[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12224-12230]
[From the U.S. 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 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

[[Page 12225]]

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 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

[[Page 12226]]

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 
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.

                              {time}  2115

  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

[[Page 12227]]

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.
  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

[[Page 12228]]

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 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

[[Page 12229]]

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 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?

[[Page 12230]]

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 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.

                          ____________________