Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I withhold the request. I will just begin my statement, and then we can work out the time as we go along. Before Senator Inhofe leaves the floor, I am just curious. That prison notice that he read, I would like to ask my colleague, was that a Federal prison or State prison?

Mr. BIDEN. In fairness to the Senate, I was supposed to be here at 7 o'clock to start that amendment. So I would suggest that--I have checked this with at least the staff of the minority--the time for my amendment be cut to an hour and a half equally divided so that we are finished by 9 o'clock with this amendment.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I believe that I have 2 hours allotted to my amendment that will be equally divided.

Mr. BIDEN. That is what I thought. On that score, I will be delighted to yield to the Senator from Missouri at this time. Then I will seek recognition when he finishes.

Mr. BIDEN. I am happy to accede to the suggestion of the Senator from New Hampshire, if he wishes, that the time on this amendment extend until 9 o'clock and that the Senator from Delaware would have approximately 12 minutes remaining?

Mr. BIDEN. I will be happy to yield for an observation.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I say to my friend from New Mexico, I have overwhelming confidence in his parliamentary skills. If he says it, there must be a likelihood he is correct, in which case I make a parliamentary inquiry: When is it appropriate for the Senator from Delaware to introduce an amendment that would, in fact, restore the $75 million to the violence against women account?

Mr. BIDEN. That is a very useful piece of information, Mr. President. I thank him very much, and, if it is appropriate, I ask unanimous consent that, upon disposal of the Hatfield amendment, I be recognized to offer my amendment.

Mr. BIDEN. I have no objection.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, will the Senator be kind enough to yield for 30 seconds?

Mr. BIDEN. In the amendment which I sent to the desk numbered 2818, my omnibus amendment, I made a mistake in two places in it in terms of numbers. They were as described but different than written, and it has been cleared with the majority and minority. I ask unanimous consent that I may modify my amendment, and I send the modification to the desk.

Mr. BIDEN. I realize this is a mildly backward way of doing it, speaking to it before I send it to the desk, but I did it, and I yield to the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BIDEN. I send the amendment to the desk. [[Page S 14530]]

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, in keeping with our informality here, let me finish up. I thank my friend from Missouri for speaking to the efficacy of drug courts. Let me speak to two other pieces of this amendment. One is the rural drug enforcement grants. The latest reports from rural America tell a bitter story of violent crime, murder, rape, aggravated assault. It is rising faster in rural America. Most of our colleagues from urban States do not realize this. It is rising faster in rural America than in urban America. From 1992 to 1993 alone, the violent crime rate in rural areas increased 7.4 percent; violent crime among juveniles in rural areas-- violent crime now--rose 15.2 percent in rural areas. Drug trafficking and addiction are also skyrocketing in America's rural States, especially among our young people. Drug abuse violations have increased by nearly 30 percent among young people under the age of 18 in recent years. At the same time, the number of law enforcement employees per 1,000 inhabitants in rural areas has not changed, leaving already understaffed law enforcement teams in rural America to fight devastatingly high increases in serious offenses. In 1993, the most recent year that data is available, 12 percent of our population or almost 32 million people were served by rural law enforcement agencies. That is 32 million people who have watched their communities become frighteningly dangerous. That is 12 percent of the population that has witnessed their children becoming increasingly vulnerable to becoming victims of violent crime or becoming involved in drugs, crime and violence. Rural drug enforcement grants have, we found, been the best way to target assistance to rural area law enforcement agencies. I might point out that Senator Hatch was one of the leaders in making sure this provision was in the crime bill. These grants, which place a special emphasis on drug enforcement over the 32 million people living in rural areas, give the protection they need and deserve. These dollars can be used for the same purposes State and local officials use their Byrne grant money; specifically, funding will support the highly successful multijurisdictional State, local, and Federal drug enforcement task forces. These joint efforts have proven that they work. They have a proven track record of reducing drug trafficking in rural America. Put this in commonsense terms. How can a rural sheriff, a rural chief of police in a town of 800 or 1,000 or 1,500 or 5,000 people, with one officer or maybe as many as three or four, how can they possibly deal with the sophisticated drug operations that come into their areas? They cannot do it. In the good old days when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, many of my colleagues, Republican as well as Democrats, would come to me and say, ``Joe, can you help me get an extra DEA agent in Montana? Can you help me get an extra DEA agent or two of them in Idaho or North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Maine?'' Small States, but rural States. They are big geographically. The reason they needed them is their local sheriffs, their local police officer coming to them and saying, ``We need some expert help and advice.'' We even went so far as to allow for the providing of training for local law enforcement officers from rural and small police departments down at the FBI training facility. They need the expertise. These are brave women and men who are outmanned, outgunned and outsmarted because they are dealing with something that goes well beyond the town limits or the county limits that they have the jurisdiction over. Ten rural States are eligible for these grants statewide. These States include Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming. I will note that Delaware is not on that list. These States that I mention, these 19 rural States are eligible for statewide grants, although all the remaining States, the remaining 31 States could benefit in their rural areas. Rural areas of all other States will receive funds, as well. These grants must be removed from the unfocused block grant and funded separately. If they are to remain in the block grant scheme, they will have to compete with a great many programs for limited funds. Let me ask all who are not in the 19 States, what do you think of the possibility your rural law enforcement officer is going to get this money? What do you think the possibility is that your Governor will send it your way? Do you think maybe it will go where the population centers are? I bet it surprises even some of my colleagues here on the floor to hear me say that violent crime is rising faster in the rural parts of your State than it is in the urban parts of your State. In the block grant, I very much doubt and I believe you would be hard pressed to convince me or yourself that this money which was specifically earmarked for rural areas and States that are rural in nature, they need the help. So I would like to point out that rural areas often come up last when it comes to the so-called funding fight in each State. This fact has not escaped my colleagues in previous years. The need for special targets of anticrime funds to rural areas was also expressed by my colleague, Senator Hatch, on February 10, 1994, while he was speaking in support of the Biden-Hatch rural crime amendment, when he said: We need to get more officers to rural areas where the violent crime problem is increasing at a greater rate . . . drugs, crime, and violence are national problems facing both urban and rural America. Unfortunately, the crime problems faced in rural America have been overlooked by Federal agencies in Washington. They have focused on the crime in urban areas. Yet the problems of rural states need greater Federal attention as well . . . if there is a place where additional Federal expenditures is warranted, it is to fight crime and violence in rural states. That was what my colleague said February 10, 1994. In the 102d Congress, Senators Adams, Baucus, Bryan, Bumpers, Conrad, Daschle, Fowler, Harkin, Heflin, Leahy, Pryor all cosponsored the Rural Crime and Drug [[Page S 14529]] Control Act which I authored and passed in 1991. I believe areas experiencing growth in violent crime and drugs are areas to which enforcement funds should be targeted, especially when those areas are already underfunded and their enforcement efforts such as in rural areas are undermanned. That is why I am asking the rural drug enforcement grants receive direct funding, so they can guarantee rural areas their fair share of help from the Federal Government in ridding their communities of drugs and crime related to drugs. Again, I daresay if you go ask your rural law enforcement people what they would rather have, what chance they think they have of getting any adequate funding out of this when it goes into one big pot and it goes into the State legislature and is distributed by the Governor, I wonder if they think they are going to get a fair share. I predict to you they will not. If the Dole block grant is adopted, the block grant amendment introduced by Senator Dole gives targeted aid to urban areas. The formula for the block grants is targeted to high-crime areas, weighs population in its equation for determining crime rates, and the formula guarantees that urban areas will receive targeted funds while assuming that most rural areas will not receive such aid. In 1993, the most recent year for which data is available, the murder rate grew 3.4 percent in rural America and it decreased 2.8 percent in the Nation's largest cities. Similarly, the violent crime rate rose 1.4 percent in rural areas, while it decreased 3.4 percent in the largest cities. But the Dole block grant proposal that is in this bill targets aid to the most populous areas. It clearly does not target funds to those areas most in need, rural America. While violent crime rates, including homicide, forcible rape and assault, are declining in urban areas, they are clearly on the rise in rural America. And rural America does not receive the funds under this block grant proposal. Rural areas have historically had the hardest time producing funds for law enforcement, and it seems to me we should not allow these areas to continue to receive less attention and less antidrug-related money than urban areas just because they are less populous. This is just an example of the creative budget games that are going on. By providing open-ended block grant funds which may be used for this or any other program, while at the same time significantly cutting the amount of total funding available, my friends are limiting programs such as rural drug enforcement block grants without doing so directly because of where they will have to compete. The last point I wish to speak to at this moment is the boot camps. Our ability to reduce crime in a manner depends directly upon our ability to target offenders with the appropriate time of sentence. This means, of course, we have to identify violent offenders and make sure they go to prison. But it also means we must separate out the nonviolent offenders who can be diverted, potentially, from a career of crime through an intensive cost-effective programs such as military- style boot camps. That is exactly what we did in 1994 with the Biden crime law. We encouraged the States to identify nonviolent offenders and offer them alternative, more cost-effective programs while we, in fact, kept them incarcerated. We provide $9.7 billion to States to build and operate prisons and we gave them the option to use a portion of that money for boot camps. This appropriations bill would completely eliminate State flexibility to use boot camps for nonviolent offenders in order to free up conventional prison cells for violent offenders. My amendment would restore the State option, the State flexibility to use boot camps for nonviolent offenders, to use their Federal prison money for boot camps. Let me first tell my colleagues a little bit about boot camps so they can be clear what we are talking about. Boot camps provide a regimented program of work and exercise for young, nonviolent offenders. And they have shown marked success with young offenders who learn discipline and respect for law and authority. They are put behind barbed wire. They are locked in. They are essentially put in Quonset huts. Some argue it is inhumane. I argue if it is good enough for a marine to sleep in a Quonset hut, it did not hurt him very much, it sure in heck should not be too tough to put a convicted person, a nonviolent person in such a circumstance. At the time we did this in the Biden crime bill just about everybody stood up and supported boot camps. It was one of the few things everybody agreed on. Now I am a little concerned. I do not know what has happened that we would go contrary to the trend of the last year, which is to give States more flexibility. I have heard no one argue these boot camps are not worthwhile. I have heard no one argue that States should not be allowed to have them. And I have heard no one argue that States should not have flexibility. So, maybe it was an oversight that States were explicitly prevented from using their prison money to build boot camps. I do not know. But the bottom line is quite simple. Boot camps work to do one very important thing--I suspect many others, but one. That is, I will end where I started. Two years ago the States convicted--not in Federal court, in State court--several hundred thousand violent offenders were convicted in the State court system. Mr. President, 30,000 convicted, violent offenders never spent a day in jail--30,000, in the States; 30,000 convicted State felons, violent felons, never served a day in jail. The reason they did not is because the State legislatures did not want to go back to their folks in the State and say to get tough on crime we have to build more prisons. To get tough on crime we have to raise your taxes. To get tough on crime we are going to increase our spending. Most States did not do that. What this does, it gives the States the option to be cost effective. For 40 percent of cost, they can take the nonviolent offenders, who are serving time in a penitentiary, behind bars, in a secure, maximum security facility, put them behind barbed wire with folks with guns watching them, in Quonset huts, and free up hard-core prison space for the violent offenders. At a minimum that is what boot camps do. At a minimum. They also do much more. But in the interests of time I will not belabor the Senate with that argument. So, to sum up, what I do here is I come up with a total of $117 million in shifting around of how the Appropriations Committee allocates the money. I take $117 million and I get it two ways. One, I take a total of $21.2 million from State prisons, which were increased by a quarter-billion dollars by this committee over the requested amount, and over what the House has, still leaving a total of $225 million for prison grants. And I take money by increased fees on people obtaining green cards, because they now would have to go home and spend the cost of going home and back to be able to get the green card and now they do not have to do that. It is not onerous. It is a reasonable charge for that privilege. And that is how I get the $117 million in offsets. I take that money and I put it in the drug courts, drug treatment and prisons and rural drugs as well as law enforcement, family support. I thank my friend from New Hampshire for his indulgence in listening to my amendment and I will be happy to yield the floor for him or anyone else to speak against the amendment. But I ask unanimous consent to send the amendment to the desk, that no amendments to my amendment be in order, and that my amendment be in order.

Mr. BIDEN. Yes, I believe so. I would like to ask, how much time would I have left under such an agreement?

Mr. BIDEN. Yes, I would. It is not my intention, by not sending up the amendment, to be able to elongate the time that would have otherwise been allotted to the Senator from Delaware. I will do that. The reason why I have not sent the amendment to the desk is there are a few changes several of my Republican colleagues want, in the form they want it in to be able to send it up. That is the reason. I see my colleague from Missouri on the floor. I am told he would like to speak to the drug court issue. If that is the case, I ask the permission of my friend from New Hampshire whether I could ask unanimous consent to yield to him 5 minutes of whatever time I have, if we reach an agreement on that time?

Mr. BIDEN. I am happy to hear that. But he had the bill for months and months before we started the appropriations process. I do not stand for that reason. I rise to speak to an amendment that I have. Let me very briefly describe it before I send it to up to the desk. Mr. President, the crime bill--which we passed, and is now the crime law--was in many ways authorized in this appropriations bill. My good friend from Texas, Senator Gramm, for whom I have great respect and I have never underestimated his abilities, was very effectively able to, in the appropriations process, essentially change the authorization process by dealing with a number of the provisions in the crime laws that are in place and functioning. What this amendment essentially attempts to do is go back and undo-- whether the Senate will agree is a different story--essentially what was done in the subcommittee on appropriations. I am not speaking to each part of the amendment, but I will give you the major points. One, it reinstates money for the drug courts. The Appropriations Committee eliminated the funding for drug courts, something that we passed a year ago into law and is now law. Second, it eliminates money for drug treatment in prisons. I might note for those who might think that is sort of a silly, soft-headed notion that the States in the United States of America in the year 1993, after releasing prisoners from the jail--prisoners who had served their time in the State penitentiary--as they walked out the gate from a State penitentiary with the clothes they wore in and a bus ticket and five bucks in their pocket, 200,000 of them in one year walked out of that penitentiary drug addicted, drug addicted, addicted to drugs after having served their time as they walked through the portal. So what all the evidence shows is that drug treatment in prisons is as effective as drug treatment out of prison, and it makes a big difference because you have 154 crimes a year committed by a drug- addicted person. If you have 200,000 people, after having walked out of jail, still drug addicted as they walk out the gate, we have a problem. But unfortunately, the meager amount of money that was in the crime bill, in the crime trust fund, which should have been spent and would have been spent in this upcoming year, that also was zeroed out. In addition, there was in the crime law a provision that a vast majority of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, supported when we debated the crime bill 2 years ago, and that was rural drug enforcement grants. I have spent a lot of time with the Presiding Officer, my colleague from Utah. And, as a consequence, I do not pretend to know the State of Utah, but I have become much more familiar with it. I need not tell the Presiding Officer that drug trafficking in methamphetamine with the gangs from Los Angeles moving into rural Utah, drive-by shootings occurring in Salt Lake City that never occurred before, the influx into the large intermountain States of drug deals, drug cartels, and drug organizations primarily dealing in synthetic drugs and methamphetamine--all of them have put an incredible burden on all of those things and have put an incredible burden on the rural law enforcement agencies in the small towns in the State of Utah, in New Hampshire and in Delaware. I mentioned those States because the three Senators representing those States are on the floor. We represent States where the vast majority of their cities are very small. The largest city in the State of Delaware is 85,000 people. Now, I realize Utah is larger than that, and I think Manchester, NH, is larger than that. But the point is, we do not have that many big metropolises. We have tens, scores of small, little towns of one sheriff or one police officer or two or three. And what every rural law enforcement agency said to us when we were writing this bill was that we need help, particularly we need help in the area of dealing with drug enforcement problems, because the problems that are visited upon those small towns are not just the kids selling marijuana in the schoolyard; the real problems that have occurred in the last 10 years is these drug organizations move into those small towns, or they move into the outskirts of those small towns that in effect are incapable of being dealt with across State borders by small, rural law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, the subcommittee on appropriations saw fit to zero out that function as well. I attempt in this amendment to restore that money. In addition, I also restore another thing that was cut totally, and that is the Law Enforcement Family Support Act. Now, most people do not know what that is, but a number of us have participated, and I expect my colleagues on the floor tonight will participate in the ceremonies that take place at the law enforcement memorial once a year, where almost every year the President speaks, whether it be President Bush or President Clinton, and where we deal with and hail the slain officers and the families of officers slain in that calendar year who come to Washington. And they come to Washington to be recognized and to recognize the contributions of their spouses, mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters. A very important part of that, as those of you who have attended may know, is that when that ceremony is over out in The Mall, there are 2 days set up of counseling for the families, the families that come from all across America, that come from Idaho, Utah, Montana, Maine, Florida. You speak to the families of those slain officers, and they will tell you this counseling that they get as to how to deal with this and being able to deal with other families who have been through it is one of the most helpful things that happens to them. It matters to them. What this $1.2 million we cut does is to provide that very counseling. So I hope when my colleagues vote on this amendment, they will remember that next year when they are invited down to the law enforcement memorial ceremony and they see and, God forbid, it will occur we know, another 25, 50, 100 families down there where officers have been slain in the calendar year doing their duty, we will realize that in failing to put this money back in the thing that those families valued the most will in fact not be available to them because they literally leave there, go to a luncheon and get on buses to take advantage of these counseling services. So I attempt to restore the $1.2 million in the Law Enforcement Family Support Act that was taken out by the committee. It also restores--no new money, no change in money--the State option that is presently available under the crime law, under the prison grant portion, to allow States to use their prison dollars to build boot camps if they choose to do it. The argument that we heard on the floor, Democrats and Republicans, for the past year is that we want to allow more local control. We do not want the Federal Government telling people what they should do. We passed, with my support and the overwhelming support of the people in this body on both sides of the aisle, the mandate legislation saying we should not be mandating to the States what they must do without sending the money. But implicit in that is we have also said as a matter of policy that we do not know federally, we have acknowledged we do not know federally as much about the specific needs of the States and the localities as the States and localities know. So I find it curious that my colleagues, at least the majority on the appropriations subcommittee, decided to tell the States they do not have the option to build boot camps. I do not quite understand that. Everybody stood on this floor and talked about how valuable and important boot camps are. But the language that I have in this amendment--and I will go back to this in a moment--restores the State option. No requirement, no State has to build a single, solitary boot camp. They can all go build maximum security prisons. They can do whatever they want to do with the money as it relates to prisons. But they should have the option of being able to build a boot camp, as my State has decided. And there are several other changes that this amendment contains for the [[Page S 14526]] purpose of making sure that we in effect put the crime law back together. This amendment is supported, I might add, by I believe every single major police organization in the country. The legislation relating to law enforcement and family support is specifically supported by the National Association of Police Organizations. As I said, everyone may remember a year and a half ago there were a rash of police suicides across the country including what personal toll was taken on America's law enforcement officers and their families as a consequence of them being shot or wounded or killed. This amendment on the Family Support Act helps deal with that. So let me speak a little more specifically to each of the general areas that I try to restore. Again, $100 million for drug courts, $20 million--and by the way, we authorized $150 million. I should point out one other thing. We are dealing with moneys from a trust fund. These are not any new taxes. What we all decided to do under the leadership of Senator Gramm of Texas and Senator Byrd of West Virginia, when the crime law was being debated a year and a half ago, was to say, look, why not make sure this is not funny money. Why not make sure we can pay for what we say we want to do. I wholeheartedly agreed. And under the leadership of Senator Byrd, with the strong concurrence of Senator Gramm of Texas--and quite frankly, with the ingenuity of John Hilley, who was then the administrative assistant for Senator Mitchell--they came up with a unique idea. Never before, to the best of my knowledge, did the Senate ever set up a trust fund for law enforcement. And the way that was funded, the Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm], insisted that the commitment that we made to reduce the Federal work force by 272,000 people over a 5-year period be written into the law. It had not been legislated before. And so, as a part of the crime bill we legislated, the President would have to reduce the present work force by 272,000 people. OMB calculated how much the revenue that was now being paid out of the Treasury to pay those folks' salaries would be. And we agreed that as that attrition took place--and we have cut now by 170,000 some Federal employees. We have done that. That is real. That has been done. Their paychecks would go into this trust fund and that from the trust fund the funding for the crime bill would come. Now, someone could have argued legitimately that when I say, ``No new taxes,'' they say, ``Biden, you could have taken those savings from the reduction of the Federal work force and you could have lowered the deficit or lowered taxes.'' That is true. We could have done that. But the majority of us--and I for one strongly felt it was a higher priority to fight crime in America and give localities the resources to do that. So I want to make it clear what we are talking about here is trust fund moneys. So what I do in this amendment is I reinstate $100 million of the $150 million for drug courts, $27 million for drug treatment in prison, $10 million for rural drug enforcement, and $1.2 million for the Law Enforcement Family Support Act, and then change other language--no reallocation of funds for making sure that States have the option dealing with being able to use prison money to build boot camps. Now, let my speak to what I think the single most important piece of this amendment is, first, in more detail, and that is the drug courts. The Federal Government has long focused on the fight against illegal drugs, but few of its efforts have shown the promise already demonstrated by drug courts. The key to the drug court program is to punish and control offenders in the most efficient way possible. In fact, it is precisely because of the success of the drug courts seen in model States, that I worked with the Attorney General to include the Federal support for drug courts in the 1994 crime bill signed into law a year ago. Drug courts represent an innovation in how our criminal justice system deals with low-level, first-time drug offenders. Throughout the Nation nonviolent drug offenders are simply released back into society with no punishment, no treatment, no supervision. Nationwide, the most recent estimates are that 600,000 such offenders are on the streets; 600,000 people convicted of abusing drugs and committing crimes sent back out into the streets with no reason not to return to more drugs and more crime and with no punishment, no treatment, and no supervision--1.4 million of these nonviolent drug offenders are convicted every year, and 600,000 of them get absolutely no treatment, no supervision, no punishment. Now, let me tell you how the drug courts work. The drug courts work so that what happens is the States, with the money provided by the Federal Government as seed money, this $100 million, set up drug courts where they take these first-time, nonviolent offenders into the court. They adjudicate their cases very rapidly, usually within 30 days. They then sentence that offender to something, including all of the following: First, if they are in school they must stay in school. Second, if they have a job they must keep a job. Third, they must be subject to random drug testing. Fourth, they actually must report two times a week to a probation officer and a counselor. Fifth, they are required to enlist in drug treatment and stay in drug treatment. If they violate any of those things, they go straight to jail. They do not pass go--straight to jail. In Dade County, FL, which, unfortunately, probably has more experience with drug trafficking and illegal drug use than any other county in America, it was put into effect several years ago. The rearrest rate prior to the institution of drug courts was about 34 percent. Thirty-four percent of all the people who were convicted the first time of a nonviolent drug offense ended up rearrested and reconvicted and back before the courts. When the drug court program was put in place--and it has been there now about 5 years, I believe, maybe a little longer--the rearrest rate dropped to around 3 percent--3 percent. I can say to the Presiding Officer and others who are listening that in my State, the State of Delaware, a Republican attorney general named Richard Gebelein became a superior court judge and set up a drug court system like this--strict, strict, strict rules for nonviolent offenders once they are convicted, requirements of treatment, requirements of public service, requirements of random drug testing, requirements relating to keeping a job, very strict requirements. They were literally required to sign a contract. And when they violate any of those provisions, they go to jail. It is amazing what an incentive it is. It is amazing what an incentive it is. In my State they are going to be going to boot camps because boot camps cost 40 percent less to run than the prison system does, than building bricks and mortar. So they work. I say to my friend from Utah and others who are here, they work. And, unfortunately, I know in the interest of trying to find money for other purposes in the bill, they were zeroed out. So what I do in this legislation is I restore $100 million of the $140 million that has been authorized. Again, drug courts combine a carrot of drug treatment and the helping hand with a stick of mandatory drug testing and the gavel of a judge that says you go back to prison if, in fact, you violate any of the provisions. For example, as of about 1 month ago, the Delaware drug court had worked on 481 offenders in my small State in what it calls its track one program. That is, 143 of these 481 people had completed the program and were on their way to being productive citizens; 80 were, to use the Delaware judge's phrase, ``terminated.'' In other words, they were sent back to jail. And the remaining 258 are presently working their way through the program. But an interesting thing, I say to the Presiding Officer. Guess what? Of those 481 people who were in the system, committing an average of 154 crimes a year, the crime rate has gone down precipitously among those people. And those who could not stay in the system were, to use the phrase of the former attorney general--now judge--Gebelein, they were terminated. They were sent to jail. Absent the drug court system around the country, what happens now is they never get any treatment, they never get any punishment, they never get sent to jail; 600,000 of them a year are out there walking around after having been convicted. So I say to my friends, as they look at this, ask their judges in their home [[Page S 14527]] State, ask their probation officers, ask their police officers, ask their prison officials, and I can tell you, they will find almost without exception that the drug court innovation is viewed as one of the best hopes law enforcement has to deal with what is ultimately the problem. And to paraphrase a phrase used in a Presidential campaign last time around, ``It's drugs, stupid. It's drugs.'' Crime is drugs. ``It's drugs, stupid. It's drugs.'' Now, on the point of drug treatment in prisons, I will again merely make the point that it works. Last week the Department of Health and Human Services released preliminary estimates from the 1994 national household survey on drug abuse. And its report is alarming. The survey found that among youth age 12 to 17, the rate of illicit drug use increased between 1993 and 1994 from 6.6 percent to 9.5 percent. In the past year, nearly 10 percent of our youth were using illicit drugs. Marijuana use among 12- to 17-year-olds has nearly doubled from 1992 to 1994. Perhaps even more frightening than the upsurge in use trends is the increase in the perceived availability of illicit drugs, substances in all age groups. The percentage of youth reporting that marijuana was easy to obtain increased by over 10 percent. Fifty-nine percent of the young people in America said marijuana is easy to obtain and they know how to get it. There was an increase in the perceived availability of LSD, PCP's, and heroin for all age groups. The percentage of people age 35 and older who claim that cocaine was easily obtainable increased from 36 to 41 percent. Clearly, despite the progress we made in drug abuse prevention and treatment and law enforcement, there is still a great deal more to be done. And things are moving the wrong way. Given the need for more and greater efforts in the war on drugs and given their call for a strong stand on the drug issue, I cannot understand why my colleagues in this body employ the decision to abandon the key antidrug initiative in the 1994 crime law. Specifically, I would like to mention the three programs they have eliminated. One I have spoke to--the drug courts; second is drug treatment in State prisons; and the third is rural drug enforcement grants. I do not quite understand why, as we talk about drugs, we in fact find ourselves with legislation that cuts our effort in fighting drugs. Last year, the 1994 crime law took a strong stand against drug abuse in rural areas, against drug abuse throughout the court system and in the prison system. But this bill zeros out those functions. So it always surprises me, when we talk about being tough on drugs, why more of our colleagues do not go home and talk to their police, why they do not talk to their prison officials, why they do not talk to the tough guys, the law-and-order types, who will tell them. I am telling you they will tell you that in fact they want these programs. What my amendment does, it takes funds from an open-ended, unfunded block grant to make sure that these dollars are targeted to the antidrug measures I mentioned. In other words, the amendment allocates funds directly--what we do is we take $117 million in the bill--we do not look for any money anywhere else --and apply it to the three programs I mentioned, and here is how we do it. We increase the fee charges to obtain green cards. A few years back, when the non-U.S. citizen was in the United States and applied for and was authorized to obtain a green card, that person would have had to return to their native country and then reenter the United States legally. In 1994, we passed a law that allowed the person in those circumstances to remain in the United States and obtain the green card if certain requirements were satisfied. That person paid an additional fee of a few hundred dollars. The rationale behind the additional fee is that, in paying the fee, the person did not have to leave the United States, return to their home country, reenter the United States, and they saved a round-trip fare ticket. In addition, there is $21.2 million in offsets from the reduction in the State prison grants. I note that the House funded the administration's request of $500 million. The bill before us provides $750 million for prisons. We all know that whatever comes out of conference is not going to be $750 million. So we take $21 million--a mere $21 million--out of the additional $250 million for State prisons that the Senate subcommittee put in. And should it be adopted, the bill would still provide more than $725 million for prison grants. And so when my colleagues legitimately ask, OK, Biden, let us assume the three programs that you and the cops talk about all the time are as good as you say, and that is drug courts, the drug prison money, and drug treatment money in prisons and rural drug enforcement--what I did was I found the $117 million to offset that from the places I just stated. I see my friend from Missouri. I have more to say. How much time remains for the Senator from Delaware?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator. Maybe he could make that very compelling speech to Mr. Gingrich so we can actually pass the terrorism bill instead of him holding the terrorism bill up that we--the Senator from Oklahoma and I--worked so hard on. The House has not passed it yet. It is a great emergency. I have not heard any speeches on the floor from my friends who were decrying failure to move quickly on the terrorism bill when we had it. I have not heard any speeches about why the Republican House of Representatives is holding it hostage. God only knows. Maybe it has to do with a line-item veto that they used to be for as well in the House. I am not sure. But I think we would all serve the Nation well if we constantly spoke out and asked Mr. Gingrich to let the terrorism bill go instead of turning that into a habeas corpus reform. I would hate to have that sit over there for the remainder of the year.

Mr. BIDEN. Sure.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator. I was just curious. I would point out to him that in the Federal prison system, we stopped fooling around-- unlike the State of Oklahoma or the State of Delaware and other States--we stopped fooling around like many who served in the State legislature fool around. We passed an amendment that the Senator from Delaware offered in the late 1970's and early 1980's. It is called ``the same time for the same crime.'' You get convicted in the Federal court, you go to jail for all the time, and I am just sorry the State legislatures are not as we have been and as the Federal Government has been for a long time.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield the floor. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Joe Biden

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