[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 29319-29322]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                              {time}  2320

                           ILLEGAL NARCOTICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Toomey). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is 
recognized for 41 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor late on a Tuesday night 
once again to talk about the issue of illegal narcotics. But before I 
get into the issue of illegal narcotics, I must follow up on some of 
the comments of my colleagues, and I am going to try to mesh my 
comments into part of the debate that we are having here in Congress as 
we wrap up the funding of our government. It does take 13 
appropriations measures to fund our entire government. We have been 
through about nine of those bills. Really in most cases now we are down 
to the question of not how much more money to expend but how to operate 
programs. I am so pleased that my colleagues on the majority side, the 
Republican side, spent part of the time tonight talking about education 
and about some differences in philosophy. I think that is very 
important to particularly education.
  I chaired the House Civil Service Subcommittee for some 4 years. If 
you want to find out where the bodies and the bureaucrats are in our 
Federal Government, just chair that panel for a short period of time 
and you will. I quickly found that there are about 5,000 people in the 
United States Department of Education. I also found out that about 
3,000 of them are located just within a stone's throw of the Capitol 
building right here in the Washington metropolitan area. Then another 
2,000 are located in the approximately dozen regional offices 
throughout the United States. It is no surprise that none of them are 
located in the classroom. It is also no surprise that they earn between 
50 and over $100,000 apiece on average. They are very well paid and 
they are education bureaucrats. Their responsibility is to really 
provide the administration for some, it was 760 Federal education 
programs. We have narrowed that down to approximately 700. In addition 
to that, they are part of what I call the RAD Patrol. The RAD Patrol is 
regulate, administer and dictate.
  Basically we found in our work on the Civil Service Subcommittee and 
again exploring what these individuals are doing, is basically they are 
again administering a mass of Federal programs and a mass of Federal 
regulations that are being pumped out. What that does in fact is it 
ties our teachers up in little knots, it ties our school boards and our 
States into bigger knots, and the last thing the teacher is able to do 
is teach. They have put so many constraints and requirements and 
reports and paperwork on our teacher, that if you talk to a teacher 
today, a teacher no longer has control of her classroom, his or her 
classroom, no longer has control over his or her agenda, no longer has 
discipline in the classroom and no longer has respect. All of that, I 
think we can trace back to this massive Federal bureaucracy.
  A part of the budget battle right now is how those education dollars 
are spent. They still want to maintain on the other side of the aisle 
control of the entire education agenda from Washington. I do not think 
that has ever been the case. The best schools have always been parent 
and teacher and local community led. This is a very fundamental 
argument. Balancing the budget was probably one of the easier tasks. Of 
course, we took our wounded in that battle and were accused of all 
kinds of misdeeds, but in fact we did bring the country's budget into 
order, not by decreasing any programs, in fact, we have increased the 
money in most of these programs, including education, but by, in fact, 
limiting some of the increases in the programs that had astronomical 
amounts of increases, the revenue that was coming in was not equal to 
the money in increases we were giving out and we got ourselves into two 
and $300 billion deficits. Every pension fund, every trust fund was 
raided, and for 40 years that continued. It was not buying votes but it 
was giving out more money than was coming in the treasury and then 
taking from all of these funds, some of them even pension funds.
  I oversaw some approximately 30 Federal pension funds out of about 36 
or so that were totally without any hard assets. Every bit of money of 
the Federal employees had been taken out. In fact, that obligation to 
pay back just the interest on the money that has been taken from those 
funds amounts to about $40 billion and is projected to grow in the next 
10 years to about $120 billion a year. It is, I believe, the fourth 
biggest budget item that we have, because there is no money in that. 
Everybody is upset about Social Security and they took basically all 
the money out of those funds, the hard cash put in certificates of 
indebtedness of the United States. Well, they did the same thing to the 
Federal employee pension funds.
  You look at program after program, we have had battle after battle to 
try to get those programs in order. The highway trust fund. I serve on 
the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The highway trust 
fund was another fund that was abused. The

[[Page 29320]]

18.4 cents that you were paying into this fund to build highways and 
public infrastructure, that money was not really going in there. Some 
of it was not being spent to artificially, quote, go towards balancing 
the budget. Then money was also taken out of there and used for other 
purposes other than what the highway trust fund was set up for, and 
that cost tens of billions of dollars to straighten that out. We have 
had a heck of a battle in the House of Representatives to try to 
straighten that out. So whether it is pension funds, whether it is 
Social Security, whether it is the transportation highway trust fund, 
for 40 years they played a game with the American people. Now we are 
paying a penalty in trying to straighten that out. But we are trying to 
do it in a legitimate fashion.
  I chair the Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Subcommittee of the 
House of Representatives. I try to speak at least once a week as the 
person who is responsible in the House in trying to help develop a 
national drug policy. I try to focus on that issue, get the Congress, 
Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues here and the American people to pay 
attention to what I consider the most serious social problem that we 
have, and certainly it is a criminal justice problem with our prisons 
nearly packed to capacity with some close to 2 million, 1.8 million 
Americans behind bars, some 70 percent of them there because they have 
been involved in some drug-related crime.
  We have a horrible situation. As I mentioned, we have had over 15,000 
deaths; 15,973 deaths were reported from drug induced causes in 1997, 
our latest figures. That is up from 11,703 in 1992 when this 
administration changed hands.
  So we have a very serious national problem. This national problem 
also as far as narcotics is intertwined in this budget battle. As I 
say, we have 13 budget bills or appropriations measures that make up 
the total budget and appropriations to run the country. One of those 
funding measures is to fund the District of Columbia. We have an 
obligation under the Constitution since we established in 1790 the 
District of Columbia to fund the District of Columbia and act as 
stewards of our Nation's capital and the district that was set up.

                              {time}  2330

  Unfortunately, in some 40 years of control by the other side, the 
District of Columbia, which should, again, be a shining example for all 
Americans, the place of our national seat of government, a respected 
capital in the world turned into a city in disgrace, a city in despair.
  When we inherited the District of Columbia in 1995, and I came in 
1993 when the other side was in control, and controlled the House, the 
Senate, and the other body, and by wide majorities, and the executive 
office, of course, the presidency, they controlled the entire three 
major determiners of policy for the District of Columbia and for 
national policy.
  But we inherited in 1995 a Nation's capital in disgrace. Part of the 
budget battle today is, and one of the pending items that has not been 
approved, the President has vetoed it several times, and he may veto it 
again, is funding for the District of Columbia.
  I always like to cite from facts about the situation. I do not mean 
to do this in a partisan fashion. We inherited a responsibility here. 
We have had some 4-plus, going on 5 years of running the Nation's 
business, and also overseeing Federal policy towards the District of 
Columbia.
  I cite from some articles about what we inherited. A Washington 
newspaper, July 27, 1994, this article said about public housing, and I 
will quote from the article, ``Hundreds of D.C. families live in 
deplorable conditions as a result of the Department of Housing and 
Urban Development's failure to properly monitor owners and inspect 
various properties,'' says a report by the D.C. accounting office. 
``The study found that 292 HUD subsidized units at Edgewood Terrace in 
the Northeast section of the city, the District of Columbia, failed to 
meet standards, and even called some of the 114 occupied apartments 
unfit for human habitation.''
  This is the type of situation we inherited. The public housing units 
were not fit for human habitation. In fact, the housing agency was 
bankrupt.
  I spoke a minute ago about the taking of pension funds. Marion Barry, 
who was the chief executive, this report in the newspaper of November 
9, Washington, 1994, states that there was $5 billion in unfunded 
police and firefighters pension liability which also was increasing 
costs.
  The D.C. General Hospital was hemorrhaging in red ink, and there were 
other fiscal problems. It goes on to cite the situation with pension 
funds, the hospital, and other matters that we inherited, again, as the 
new majority.
  The situation, I have cited this before, but even the morgue was a 
disaster. This report from early in 1996, again, a Washington paper, 
the Washington Post, reported, ``About 40 bodies are being stockpiled 
at the D.C. morgue because the crematorium broke down about a month 
ago, and the cash-strapped city government has no other way to dispose 
of the corpses.''
  When the Republicans inherited, again, 40 years of their oversight of 
the District of Columbia, we were running approximately three-quarters 
of $1 billion in deficit that year that we inherited this mess. I am 
pleased that as a result of what we have done, not only with the 
national budget but also with the District budget, this is one of the 
first years that the District is nearly in a balanced budget situation.
  We have not replaced all of the funds that have been taken from these 
various funds, just like we have not replaced social security or 
unfunded Federal employee pensions, but we have begun that process. My 
point tonight is we do not want to turn back, whether it is those 
programs that I have mentioned or other programs.
  Another program I have mentioned tonight is the job training program. 
A Washington Post article of October 4, 1994, basically found that the 
city was spending a great deal of money and not training anyone. In 
fact, one of the reports we had was no one was trained in one year, and 
that in fact most of the money went for administration.
  Another Washington Post article talked in 1993 about drug and alcohol 
treatment, something that, of course, is very much of interest to me 
and also to our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and 
Human Resources. This is what we inherited: ``Its drug and alcohol 
treatment programs,'' the District, ``however were denounced as 
inadequate last month by Federal officials.''
  They go on to talk about lack of a mental health commissioner for the 
past year, and other deficits in programs here.
  Some of the worst examples of what we inherited as a new majority is 
this article from the Washington Post in April of 1995. With the city's 
financial situation in almost total bankruptcy, they did in fact treat 
the mentally ill children in this fashion. Let me read this from the 
article:
  ``Some mentally ill children at the District's St. Elizabeth's 
Hospital have been fed little more than rice, jello, and chicken for 
the last month after some suppliers refused to make deliveries because 
they have not been paid.'' This is, again, part of what we inherited 
here in the District.
  I could go on. There are more and more of these articles about what 
we inherited in the District of Columbia. My point tonight is that the 
District of Columbia is now beginning to be in some order, brought into 
some order by the new Republican majority. This is not the time to turn 
back.
  Tonight and this week we do not have an issue over dollars in the 
D.C. budget bill. We still have an issue, though, however, of policy. 
That policy difference is over a liberal approach to drug treatment, a 
liberal approach to needle exchange, a liberal approach to enforcing 
the laws about what are now illegal narcotics in the District of 
Columbia.
  The administration would like to change the philosophy. They would 
like a liberal philosophy, a liberal needle exchange policy, 
liberalization of the narcotics laws in the District of

[[Page 29321]]

Columbia. Our side, the majority, says no, we should not make that 
step, that we think it is the wrong step.
  We have some good examples of what bad programs have done. I always 
cite just to the north of us Baltimore, which has had a liberal policy. 
That policy in fact has caused tremendous problems for Baltimore. 
Baltimore has gone from some 38,000 addicts just several years ago, in 
1996, according to DEA, to the most recent statistics by one of the 
city council members there where Baltimore now has somewhere in the 
neighborhood of one out of every eight citizens, and that could be 
anywhere from 70,000 to 80,000 people in Baltimore are now drug or 
heroin addicts.
  I do not think we need to model liberal programs, liberal needle 
exchange programs, or a liberal program as far as drug laws and model 
it after Baltimore and have that in the District of Columbia. We have 
some 540,000 population here in the District. We probably have some 
60,000 addicts, if we adopted that model and the same thing happened 
here in the District of Columbia.

                              {time}  2340

  We do not think that, in fact, that is the way to go.
  I have also cited in the past, and I have another chart here tonight, 
showing zero tolerance and a tough enforcement policy. Some folks do 
not like that. Some folks call for liberalization. They say the drug 
laws are too tough. But we find this New York City chart, look at index 
of crime. We have index of crimes and that is going down as the arrests 
and enforcement go up.
  Not only do we have crime being reduced with tough enforcement with 
zero tolerance, the statistics on deaths are about as dramatic as any 
figures I have ever seen. There has been a 70 percent reduction in 
deaths since Mayor Giuliani took office. The early years of his taking 
office there were about 2,000 deaths, and in 1998 they are down to 629, 
a 70 percent reduction. Baltimore, again, a liberal drug policy, more 
liberal philosophy with their folks, has had 312 deaths in Baltimore in 
1997, 312, the same figure, in 1998. And one can see what again a 
contrasting philosophy can do.
  So we think that it is very important that we continue the fight. If 
the President wants to veto the bill again, many of us here have said 
let him veto the bill, but we insist on some of these provisions. 
Again, we do have the finances of the District in order. We have 
brought them in order. We have gone from a $700-plus million deficit 
just in the District, almost three-quarters of a billion when we 
inherited the District, to nearly a balanced budget in the District of 
Columbia.
  We have reduced the number of employees from 48,000 to 33,000. We 
have put in new administration. Of course we had to put in a control 
board, some of the operations we had to privatize and some of them we 
had to reorganize. Programs are in order that were a disaster. Welfare 
and schools. They were paying some of the highest in taxes in the 
District of Columbia and some of the schools were the worst performing. 
Paying highest amount per capita, one of the highest in the Nation, and 
again getting some of the lowest results.
  We personally think this paying more and getting less out of 
government is a bad approach and we would hate to see us take now a 
liberal policy and adopt it in place of a conservative policy, a zero 
tolerance policy when it comes to drug enforcement. Again, the 
statistics are pretty dramatic.
  A lot of folks say that those in jail are there because they have 
committed some minor crime offense. That really is not the case. There 
are many myths that are relative to this war on drugs and the effort 
against illegal narcotics.
  We had a study, one of the most recent studies completed in the 
United States was completed in New York by their judicial officers and 
they found roughly 22,000 individuals serving time in New York State 
prisons for drug offenses. However, 87 percent of them were actually 
serving time for selling drugs, 70 percent of those folks had one or 
more felony convictions already on their record. So 70 percent of those 
22,000 individuals were already multiple felons.
  Of the people that are serving time for drug possession, 76 percent 
were actually arrested for sale or intent to sell charges and 
eventually pled down to possession. So some of the folks that are in 
New York State prison are there who may be charged with more minor 
offenses but, in fact, have plea bargained down. And, in fact, some 70 
percent of them have one or more felony convictions.
  So we are not exactly dealing with people who are being put in prison 
for some minor drug offense. We are dealing with repeat offenders.
  But the statistics do show in the manner in which this has been 
handled in New York that, in fact, this tough enforcement, zero 
tolerance does make a big difference and dramatically changes the 
lifestyle, as anyone who has visited New York or lives in New York can 
attest to.
  The other myth that I like to dispel and will talk about very briefly 
again tonight is that the war on drugs is a failure. Let me repeat some 
charts if I may. I hear over and over that the war on drugs is a 
failure. The war on drugs is not working. Let us just take a minute and 
look at what has happened. This chart does show 1980 and the Reagan 
administration and the Bush administration through 1990, and the 
Clinton administration. We see in this long-term trend in drug use a 
continuing decline. And this is through the Reagan and Bush 
administration, a tougher policy, awareness campaign that was made, 
interdiction and source country programs that were properly funded.
  We saw all of that come to an end in 1993 with the election of 
President Clinton and the new majority at that time in the House. 
Actually, the old majority. They controlled the House and the Senate, 
the Democrat side and the White House. One could almost trace the 
dismantling of the drug czar's office and he reduced that staff, and 
the Democrat Congress did, from 120 to some 20 individuals in the drug 
czar's staff. That would be the first blow. Then the next blow was of 
course the hiring of Jocelyn Elders who said ``Just say maybe'' to our 
young people.
  The next thing, if we looked at this chart and we added it in here, 
were the reductions in spending on interdiction and also on source 
country programs. Again, two Federal responsibilities. Stopping drugs 
at their source and then stopping drugs before they come into our 
country and into our borders.
  In the international source country programs, Federal drug spending 
on these programs declined 21 percent in just one year after the 
Clinton administration took office. So to go back to the chart, we see 
a 21 percent decrease. In fact, just in the last year, in this year, we 
will get us back to in international programs to the level of 1992 in 
spending and putting back together the cost-effective stopping drugs at 
their source. If one does not think these programs are successful, we 
have spent very few dollars in the last 2 years in Bolivia and Peru, 
two cooperating countries under the leadership of President Banzer in 
Bolivia and President Fujimori in Peru. In Peru, we have cut the coca 
production by 60 percent in a little over 2 years. And in Bolivia, some 
50 percent of the cocaine production has been reduced. And we can 
almost see the beginning of cocaine trafficking use and abuse in the 
United States, in fact we do see that and we see less and less of the 
product coming into the country. So we know a little bit of money, out 
of billions and billions expended on other programs and certainly 
enforcement, certainly imprisonment and certainly treatment, are very 
expensive programs. But keeping the drugs out of our country again is a 
Federal responsibility.
  The interdiction programs, again, if we go back to the chart here and 
we see 1993, the Clinton administration reduced interdiction, cut 
interdiction some 23 percent 1 year after the Clinton administration 
took office.
  So these charts and, again, we can bring up the exact charts. It 
would almost be nice to superimpose those. But international programs, 
again, in the Reagan-Bush years were at this level. Dropped down. We 
are bringing them back up to where we were 1991, 1992

[[Page 29322]]

equivalent dollars, source country programs.

                              {time}  2350

  Source country programs, interdiction programs, the same thing. They 
cut dramatically.
  Basically they stopped the war on drugs as far as any effort and put 
most of their effort into drug treatment programs. Most people would 
think that we have had a decline just of late or in that period in drug 
treatment programs. In fact, Federal drug treatment spending on 
treatment programs increased 37 percent from 1992 to 1998. It went from 
$2 billion to a little over $3 billion. Interestingly enough, even with 
the new majority, we have increased from 1995 when we took control some 
12 percent in spending, not tremendous increases of that past, but 
there has been a steady increase.
  So contrary to some belief and some myths, we have been spending and 
increasing funding on treatment. But we know that dramatic reductions, 
again, in interdiction and source country programs cause problems. 
Those problems, of course, we are facing today in this budget battle.
  Also on the agenda in Washington this week is how much money we put 
into additional assistance. Today's Washington Post has a story that 
berates the Congress a bit not moving forward on funding for Colombia.
  I cited a success story the last couple of years in Peru and Bolivia 
where we have made great strides in curtailing illegal narcotics coming 
into the United States. In Colombia, we have a reverse situation.
  The administration in 1993 began an effort to really close down our 
efforts to assist Colombia. First of all, they stopped information 
sharing. Next, they stopped overflights and also information sharing 
from those overflights. Where we shared information on shoot-down 
policies, basically the administration shot down that policy. For some 
time, we were left without providing any assistance.
  The next dramatically destructive step that was taken was the 
decertification of Colombia. Now, Colombia could be decertified as not 
fully cooperating on the war of drugs, which is a Presidential 
responsibility in his annual assessment as charged by law. But there is 
in that law a provision for a waiver which would have allowed us to get 
equipment, resources to Colombia. In fact, that was not granted for 
several years. Until 1998, absolutely nothing went to Colombia.
  In the meantime, we have seen the disruption of Colombia. We have 
seen nearly a million people displaced in 1 year, 300,000. We have seen 
some 30,000 people slaughtered, some 4,000 to 5,000 police and public 
officials, Members of Congress, the Supreme Court slaughtered in 
Colombia.
  Now we see the disruption of Colombia and that disruption extending 
up into the Panama isthmus and to other countries. This region produces 
20 percent of the United States daily oil supply, and suddenly this has 
become a crisis.
  The Washington Post asked today in the current budget negotiation, 
``however, no one seems to be looking for money for Colombia.''
  One of my responsibilities of chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal 
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Relations is to find out where the money 
has gone, investigate how it has been expended.
  Last year, we appropriated some $287 million towards the 
antinarcotics effort in a supplemental package, again to try to get us 
back on track with Colombia and in the international arena and 
interdiction arena.
  Today, this morning, and last week, I began a series of closed door 
meetings with the Department of State officials, DoD officials, in 
addition to public hearings that we have held, to find out where the 
money has gone.
  Of the money, I have found that about $200 million actually ended up 
going to the account designated for Colombia. Of that money, to date, 
only about half of the $200 million has actually been expended.
  Unfortunately, we have requested, and this has been a bipartisan 
request of the administration for the past 4-years, helicopters, 
equipment, resources, and assistance to Colombia so the Colombians can 
fight the Marxist insurgency that is financed by international 
narcotics, narcoterrorists. To date, unfortunately almost all of that 
equipment has not reached the shores of Colombia.
  We are told that we had delivered this past weekend three 
helicopters. We have six other helicopters. We have nine helicopters in 
total of which, really, not any of them are fully capable of missions 
yet. Some still need armoring. To make matters worse, we found that the 
ammunition that we have requested year after year to provide to the 
Colombian national police and their enforcement folks that are going 
after the narcotraffickers had been shipped November 1, some few days 
ago. They could not even confirm this morning to me that that has 
arrived.
  Now, we are willing to meet our budget obligations, and we will put 
into Colombia whatever money we need for Colombia to help get that 
situation under control. But we have repeatedly provided funding 
assistance. We have requested the administration to get resources, 
helicopters, ammunition, whatever it takes to go after the 
narcoterrorists.
  I must report to the Speaker and the House of Representatives tonight 
that the track record is absolutely dismal of performance by the 
administration. So it is unfortunate that, even with a supposed 
request, and I asked this morning for a specific request of how much 
money the administration will be asking for, and we have heard anywhere 
from $1 billion to $2 billion, some folks have recommended as much as 
$1.5 billion to assist them over a several-year period, we still do not 
have, and I still do not have as of this morning a specific proposal 
from the administration.
  I think this will be the December surprise. I think that once the 
Congress has finished its work in the next few days that the Congress 
will be presented with a price tag for this failure, failure to get the 
equipment there, failure to get the resources there, failure to spend 
the money that the Congress has already expended.
  So we are going to take a very hard look at that and see how those 
dollars should be expended. We will try to provide additional 
resources. But we must do it mindful of that we are guardians of the 
public Treasury and that those dollars that we ask to appropriate in a 
fashion go to those specific projects, and that the administration 
follow through as directed by the Congress of the United States before 
we pour more money into this war. Again, we are committed to put in 
whatever dollars are necessary to bring this situation under control.
  So we have a horrible situation getting worse. This last chart, as I 
close, shows the latest statistics showing from South America 65 
percent of the heroin now an increase from 14 to 17 percent, the heroin 
coming from Mexico, and some 18 percent from southeast Asia. A picture 
that looks worse for Mexico, worse for South America, and worse for the 
American people and for the prospect of hard narcotics, in this case 
heroin, coming into our streets and our communities.
  Finally, tomorrow we will meet with the Mexican officials, their 
attorney general, their other officials who will be here with a high 
level of working group to discuss the United States and Mexico efforts 
to get illegal narcotics through the major transit country, Mexico, 
under control. It is my hope that we can we can be successful, but we 
are also going to take a large look at Mexican cooperation, which has 
been lacking.
  Mr. Speaker, hopefully next week we will have the opportunity with 
the Congress to come back and finish the narcotics report.

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