[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 26892-26897]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 26892]]

      ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE YOUTH OF OUR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Northup). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to come to the floor of the 
House again on a Tuesday night to talk about an issue that I talk about 
as often as possible, and that is the problem that we have in our 
country and also in dealing in Congress with the issue of illegal 
narcotics and the tremendous impact that illegal narcotics are having 
on our young people.
  Tonight I am going to focus a little bit on some of the issues that 
relate to the question of the District of Columbia's appropriation and 
some specific measures that are in the appropriations bill that deal 
with the District of Columbia.
  I also intend to talk a bit about the general war on drugs and review 
a little bit how we got ourselves into that situation.
  Time permitting, Madam Speaker, I also hope to talk some about 
Colombia and the administration's potential request, which certainly 
will dramatically affect our spending as soon as we finish with the 
problems we have now in funding the fiscal year 1999-2000 requirements. 
We are expecting a rather substantial request to come in by the 
administration, and we will talk about that and Colombia and how we got 
ourselves into that particular dilemma.
  And I will also talk a bit about the situation in Panama, that whole 
region that has been such an active area as far as illegal narcotics 
trafficking and disruption in general for the entire hemisphere.
  So those are a few subjects, and then, time permitting, I will get 
into some of the updates that I usually try to do on problems relating 
to illegal narcotics and how they affect all our communities across the 
land.
  The first thing that I want to talk about tonight is something that I 
hear repeatedly over and over; that the war on drugs has failed; that, 
indeed, we have lost the war on drugs. I have some very good friends, 
even on the conservative side, and I noticed one of the columnists, who 
is very conservative in his opinion, this past week came out and said 
why not legalize narcotics; that the war on drugs is a failure. I 
always try to relate my topic of discussion to the facts and deal with 
the facts and statistics, information that we have had presented to us 
in the subcommittee which I chair, which is the Subcommittee on 
Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Committee on 
Government Reform.
  We have had many, many hearings since I have taken that subcommittee 
over the beginning of the year dealing with illegal narcotics, and we 
have looked at the question of whether or not the war on drugs is 
indeed a failure. We have looked at the question of legalization. In 
fact, we probably conducted the first hearing, the only hearing to 
date, on the question of legalization and decriminalization of drug 
penalties. We have talked in our subcommittee and held hearings on the 
problems with Mexico, with Colombia, with some of our treatment 
programs and, most recently, the education program that this Congress 
has funded to the tune of a billion dollars over the next 5 years 
getting an update on that first year's progress in that program.

                              {time}  1945

  Additionally, the southwest border and the billions of dollars we 
spent in Federal resources at that border in trying to contain not only 
illegal narcotics but illegal immigration and trafficking, illegal 
commerce across our borders.
  So we have covered the gamut of this topic. We have heard from GAO, 
DEA, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of State, 
many, many agencies of Federal Government and rely on their facts and 
support and statistics in our reports.
  Basically, I came to the conclusion, and I think my colleagues would 
too if they spent time in those hearings as we have done, we came to 
the conclusion that, in fact, the war on drugs did not fail.
  What happened was we had an end of the war on drugs in 1993 with the 
Clinton administration, which took over not only the executive branch 
of Government, which executes the law, but also had very substantial 
majorities in both the House of Representatives and also the other 
body, the United States Senate. They controlled and dominated the 
agenda, the legislative agenda, and the executive and administrative 
operations of this Government for over 2 years, from 1993 through 1995.
  I have had these charts out before, and I will refer to them once 
again. Foremost in our responsibility as a Federal Government are our 
programs to stop illegal narcotics at their source, outside the 
country. Now, State and local governments law enforcement folks cannot 
do that, but it certainly must be done. And whether we legalize what 
are now illegal narcotics or not, we would still have a fundamental 
responsibility in keeping what would be an illegal commodity coming 
into the United States. In this case, it happens to be primarily 
heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines.
  The first thing that the Clinton administration did after completely 
decimating the drug czar's office, and that was the beginning of the 
ending of the war on drugs, they took the drug czar's office down from 
a staffing level of over 120 to some less than 2 dozen personnel. That 
was the first cut, slash, burn that ended the war on drugs.
  The next thing they did, and again Federal responsibility is to stop 
drugs at their source, that is, outside the boundaries of the country, 
clearly a Federal responsibility, if you look at the chart, Federal 
spending and international programs, these are source country programs 
we see this dramatic decline in 1993 right in this period here through 
1995, up to 1996 it bottomed out. This is where the Republicans took 
control of the House and the other body.
  Then you see a dramatic reversal in that spending. And these are 
really not very big dollars, this is $633 million, in the scheme of our 
entire war on drugs. And you have to understand that illegal narcotics 
and drug abuse and crime and operating our justice system and 
everything, all the costs run us about a quarter of a trillion dollars 
a year.
  So this is $633 million back in 1991. And in 1999 we are up to about 
that level. If you look at 1990 dollars, you see that we have gotten us 
back into the war on drugs in the source country programs. And that has 
been particularly effective in cocaine, where we have had two programs 
that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) help start them, Mr. 
Zeliff, formerly a member, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) 
now the Speaker, when they took over this responsibility which I now 
chair, they began very effective international programs in both Peru 
and Bolivia.
  I am pleased to say that, in Peru, almost 60 percent of the cocaine 
production has been eliminated and in Bolivia over 50 percent. 
President Fujimori of Peru has done an outstanding job. And the 
President of Bolivia has done an excellent job, too. Mr. Banzer, the 
President there, has, as I said, eliminated over almost half the 
production and has a program that in the next 2 years, 24 months, to 
eliminate the balance.
  So we have seen cocaine production figures drop most cost 
effectively, small amounts of money, in those countries.
  The one disaster in all of this is Colombia, and I will talk about 
that later, where specific administration policy closed down not only 
the war on drugs internationally but, more specifically, in Colombia. 
And that has done the most damage and where we are getting now most the 
cocaine and heroin entering the United States is now produced there.
  But we see, in fact, our primary responsibility as a Federal 
Government would be in the international arena spending cost 
effectively these dollars, and in 2 to 3 years they did an incredible 
amount of damage.
  The next responsibility as far as the Federal Government and working 
with our agencies to stop illegal narcotics would be to stop them from 
the source to the border coming into the United States. Again, the war 
on drugs basically closed down.
  If we took these figures back to when Ronald Reagan was President and

[[Page 26893]]

George Bush, we would see a dramatic drop and they made tremendous 
progress in stopping illegal narcotics coming in, stopping the 
production and also interdicting and using the resources of our various 
agencies.
  Basically, again, the Clinton administration and the Democrat 
controlled Congress stopped the military from being involved in the war 
on drugs. And some way, well, the military should be involved in this 
effort. But, in fact, they do patrol outside our borders. In fact, 
their planes do go up every day. In fact, we have servicemen and women 
serving around the world.
  If we looked at the impact of any type of damage to our country, I 
said a quarter of a trillion dollars in expenditures and lost lives and 
production in this effort, our military are there, they are on duty. 
And they were brought into this war by President Reagan and also there 
with the blessing of President Bush, and they did a tremendous job and 
we saw a decline in illegal narcotics coming into the country. And it 
was most cost effective since we are paying the tab for the military in 
these arenas anyway.
  Additionally, if you took at the casualties, and I have cited the 
most casualties we had released just a few months ago, it was over 
15,200 Americans died from drug-induced deaths, if you take from the 
time President Clinton was elected to today, we are probably looking at 
close to 80,000 Americans have died as a result of drug induced deaths. 
And that is as many as any of the conflicts, the Vietnam conflict, the 
Korean conflict. And that does not address the other social problems, 
the human tragedy cost to so many who are not mentioned in just the 
death figures but the destruction again of families.
  Again, the second most important responsibility, stopping drugs 
before they come into our country, very cost effective again. We were 
up to $2 billion totally. And again this is money that would have been 
spent by the military in any event, almost all of this money. Because 
we have the planes, we have the ships, we have the personnel which are 
the bulk of the costs. But, again, their disdain for the military, 
their disdain for a real war on drugs, they took them out of this 
effort.
  We also used the Coast Guard to protect our borders, particularly 
around the coastal areas. Puerto Rico is a great example. And my area 
has been very hard hit. I represent central Florida, Orlando, where our 
heroin overdoses and drug overdoses now exceed homicide as a cause of 
death, more deadly than any gun or knife or weapon that is used in the 
destruction of human life.
  Drugs have decimated my area. Most of those drugs came in from a very 
simple action of the Clinton administration in cutting the Coast Guard 
budget. This House of Representatives and the Senate, dominated by the 
Democrats in 1993, 1994 up to 1995, slashed those budgets. Talk to 
anyone who is in the Coast Guard. They cut the shield that protected 
Puerto Rico. And drugs float in there. Once they are in Puerto Rico, 
they are in the United States. And the next thing we knew, they were 
flooding our area and Central Florida, and other areas have been hit by 
the same type of heroin epidemic.
  But there are consequences to our policy. The policy adopted by this 
Congress is very clear. They killed the war on drugs, dead as a 
doornail. So we had again no leadership as far as the national level. 
In fact, we had contra-leadership with the appointment of Joslyn 
Elders, who was our Nation's number one health advocate, and she said 
``just say maybe.''
  They slashed the drug czar's office from 120 positions down to some 
20 positions. They cut the spending in the Federal areas of most 
critical importance. Again, source country, very cost effectively. Just 
a few dollars took the military of the Coast Guard and others out of 
this war.
  So, my colleagues, that is how we got ourselves into this situation, 
with incredible quantities of heroin coming into the United States, 
incredible quantities of cocaine, methamphetamines, and other drugs 
coming into the United States, cheap and on our streets in large 
quantities.
  Now, those policies had some very direct results. I wish I could take 
a transparency and put what they did as far as their policy over these 
next charts. These charts, and I showed them, one other time we have 
used them, but they show the long-term trend and lifetime prevalence of 
drug use.
  If we look again, this puts it in perspective. I hope we can focus on 
this. If we look at the Reagan years and we see the prevalence of drug 
use in the Reagan years starting to decline, the Bush years declining 
dramatically, the Clinton years almost like a rocket it is launched 
from the time that Bill Clinton, with the help, assistance and aided 
and abetted by the House of Representatives, did what I cited in these 
two charts and gave us this result.
  And it is dramatic, if you look at just in the short time the 
Republicans took control of the House and the Senate, how we have 
already begun to turn that tide. And that is through restoring 
interdiction, through bringing the military back into this effort. By a 
full court press, so to speak, we have restored the drug czar's office.
  In fact, I checked today and we funded over 150 positions. If you are 
going to fight a war on drugs, you have to have the ammunition, you 
have to have the equipment. You cannot cut the staff out of the 
leadership from 120 to 20.
  Barry McCaffrey, our drug czar, I will say has done an admirable job 
in taking up this responsibility. And he not only has to have the 
responsibility, but he has to have the support of the Congress; and the 
support was not there. We see the results again in the lifetime drug 
use. And it is just not coincidence. These are facts.
  If we look at the long-term trend in lifetime of prevalence of 
cocaine, we see the same thing. We see during the Reagan 
administration, and I was a staffer in the United States Senate in 
those early days, I remember helping work with Senator Hawkins and 
others of the Reagan administration, the Republicans at that period of 
time controlled the administration and also the U.S. Senate, and we 
were able and we had support, I remember even the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Rangel) and some of the Democrats on the other side help, and 
we turned around this situation with cocaine.
  If you look, it goes back down to President Bush. Incredible declines 
in the prevalence of cocaine use through the Bush administration. And 
then, with ``just say maybe,'' with lack of Federal leadership, with 
lack of executive direction, the cocaine use takes off again under 
President Clinton.
  These are very dramatic charts showing exactly what happened. The 
information is not something the Republicans have just developed or our 
staff just put together. These are all from solid reports. This chart 
should be quite startling to everyone because it shows the latest drug 
of choice, and it is doing so much destruction not only in my community 
but also the land.

                              {time}  2000

  This shows again during the Reagan administration it sort of leveled 
out and the Bush administration, the prevalence of heroin use. We do 
see some decline in the Bush years, and then we see in the Clinton 
years it taking off like a rocket. And then when the Republicans took 
over again and we reinstituted a multifaceted, as I said, a full-court 
press against illegal narcotics, we have seen the beginning of a 
turnaround.
  You cannot take the critical elements out of a war on drugs, just 
like any war that you fight. You cannot just be treating those wounded 
in battle. Interestingly enough, and we have the statistics on this, 
but from 1993 when the other side took control of the Congress and they 
controlled the White House, since then we have about doubled the amount 
of money on treatment. There is nothing wrong with spending money on 
treatment so long as those treatment programs are effective. But they 
must be effective and they must work. They must not be a revolving 
door. But we have doubled the money. In fact, with the Republican 
leadership just since we have

[[Page 26894]]

taken over, there has been a 26 percent increase in funding from this 
Congress, Republican-controlled Congress, in treatment funding.
  Tonight, I want to talk again about the budget battle. We are engaged 
in the House and the Senate with the administration in a very serious 
and difficult budget battle. We must pass 13 appropriations measures to 
fund all the operations of government. We have passed some seven or 
eight of those and some of those have been vetoed by the President. The 
President I believe yesterday signed into law the Defense bill. That is 
sort of a no-brainer. It had pay raises for our military that is long 
overdue. Depletion of the military, we have restored funds. It has 
really one of the few increases, but again we have to remember that 
this administration that detests the military has used the military in 
more deployments than ever in the history of any administration that 
has existed. There is great cost and to that cost we must have 
responsibility. It is also a big agency and there is an opportunity for 
improving payment patterns and expenditures and cutting waste and 
inefficiency out of it. We are trying to do that. In fact, we are 
trying to do that in all of these bills. But again Defense is sort of a 
no-brainer.
  One of the other bills that the President has vetoed is the District 
of Columbia appropriations bill. One of the 13 bills that we pass to 
fund our Federal Government, we also pass to support the District of 
Columbia, and that is a constitutional responsibility set out from the 
very beginning when we created the District in 1790, we have had that 
responsibility, but I think that bill is sort of a microcosm of what we 
are facing in the larger picture, how the Republicans inherited sort of 
a mess, an incredible mess, trust funds that were robbed, Social 
Security funds that were depleted, unfunded pensions, pension accounts; 
just numerous inefficiencies, programs that had been expanded. We had 
760 Federal education programs, 200 job training programs, hundreds and 
hundreds of programs and built incredible bureaucracies in Washington. 
In fact, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, I think 
there are somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million 
Federal civil servants just within 50 miles of where I am speaking 
around Washington. They had built this huge bureaucracy that had sort 
of spun out of control and in the process to fund this and also to keep 
power, in order to keep power you have to keep getting more people 
hooked on the Federal take, so to speak, and I am not speaking about 
just Federal employees. There are thousands of them that do a great 
job. I was chairman of Civil Service for 4 years. There are some great 
Federal employees out there. Many of them are hampered by the laws and 
regulations which the majority put into place and they could do a 
better job if we let them more effectively operate.
  The District of Columbia is a great example of government gone wrong. 
What the folks on the other side who had 40 years to straighten out the 
District of Columbia, 40 years to make changes in programs, 40 years to 
bring the government of the District under control and the government 
of the United States, what they did and now what the President is 
threatening to do, the President is threatening to veto again, and we 
have already had one veto on the District appropriations bill, but part 
of the discussion is, one, we are not spending enough money, the other 
is that we have not adopted liberal enough policies.
  How do I get into this mix? I am chairman of the drug policy 
subcommittee but also an observer of the District and of what has gone 
on here, both before we came into power and after we came into power. 
But the same liberal policies that they are trying to adopt now, spend 
more and then adopt a more liberal drug policy, are exactly what got 
the District into difficulty. We have been able to bring the District 
out of some of that difficulty.
  We have done the same thing with the District we have done for the 
country at large. Now, stop and think about this. Think about the 
District of Columbia in 1995 when we inherited the District of 
Columbia. The other side ruled it for 40 years, again very tight rule, 
specific rule, giving them everything they want. There was a $722 
million deficit just in 1995 in running the District of Columbia. It 
was just like the Federal Government. We were running 200 and $300 
billion deficits annually in addition to taking all the money out of 
the Social Security trust fund. They were taking all that money, then 
spending beyond that a couple of hundred billion more. They had run the 
District into indebtedness and reliance on the Federal taxpayers' 
largesse to the tune of three-quarters of a billion dollars a year. 
They had 40 years. In just over 4 years we have gotten their finances 
straightened out.
  The first thing we had to do was basically take over the District, 
put in a control board and get some personnel who could do something. I 
want to cite again what we inherited here and talk about the policy 
that they are trying now to foster and the President is trying to 
impose with these vetoes.
  The District of Columbia had, in 1995, 48,000 people employed in the 
District. It was the third in size as far as municipal employees, 
exceeded only by New York and Los Angeles. The revenue from all sources 
in 1995 was over $7,200 per capita. They had plenty of money coming in. 
In fact, it was the highest in the United States. When we took over, 
they were charging more. The expenditures per capita, $7,150, you 
guessed it, was the highest rate of expenditures in the country. So 
they had more employees than anyplace except for the two largest cities 
and on a per capita basis probably exceeded only by the former Soviet 
Union. The debt was the third highest in the United States at $6,354 
per person. That is what we inherited. Again, three-quarters of a 
billion dollars running annual deficit.
  Let me tell you what else we inherited, and this is from the folks 
who are now saying they are going to straighten out Social Security and 
the District of Columbia. Let me talk about a few of the programs that 
are important to people, and they always give you this baloney that the 
Democrats or the liberals are more interested in people than the 
Republicans or the conservative side of the aisle. This is what they 
did to the people that they are supposed to care about.
  According to, and these are all articles except for one of these, it 
is from the Washington Post, not exactly a conservative publication but 
we will use the Post as a source. According to the Post in 1995, the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development rating system, the 
District's subsidized housing program achieved the lowest ranking of 
any urban public housing agency in the Nation. Now, that is an 
accomplishment. They had control of this place, control of the District 
and the housing program basically failed.
  The prison. This is from 1995, again, the same story. ``Authorities 
have uncovered a multimillion-dollar heroin ring that was run out of 
the Lorton correctional complex. That is the D.C. prison. Prosecutors 
have obtained convictions on more than 30 corrections employees in the 
past 3 years for smuggling drugs, accepting bribes and corruption. A 
jail suicide expert recently described the D.C. jail situation as 
catastrophic.'' This is what we inherited in 1995, the new majority. We 
have had to basically take the Federal prison, take the housing 
authority and revamp all of these programs, practically eliminate the 
prison here because the prisoners had basically taken over control.
  Now, again these are supposed to be the most compassionate people, 
they tell you how they are saving Social Security and children and they 
always line up the children in the photo ops and all of that. This is 
what they were doing with the children, again their liberal, failed 
policies. This is from the Washington Post. The article is right here. 
I will read right from it:
  ``Some mentally ill children at the District's St. Elizabeth Hospital 
have been fed little more than rice, jello and chicken for the last 
month after some suppliers refused to make deliveries because they 
hadn't been paid.''
  Here those that are probably the least well off, least able to help 
themselves, the mentally ill children in the

[[Page 26895]]

District, they were the recipients of their policy, and again this is 
something that we have had to straighten out in the last little more 
than 4 years. They had 40 years to create this mess. And now they want 
to go back to that.
  This is a great story from the Washington Post, October 7, 1994:
  A city funded program aimed at spurring economic development has made 
few loans, created few jobs and after 6 years is still sitting on 
millions of dollars, according to the D.C. auditor Russell Smith. Smith 
said the Economic Development Finance Corporation, which began 
operating in 1988, again under these folks, has failed in its mission. 
He contended that it has improperly invested $6 million in a private 
for-profit group and furthermore that again their programs were a 
failure. Finally, the report criticized this group, the economic 
development group, for improper expenses, including food, flowers and 
political contributions made. This is what the other side did when they 
controlled the District of Columbia.
  One of the other areas I spoke a little bit about and I think is 
important to all of those who do not have housing, is public housing. 
The other side claims to be able to do more for folks. But again in 
February 1993, the Washington Post reported about the housing project, 
again under their watch:
  ``Fraught with contracting delays, staffing problems and an endless 
crush of maintenance requests, the city's housing department still has 
1,895 units boarded up and unfit for anyone, not the record number of 
families in shelters for the homeless, not the 11,000 people waiting on 
average of 5 years for public housing.''
  And then in their drug and alcohol treatment programs, trying to help 
those who we want to help and who we are now trying to help with our 
programs and policies that are incorporated in the legislation that the 
President has vetoed for the District.
  This is 1993 again. ``Its drug and alcohol treatment programs, 
however, were denounced as inadequate last month by Federal officials. 
However, the city has also gone without a permanent mental health 
commissioner for the past year. Its public housing department is being 
sued for failing to fix apartments and its Department of Human 
Services, responsible for tackling most of the social problems 
affecting the city, is still bound by 16 court orders to improve its 
work.''
  Now, this is what they did in 40 years and we inherited, and in a 
little over 4 years we have begun to straighten out this mess, but the 
President does not want to see that continued. He wants more spending, 
more liberal programs.

                              {time}  2015

  Public housing, the situation was horrible. I remember seeing a 
television report with rats and infestations you would not put, as I 
said on the floor of the House in a previous speech, your dog in one of 
these units, public housing units, that were under the control and 
supervision of these folks here.
  Again, a question of a liberal policy, a conservative policy.
  Then the question of pensions, and the previous speaker to me was 
talking about the Republicans and how they are not good custodians of 
Social Security.
  Now my colleagues have to remember that in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 
before that, they were spending 200 to $300 billion a year in excess of 
the revenues coming in and then all the money in the Social Security 
Trust Fund.
  This particular chart tells it all. It shows Democrat control, 
spending from the Social Security Trust Fund. Democrat control, 1984, 
1985, right in this period when they took over the House and the 
Senate, and the Congress controls the spending, folks. The President 
can recommend it or veto some, but basically the authority under the 
Constitution is with the House of Representatives and the Senate.
  This is the most graphic and telling chart that I have ever seen. 
Every American should look at this.
  And how they can come to the floor with a face and tell us that we 
are not doing a good job, we are not good stewards of this, or we are 
proposing plans to spend from the trust fund. When you see what they 
did when they controlled this, they spent all the money that came in, 
all of that into indebtedness, and then all of the trust fund money. It 
is absolutely astounding that they could come with straight faces, come 
to the floor and accuse us of this.
  They also distorted, and I heard, again, previous speakers talking 
about this, about Republicans wanted to do away with Social Security. 
Well, I do not know of any Republican who has advocated doing away with 
Social Security. Most of us are concerned because of their years and 
years of spending out of the trust fund. It is very difficult to put it 
back put the money back in there, and we are doing that for the first 
time. Without a doubt we are doing it.
  But it is beyond belief that, again, they could come to the floor 
with a straight face and say that we have a plan to do this.
  Now I cite this because they did the same thing with the District of 
Columbia when Marion Berry in 1994 was here, and this is from the 
Washington Times, the only one I have from the Washington Times. But I 
think the facts are correct in it. It says Marion Berry has proposed 
little beyond the $140 million mandate to shore up the city's sagging 
finances. With a $40 million deficit remaining from fiscal 1994, an $18 
million shortage in payments to Metro, 5 billion in unfunded police and 
firefighters' pension liability; not only did they do it to the Social 
Security Trust Fund, they did it to the District's pension funds.
  And again I just do not know how you can dispute the facts. This 
chart has not been doctored in any way. This tells it like it is. In 
fact, the other side had their chance some 40 years and a little more 
than 4 years. It is absolutely incredible what we have been able to do 
in fighting and kicking and screaming with the President vetoing our 
legislation, even the District bill.
  Again, if you take what the Democrats did with education, and you 
hear them talk about how they have done so much with education. In 
fact, my wife was a former educator. Myself, I graduated from the 
University of Florida with a degree from the College of Education. 
Though I never professionally taught, Mr. Speaker, I am an observer of 
what has taken place in education, both again living with a teacher and 
closely monitoring what has happened.
  What they have adopted as their policy for public education is what I 
call RAD. It is called regulate, administer and dictate, RAD; R-A-D, 
regulate, administer and dictate. And that is what they have done over 
40 years, bringing more control and power.
  Now what is interesting, only between 4 and 5 cents of every dollar 
that goes into education in fact comes from the Federal level; 95-96 
cents comes from State and local sources. But year after year they have 
created more federal programs; I told you some 760; I think we have it 
down to a little below 700 now kicking and screaming, but consolidating 
some of the administration, the A in that, the regulations. They want 
to regulate and control. As long as they regulate and control, 
administer programs, decide who gets the grant, who gets this, we have 
said that we want 90 percent of the money in the classroom and for 
basic education. They, in fact, have had 90 percent of the money not 
going into the classroom and for education. They want to determine 
whether we use the money for school construction, or they want to 
determine the hiring and firing of teachers. We think that should be 
left to the local school boards and local officials.
  It is a liberal philosophy, a liberal philosophy of RAD. Regulate 
from Washington, administer from Washington, and dictate from 
Washington.
  Now they did the same thing with the District of Columbia, and what 
did we inherit in the District? We basically inherited a school system 
where they are spending more per student than almost any place in the 
United States and getting less, some of the worst performance records.
  In an article in 1996, again of what we inherited, the D.C. public 
school system had 91 leaky roofs, currently they had 20 condemned 
boilers and a hundred of 230 buses are nonoperational.

[[Page 26896]]

This is what we inherited, and, again, straightening this out has been 
very difficult, and again the President wants to veto our approach to 
education in the District, our approach to drug policy in the District, 
our approach to fiscal responsibility in the District and go back to 
the reckless ways of spending.
  I love these articles because they cite again what we inherited, what 
this new Republican majority inherited, and I think every Republican 
should be proud whether it is the American who is out there and 
registered as a Republican, whether it is a Republican in this 
Congress, whether it is some of my colleagues who were beaten up and 
defeated for the fiscal responsibility that they brought about, but I 
think they should be very proud of what they have done not only in the 
Congress for the country, but I think what we have done for our 
Nation's capital.
  A nation's capital should be a shining example. Instead it was a 
disgraceful situation here that we inherited.
  This 1996 Washington Post article talks about what we inherited with 
some of the medical facilities; in this case, the morgue, and I have 
cited this one before. This is just unbelievable:
  Cockroaches crawling across stainless steel autopsy tables, clogged 
drains that often send blood and body fluid spilling on to the faded 
tile floor, flies droning in the hot stench, so thick it sticks to your 
skin and leaves fowl taste in your mouth. And here is a quote from one 
of the workers there:
  We try to do the autopsies early in the morning, it is cooler then.
  This was the scene yesterday at the District's dilapidated morgue 
near the D.C. General Hospital in southeast Washington where 74 
corpses, more than three times the morgue's intended capacity, are 
being stored in a facility where refrigeration sometimes cuts off when 
it rains.
  This is the mess that we inherited with the District of Columbia. 
This is the way they operated it and administered it, a very important 
fiduciary responsibility in the Constitution. The Congress is 
responsible for the District.
  It gets even worse. It says one body, and this is the report from 
this reporter, Washington Post, who looked at it then. One body was on 
the floor, and some were in body bags that had split open exposing the 
faces of the corpses. The backlog has occurred in parts because the 
crematorium the morgue uses to dispose of unclaimed bodies broke down a 
month ago, and the cash-strapped city had no other way to dispose of 
the corpses.
  This is a part of this argument, and, as my colleagues know, I have 
said before it was easy for us to balance the budget because what we 
did is we limited the increases. They have you think that we took food 
out of the mouths of babies, we closed down social programs. The 
argument we got into was limiting the increases in spending. They had 
huge 10, 12, 14 percent, not mentioning the giveaway programs of the 
District. Seven hundred and twenty-two million, three-quarters of a 
billion in 1 year, to pay for this mess.
  This is what we inherited; it is a disgrace. Can people not deal with 
these facts? I know this has to be embarrassing for the other side, but 
this, in fact, is what our majority inherited, what we have been able 
in a little more than 4 years to straighten out situations like this.
  Then, again, we talk about caring for those who are in most need. I 
talked about the mentally ill children feeding them Jello and rice for 
months. That is the compassionate liberal solution.
  Here, and I used this one last week, I will cite it again: neglected 
and abused children. Now what can be more responsible than taking care 
of neglected and abused children?
  Here is a worker, a welfare specialist who came in from Guam, and 
said she saw some very difficult situations in Guam. This is in 1995. 
But after 6 months in the District's bureaucratic trenches she knows 
she made a terrible mistake. This is quoting from the article. She quit 
Friday saddened and shocked, she says, by a foster care system so bad 
that it actually compounds the problems of the neglected children and 
their families, and she said and then to come here and see one of the 
worst situations, it is depressing. She quit in 1995.
  This is what we inherited. This is how the so-called compassionate 
liberals are taking care, custodians of the Nation's capital, spending 
huge amounts. We have gotten that into balance. We have to take it 
over, and we are getting these programs into order. The difficult part 
is getting these programs into order. But this is the disgusting and 
irresponsible mess that we inherited.
  The trauma center, the hospitals. Basically the hospitals were 
defunct in the District. March 1995, another Washington Post article: 
Impending cutbacks at D.C. General Hospital make it apparently 
inevitable that Washington's only public hospital will close its trauma 
center. This is the busiest center in the city, and the D.C. General 
Hospital is the only hospital equipped to treat gun shot, stabbing and 
other major injuries on the city's eastern side which has the most 
violence and the greatest number of uninsured patients.
  1995, March; this is the story. This is what we inherited.
  Now, again remember $722 million supplement; in other words, they are 
running that debt, the taxpayers of the whole country were funding this 
mess. This is part of what the argument about is with the President of 
the United States. He vetoed our legislation which is responsible 
legislation. We brought the District into an administrative order. The 
48,000 employees, down to some 33,000, and it should be cut even more; 
kicking and screaming, they came, and they picketed us, and they 
boycotted our offices. They kicked and screamed and yelled, but that 
had to be done to bring the administration, to bring the finances of 
the District into order.
  Again, we face a veto by the president of the United States over what 
has been proposed as far as getting the District's house in order and 
as far as liberal versus conservative policies.

                              {time}  2030

  I could go on. We have even more stories about what we inherited in 
the District of Columbia and the battle, the budget battle that is now 
being fought. I guess the latest strategy from our side is to 
incorporate in the Health and Human Services appropriations measure the 
District bill and the President will veto that again.
  But do we want to go back to where they had the District of Columbia? 
Do we want to go to where they had the people of the United States 
facing incredible deficits and the robbing of trust funds and taking 
the money from Social Security funds? I say no.
  But the proposal before the Congress and the President also deals, 
and I want to talk specifically about that here, with whether or not to 
adopt liberal drug policies for the District in addition to liberal 
spending policies. Liberal drug policies in the bill are manifested in 
a prohibition of using Federal money on needle exchanges, for one 
matter, and the other side says give them free needles and they will 
not get HIV.
  In fact, our subcommittee, I chair this Subcommittee on Criminal 
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources and our staff looked into some 
of the needle exchange programs, not only in the United States but 
around the world.
  One of the first needle exchange programs was in Australia, and we 
have a report here, a 1997 report, that said free distribution of 
needles for injections of illicit drugs was introduced in Australia in 
the late 80's on the hypothesis it would play an important role in 
prevention of HIV transmission. Free needle distribution and exchange 
began officially in Sydney, where both HIV infection and IV drug use 
are concentrated, with a trial program in 1987.
  Then a report was done in 1997 in Australia, and it said it 
specifically provides no evidence, let me read from it, ``it provides 
no evidence to support the importance of free needle or needle exchange 
programs and much is to indicate irrelevance to HIV infection in 
Australia.'' This study also goes on to cite several other areas, and I 
have also

[[Page 26897]]

cited the Vancouver study, which also showed that this needle exchange 
program actually can have an opposite effect.
  But that is what the President of the United States, that is what the 
liberal side of the aisle would like to impose, is a needle exchange 
program, federally funded by all the taxpayers, on the premise that, 
again, it cuts down on HIV transmission. The facts are to the contrary, 
the studies are to the contrary, a liberal policy versus a conservative 
policy.
  Now, Baltimore really is the premier city that has had a liberal 
policy. Baltimore is a liberal jurisdiction policy and has had needle 
exchange. I like to use Baltimore as an example because Baltimore, 
which adopted a legal needle exchange program, has actually 
dramatically increased its heroin addicts. In 1996 they went to almost 
39,000, according to this chart provided by DEA. In 1998, they were 
over 56,000, according to DEA. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings) has told me he estimates it to be 60,000 drug addicts.
  In fact, from Time Magazine, this liberal policy, again which the 
President would like to have us adopt and the other side would like to 
have us adopt, this is from Time Magazine just a few weeks ago, not my 
quote, it is a quote of one of their officials, ``One of every 10 
citizens is a drug addict. Government officials dispute the last claim. 
It is more like 1 in 8, says veteran City Councilwoman Rikki Spector. 
We probably lost count.'' Again, not my words, a Time Magazine report. 
A liberal policy.
  If you look at what we have done, again, one of the things I am most 
proud of is we have taken a tougher stance in Washington the last four 
years, and the murder rate in Washington has decreased 14 percent from 
1997 to 1998. We are down to 260 murders. It was in the 400-plus range 
when I came here. Every night young African Americans were being 
slaughtered on the streets. This is still not acceptable, but there has 
been a decrease through a more conservative oversight by, again, I 
think this Republican Policy Committee and the types of policy we want 
in the bill that we presented to the President, which he has vetoed.
  The same thing has happened with New York. The murder rate decreased 
there 17 percent in 1997 to 1998. In fact, in Baltimore, the deaths in 
1997-1998, this liberal drug policy, it is actually one of the few 
jurisdictions where they have stayed the same. In fact, they are 
exactly the same, 312 in 1997 and 312 in 1998.
  This is the liberal policy that the President wants to adopt relating 
to drug programs and to approaches as far as legislative oversight and 
as far as spending. So we can see factually what happens. You get a 
dramatic increase in the number of addicts.
  The contrary is true, and I have held this job up in New York City 
under the leadership and conservative zero tolerance approach of Mayor 
Giuliani, went from over 2,000 murders down to 629 murders. New York, I 
am not sure what the population of New York is, but it has to be 9 or 
10 million people, at least. Baltimore has about 500,000, 600,000 
population now, and it has 312 murders, about half the number. That 
must be 10 or 15 times the murder rate. A conservative approach of 
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has dramatically cut 70 percent of the deaths 
in New York City.
  So we have a choice. We have a choice between a liberal policy and we 
have a choice between a conservative approach.
  Mr. Speaker, with only 3 minutes remaining, I have spoken mostly 
tonight again on the situation we find ourselves in, but, you know, it 
is sad, because the District of Columbia has some wonderful people. 
They go to work and they try to make a living. There are families here, 
there are single parents here, there are so many good Americans in the 
District of Columbia, and we do have an important responsibility over 
the District of Columbia.
  But we tried their way. The jails failed, the prisons were destroyed. 
The public housing was a disgrace. The programs for the mentally ill, 
the children in most need, the neglected, the education programs, they 
all failed. Fortunately, that entire model was not transposed on the 
country.
  The pension fund, just as I pointed out, the pension fund of the 
District was even taken from, just as Social Security.
  I will hold this up as I close, because it is important, not only 
this one bill for the District of Columbia. Many people in America, 
many Members of Congress, may or may not care about the District 
specifically. We are very much, particularly in the House, oriented 
towards the problems of our own District. But it is a Federal 
responsibility. These are decent human beings.
  But should we return to the chaos that they created in 40 years? 
After some four years-plus of hard work and effort to put money back in 
the trust fund, to make the District of Columbia something you can be 
proud of, that people can live and work here, and it is our Nation's 
Capital, it should be a shining example, and those trust funds should 
be really part of our trust. That is why the people of America sent us 
here, for trust, to make sure these programs operate.
  So I hope that the American people will read between the lines. I 
hope that the President will not continue to insist on these vetoes, to 
bring more liberal policies on needle exchange and other drug 
legalization schemes, and then have the fiscal responsibility that is 
so important. It is tough. It is tough being a Member of Congress today 
because we do want to do the right thing, particularly on our side.

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