulu and a kid gets into that, they can get sick and
die. So now there is a charge in some apartment complexes to be able to
go in.
Mr. TERRY. I am pleased to have as one of our last speakers for
tonight the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), who has also been a
very forceful fighter against meth and is a member of the Meth Caucus
and actually one of the coauthors of the amendment that has been
referenced several times tonight.

{time} 2145

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Nebraska (Mr. Terry) for holding this Special Order. I thank the
gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Souder) for his leadership on all of
this.
It is going to take all of us together to make sure that we address
this very important issue. We have concerns that we are not putting
enough resources into funding to help out local law enforcement address
the very challenging issues that are tearing up our communities with
methamphetamine and drugs. And as the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr.
Osborne) pointed out, this started out in just a few States, but it has
really spread all way from San Diego to the Shenandoah Valley. That is
why we have to support these good, working anti-drug programs.
One key, though, is that these drug task forces need to be supported.
There are 800 around the country. If we go through with what the
President proposed or even what the good work of the gentleman from
Virginia (Chairman Wolf) and his committee have resulted in, we are
going to be losing those drug task forces that have been doing such
great work.
As we think about what this is all about, I am thinking about a
tragic story of a young girl named Megan from a beautiful town in
Minnesota. She started on meth when she was in seventh grade at the age
of 13, when some of her friends offered her the drug. And in her words,
she liked meth so much that she knew she would use it over and over
again. But when she could not afford the addiction, she, like so many
other female addicts, was exploited into becoming a prostitute to pay
for the meth she craved every second of the day.
After hitting rock bottom at the age of 18, Megan is managing to pull
her life back together now after 5 years have been stolen from her by
meth. But she has too much company in the

[[Page H4391]]

treatment and addiction programs because about one in five of those
treated for meth use in the State of Minnesota are 17 years old or
younger. But just as Megan is finding a way out of this black hole, we
are thinking about cutting the funding for Byrne grants that help local
police address the meth issues.
These cuts are wrong. They will cut task forces in our State and
across the country, and who will be there to protect the children from
those making and pushing the poison if this House approves such a
devastating cut in the Byrne-Justice Assistance Grant program?
Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues that there has to be a better
way, and there is. We can help young people like Megan reject meth
before they even try it by restoring Byrne grants to the fiscal year
2005 funded level. Doing so will send a strong signal that Congress is
serious about fighting the scourge of the meth. We must send a signal
that the Byrne grant program is important to Congress and that we do
support the work of the local officials. We must send a signal to the
pushers of this poison that they are not welcome in our communities.
Most importantly, we must send a signal to our law enforcement officers
who wake up every morning to protect our families that we stand with
them in fighting against drugs and we will work with them to give them
every tool they need to be successful.
I urge my colleagues to support the amendment that the gentleman from
Nebraska (Mr. Terry) and I have helped to put forth. Let us stand with
law enforcement. Let us protect the Byrne grant program.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman
from Minnesota for his comments.
And this is Angela from Iowa. Like the little girl in Minnesota, this
is her school picture. I do not know if our C-SPAN cameras can get
tight on this or not. This is her 12-year-old picture, her school class
picture. This is her at 13, a year later, after similar friends turned
her on to meth. And this had a little different, tragic end. This
little girl, after her mother found her and tried to clean her up,
could not kick the habit of meth and committed suicide. And,
unfortunately, that is the way that many of these tragedies end.
Mr. Speaker, at this point I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Poe).
Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for sponsoring this
legislation.
Based on my experience as a judge and prosecutor for almost 30 years
combined, this epidemic of methamphetamine is a disease that is
affecting a lot of people. It crosses all barriers, all social economic
barriers, all races, all ages, both sexes. And it is incumbent upon
Congress to make sure that our local law enforcement officials have the
ability to fight the war on drugs, to fight it the way they understand
best, and the nationalization of this whole process is a very bad idea.
Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the
gentleman's coming over to the floor and speaking in favor of this
amendment against meth, and he certainly has had some worldly
experiences that he can speak from.

____________________