Denny Hastert

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, 10 o'clock for legislative business.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Michigan, my good friend, will yield, I am pleased to announce that we have finished the legislative business for the week. The House will reconvene on Wednesday, February 11, at 3 p.m. for legislative business. Members should note that we do not expect any recorded votes before 5 p.m. on Wednesday; and on Thursday, February 12, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for legislative business. On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will consider the following legislation: a resolution providing for consideration of motions to suspend the rules and a resolution regarding the contested election in the 46th Congressional District of California. Once the rule allowing suspensions next week has been agreed to, we hope to consider the following bills under suspension of rules: H.R. 1428, the Voter Eligibility Verification Act; H. Con. Res. 202, the Daycare Fairness for Stay-at-Home Parents; and, S. 927, the National Sea Grant College Program Reauthorization Act of 1997. Mr. Speaker, we hope to conclude legislative business for the week by early afternoon on Thursday, February 12. Friday, February 13, marks the beginning of the President's Day district work period from which the House will return on Tuesday, February 24. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I will not yield. What I would like to do is also say, on my time, that one of the things that the gentleman said over on the other side of the aisle is that, my gosh, the Congress wants to look at these private numbers. These are not private numbers. These are numbers that belong to the people of this country, numbers that we need to take a look at, numbers that we need to judge with. Let me tell my colleagues, I put together a map or two in my political life, and I could tell them, when we go down to census blocks, the very most simple geographical components of map-making that we have to have, we have to have very accurate numbers.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] for yielding me the time. My colleagues, a Republican Jihad? What kind of language is that? What kind of insinuation is that? But I tell my colleagues something. If we want to take a diversion from what this country has done for over 200 years, and that is to count the men and women and children in this country one by one, in a very methodical way, and say, instead of doing that, we are going to guess how many people are in this country, we are going to make some assumptions, and we are going to put some equations in place, and then we are going to put numbers in that equation, and if that equation does not meet the assumptions that we want, then we are going to do a statistical adjustment to make sure that the numbers that did not come out the way we want will meet the assumptions we put in the first place. My colleagues, I think that this Congress has a responsibility first of all to itself, secondly to the Constitution, third to the taxpayers of this country that when we do the census, we do it right. What this bill has done, and of course the White House has worked with this to make sure that that language is in place and is fair and serves the interest of all people, that, number one, we do a test, we do a dress rehearsal; and in that dress rehearsal there will be enumeration, and there will be statistical sampling and statistical adjustment. And when we are done with statistical sampling, we have some transparencies. So we know what the numbers are. We know what the science is. We know what the technology is. And this Congress has the responsibility to do the census, has the ability to make good judgments.

Mr. HASTERT. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. HASTERT. Reclaiming my time, that is correct.

Mr. HASTERT. Never in the history of this country.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, when we put together these census blocks for most simple geographical areas, the test that was done on this statistical sampling, or statistical guessing, in 1995 had a plus or minus 35 percent accuracy, plus or minus 35 percent accuracy. That means, if there is a census block and it could be 100 people in it, well, it could be 65, or it could be 135. We do not know. But when we put those census blocks together and they become the building blocks for any representative district, whether it is county board, school board, city council, State representative, State Senate seat, we have to have accurate building blocks to put these together, because I tell my colleagues, when we go to the Federal court, they choose what program they are going to take on what maps are most accurate, which map has the least deviation. In Illinois, in 1991, the Federal Court said that the map that they chose was because 19 out of the 20 districts had a zero deviation, and one district, the southernmost district in Illinois, had plus 2. That takes pretty accurate measurement. That takes pretty accurate block- building, census block by census block. Now, if we wanted to use statistical sampling and say, guess how many people are in the United States, 277 million, we probably would get a pretty accurate number; or how many people lived in a State, 15 million people, we would probably get a pretty accurate number; or how many people are in a city, 3\1/2\ million, we probably would get a pretty accurate number. When we get down to census block and census block, we need to put a name and address with a place and census block so that we can start to put together those legislative and representative districts that bring people to this body. The taxpayers of this country, the Constitution of this country, expects the very best, and that is what we should give them.

Mr. HASTERT. I will not yield. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman. I first want to congratulate him for his hard work, and certainly the gentleman from West Virginia, the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan], who has worked on this diligently as well. I wanted to talk a minute about the census. There were some accusations, and I probably agree with my good friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank]. We need to go forward. We need to have transparency in the system, and if there is an issue of whether this is constitutional or not constitutional, we probably ought to let the Supreme Court decide that issue. If there is an issue whether this is statutorily legal to do or not statutorily legal to do, we probably ought to let a court decide that. But in the meantime, let me just say a couple things about transparency. Yes, there is going to be, first, a commission that looks at numbers, and, you know, it is not terrible to have four numbers, the four numbers in counting when you actually go out and count people and find out what the number is when you get counting and what the number is when you get done adjusting, which there is not an adjustment. So the number in counting, Number 1, will be the same as number 2. Actually, when you get into sampling, which what you have is that you have a number when you get done, and that number will be X, and then it will be X plus or X minus something else, when you get done sampling. When you do that census block by census block, people ought to be able to see what you do. Whether you take population away from this precinct and you add population to that precinct, there ought to be a transparency about what this guessing business is all about. When the bureaucrats get done guessing what the population should be, because it meets their parameters of what they guessed it should be in the first place, there is a transparency, we can look at sampling, see if sampling is worthwhile, whether it has some value, whether it is constitutional, whether it is legal, and we will look at enumeration, which the Constitution talks about enumeration, counting, one by one. It has been going on in this country for 230-some years. It was prescribed by the forefathers of this country, and I think it is probably something we ought to continue to take a very serious look at. I just have to tell my friends there is one government agency that basically goes door to door every day. They basically know how many people are in each house. It is called the Postal Service. If we need to do an extraordinary job of census, then maybe we could hire some people in the Postal Service on weekends on their time off. They can knock on doors. They know who lives in those houses. Let us do the job that the Constitution says we should do. Let us move forward, let us do the census block, census block by census block, by geographical area by geographical area and put the numbers in there. The test that was done in 1995 says there was a plus or minus 35 percent error rate when you get down to the lowest geographical area, which is usually the census block. If there is 100 people that live in a census block, we do not want to guess whether there are 65 people there or 135 people. Let us get the numbers straight. Let us do it the way it is supposed to be done and pass this bill.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleagues in the House in supporting the fiscal year 1998 energy and water development appropriations conference agreement, and I applaud Chairman McDade and the ranking member of the subcommittee Vic Fazio, for their work to finalize this appropriations bill. This conference agreement provides funding for the Department of Energy [DOE], and I want to take this opportunity to highlight one important investment this bill makes at DOE. The Department of Energy supports scientists and experimental facilities at universities and national laboratories around the country that conduct basic research in important scientific disciplines--including materials and chemical sciences, biological, and environmental sciences, and high energy and nuclear physics. In my home State of Illinois, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory are outstanding examples of the kind of facilities and scientists that are supported by this bill through the DOE. It is important to underscore that for the chemical and physical sciences, the DOE is as important as the National Institutes of Health [NIH] and the National Science Foundation [NSF] are to other research disciplines. DOE has a long history of supporting important basic research, and I note with some interest that this conference agreement recognizes DOE's critical role in our national investment in fundamental research by giving a new collective name to these programs, called simply the science account. I urge my colleagues to support this science account because, like our investments in NSF and NIH, these are dollars that help build our future by supporting the people and facilities that conduct fundamental research. The research portfolio supported through DOE's science account, including high energy physics, has been under significant budget pressure in recent years and funding had gradually eroded. Unlike NSF and NIH, the basic research programs at DOE have not seen even modest increases in recent years and are losing ground to inflation. While I support the funding levels provided in this conference agreement, I call on the administration to strengthen these programs as it works to put together its fiscal year 1999 budget. The administration must keep the science account strong, and I believe that the public and the Congress will support these programs at higher levels. At Fermilab, scientists from around the country operate the world's highest-energy particle accelerator and only hadron collider. The experimental devices at Fermilab are operated as user facilities which allow researchers from all over the world to come to the lab to conduct their research. For 30 years now, Fermilab has been the center of research and discovery in high energy physics, the place where the top quark, the smallest known element of matter, was first observed. The funding provided in this bill will continue to keep Fermilab and the United States at the cutting edge of high energy physics for the next decade. This bill provides funding for a portion of the U.S. contribution to the Large Hadron Collider [LHC], a facility that is being planned for construction in Europe. This past year, the Congress worked with the administration to ensure that our contribution to this device is appropriate and fair, that American scientists have an appropriate role in the research agenda for the device, and that American taxpayers are protected. I am satisfied with the efforts to ensure that we have the strongest possible international agreement knowing that scientific discovery is a global enterprise. The Department of Energy is a large agency with a complex set of missions. We are all stakeholders in the success of DOE in its critical missions, including science and technology, and I look forward to working on the myriad of issues facing DOE in the months ahead.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the members and auxiliary of American Legion Leon Burson Post No. 395 in Plano, Il, on the post's 78th anniversary. Mr. Speaker, the Leon Burson Post No. 395 of the American Legion was granted its charter in 1919, shortly after the guns fell silent in World War I, and the Legion auxiliary was chartered in 1920. The servicemen and women who banded together to form this post shortly after our soldiers and sailors returned home were interested in keeping their spirit of camaraderie alive. They came together through the American Legion with a goal toward serving their community and their fellow veterans, and they have been meeting that challenge ever since. Working with other community organizations, including other service clubs, civic groups and churches of varied faiths, the men and women of the Leon Burson Post have served their community faithfully and well. They participate in programs to benefit hospitalized veterans, they support the Illinois Boys and Girls State programs, sponsor Boy Scout and Cub Scout organizations, work with the local Mothers Against Gangs group, and host the annual Plano Youth Tackle Football banquet. They have held fundraisers for local residents who have needed assistance in meeting long-term health care needs and have even provided scholarships for local students. I could go on and on with the projects and programs these men and women have participated in, but let me just say that those that I have mentioned are but a brief sample of the fine efforts displayed by these dedicated post members. Mr. Speaker, it is organizations such as these that continue to make our Nation strong. I urge my colleagues to join me in celebrating the post's anniversary, and to congratulate American Legion Leon Burson Post No. 395 of Plano, IL for their efforts on behalf of their community and our Nation.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I would like to have the Members' attention for just a minute. I am not going to yell, wail, or scream. I just want to tell the Members what the facts are. Mr. Speaker, the Price-Anderson Act was enacted between the 100th and 101st Congresses on a bipartisan basis so people, if there was a nuclear accident, people could get compensation immediately. What this amendment would do, the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey], it would throw things into the courts. It may be 5 years or 6 years or 10 years before anybody would ever get compensated if, in fact, there ever was a nuclear accident, and there has not been. So what the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] would like to do is to hand this over to the trial lawyers, to the courts, to the private settlement issue, and not get victims compensated immediately. What we are asking in this bill, what the Price-Anderson Act does, is compensate victims immediately so they can take care of their health problems or their physical problems, or any property damage that they received. This amendment ought to stay in place. Price-Anderson ought to stay in place, and we should reject the Markey amendment.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time. If Members want to stand logic on its head, take the argument from the last gentleman from Nevada and say what we are going to do is not the nuclear companies that are the power companies that have this, it is the ratepayers. Ratepayers are people who flip the switch on and expect the lights to go on and they also happen to be taxpayers. So the people who are getting gouged in this amendment are the taxpayers of this country, the ratepayers. What they really want you to do is say, now when you flick the lights on, not only are you going to have to pay, are you paying this contract that you had with the Federal Government and the Federal Government says you are going to take this waste and store it as of 1998, the Federal Government and these folks here say, you can just forget about that contract, that promise to the American people, and, by the way, we are going to ask for more money. But the real ridiculous issue here is they are going to ask for more money. They want more money from American ratepayers, American taxpayers? Mr. Chairman, we have paid in $13 billion. Six billion of those dollars never went to the nuclear repository. $6 billion went to the big spenders over here in the Federal Government. They have funded the United Nations with it. They have funded welfare programs with it. Now they want to fund more of their big government programs with it. I think we need to have some responsibility for the American taxpayer and the American ratepayer, those people who have to be responsible, that have to go out and earn a living, that carry a lunch box to work. By the way, they hope to have lights go on when they flip the lights on, they hope to have a safe place to live. They expect the Federal Government to carry out its promise, its Federal contract, to say they are going to take this nuclear waste and store it. Now all of a sudden they are saying, ``Oh, by the way, we're going to change this bill. We're going to ask you to pay more.'' Mr. Chairman, it is not right. We need to keep the contract with the American people. We need to dispose of nuclear waste in a safe way, and we need to move forward with it. I would ask that Members reject this very expensive amendment to the American people and move forward.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, we are looking at an issue that certainly covers a lot of folks' interests, and certainly the people who oppose this piece of legislation certainly have a backyard interest of their own. Mr. Chairman, 15 years ago, that is how long ago Congress originally passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In 1992, Congress envisioned that the Department of Energy would be accepting spent fuel by 1998. That is less than two months away. Fifteen years ago, Ronald Reagan was two years into his first term, Tip O'Neill was Chairman, typewriters, not computers were the norm, and the Soviet Union was still considered the evil empire. But perhaps most telling was the fact that 1992 was still a full two years before the Chicago Cubs would make it to post-season play. If you are a Cubs fan, you will know how long that really was. Mr. Chairman, unfortunately though, after billions of dollars and a decade and a half, we are only a few steps closer to opening a permanent repository than we were in 1982. This bill replaces the sluggish action that has plagued DOE's Nuclear Waste Program with specific achievable deadlines and ensures that another 15 years will not pass before the Federal Government lives up to its responsibility of accepting spent fuel. Mr. Chairman, we have spent billions of dollars looking into this issue. We have assessed from ratepayers, not taxpayers, but ratepayers. Every time somebody pays their utility bill, we are reaching into their pocket and we have taken billions of their dollars. What has the Federal Government been able to deliver for that billions of dollars? Absolutely nothing. The ratepayers, our constituents, Mr. Chairman, know that it is time for this Congress to take the bull by the horns and deliver the promise that it made in 1982. Mr. Chairman, we need to pass this bill. We need to fulfill the promise to the American people that this country will have a safe and sound nuclear waste policy. We cannot allow another 15 years to go by. Regardless of what we hear on the floor today, we need to find an environmentally sound and permanent solution to the management of spent nuclear waste. Mr. Chairman, I include the following for the Record. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ H.R. 1270 (passed E+P subcmte. 21-3) S. 104 (passed Senate 65-34) ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I remember when I was a kid the old western movies were out there. My mother never told me much about nuclear waste, but we used to watch the western movies. And if they had to stop the train that had the stuff in it from getting to the good guys, first of all they sent the Indians after it. We have to confer with the Indians. We passed that amendment tonight. Then they switched it off on the spur so it cannot go down the track. Well, we can do that. But really the question is here how many bureaucracies do we have to have to stop nuclear waste from getting to a place of safe storage? Well, Mr. Chairman, we have the Department of Defense, first of all, that has some of this nuclear waste. They are involved in this thing. We have DOE, Department of Energy, who prescribes the safe way to transport this, to bundle it, to package it, to store it. And then we also have the Department of Transportation. Now, I understand that the sponsors of this amendment certainly would like to stop nuclear waste from going to a safe destination where we can have a final resting place for this stuff that is stored in scores of States and scores of places, in people's backyards, backyards in our communities next to natural resources. We need to find a safe place to do it. But if they are going to stop that from happening, what they really do here is say, well, let us let FEMA do this now. Mr. Chairman, FEMA has never had any experience in nuclear waste. They are not an agency that deals with transportation of nuclear waste, but we are going to say that FEMA now has the ability to do this and has to put together rules and has to put together a whole process and, by the way, that is going to be a couple of years so we cannot even begin to plan to move nuclear waste in this country until we have another bureaucracy involved. Mr. Chairman, we might as well bring in the Indians and try to switch this thing off onto the dead track. We need to defeat this amendment and move on.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, one of the things that when we look at amendments we have to say, what is the reason this amendment exists? Why do people want to put it in? It is very simple. If one wanted to stop nuclear waste and high-level military waste from moving across this country, as it has for scores of millions of miles, for decades across this country, safely, then one would say we would give the ability for an individual in a State, in this case the Governor, just to veto this and say ``You cannot move this through my State anymore.'' Especially if one wanted to stop nuclear waste from going to a permanent repository or a temporary repository, one would give the Governor the ability, the Governor of that State or of other States, to say, ``I am going to veto this,'' regardless of the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, the plans they have for safe transportation, and the Department of Energy, despite the plans they have for safe storage of high-level nuclear waste, regardless of what those plans are. But one of the things that I think the author of this amendment forgot to look at is the constitutionality. One of the things that we have guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States is the ability for interstate trade, and the movement and transportation of trade across the borders of States not to be inhibited by any one State or any one person in a State. This amendment, to my view, is clearly unconstitutional. What it really does is give the veto power to States and individuals in States to stop interstate commerce, something that is guaranteed in the Constitution. But beyond that, it also is a way just to stop the process, not to stop the process just for the storage of nuclear waste that this bill tries to move us to, a safe storage of nuclear waste, but of all the movement of military waste, of domestic waste that we have in this country today. That means we cannot move it anywhere, we cannot move it off the ships, we cannot move it off of any repositories we have, we cannot move it to safer places. So the only alternative left is to have this nuclear waste stack up in the open, out in the elements, near some of our most important natural resources, the Great Lakes, for instance, in Michigan and other places, and to be exposed to the elements. That is not the best and highest purpose that we have to move forward on to store high-level nuclear waste. It was never the intent. We have to remember that the Federal Government had made a contract with the American people in 1982 that they would take this nuclear waste and store it in a safe way, and when we say store it, we also have to assume it is transportation in a safe manner. We need to move forward and reject this amendment.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, the issue here is what is expedient, how do we get the job done, and how do we make sure it is done safely? Before we ever start to cross the threshold on this whole issue, there has to be an environmental impact study. That is in place. It is being done. What this amendment asks us to do is to every time that there is any action at all dealing with this, there has to be an impact study done, that there has to be a financial research study done. If we want to give $2500 to the Mayville, Ohio fire department to beef up their education, there has to be a financial impact study done. If we want to help railroad employees do safety inspections and we decide to do that, that is an action. And so whenever one of these actions happens, you stop the whole process until the financial impact statement has been done, which might be a whole period of time, and you take instead of the whole gestalt, the whole issue, you divide it into millions of little pieces and you stop that action every time you turn around. I understand that the proponents of this amendment would like to slow the action down. They would like to stop this from happening. They would like us to stop solving the problem of safe storage for nuclear waste in this country. But this amendment that brings this thing down to a death of a thousand cuts just will not work. We need to pass this legislation, we need to do it safely, we need to do the environmental impact statements, we need to do the overall financial statements, but we cannot stop the process a million and 10 times that this amendment asks for. We need to reject this amendment and move forward. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore [Mr. LaHood]. The Chair would advise that the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Dan Schaefer] has 2 minutes remaining and the gentleman from Nevada [Mr. Ensign] has 1\1/2\ minutes remaining.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, H.R. 2610 amends the National Narcotics Leadership Act to reauthorize the Office of National Drug Control Policy and fundamentally restructure the way the drug war is fought. In many ways, this is the most significant antidrug bill since the original authorization of the drug czar in 1988, with the possible exception of the Drug-Free Communities Act, which Congress passed earlier this year. This bill is built around one basic goal, a virtual drug-free America by the year 2001. To achieve this goal, the bill has two basic points: First, it empowers the Nation's drug czar to improve interagency coordination; second, it adds significant accountability mechanisms to ensure that the American taxpayer is getting maximum results from the drug czar's office and all of the national drug control policy program agencies. H.R. 2610 includes additions from both Democrats and Republicans. Although we do not agree on everything, I believe the basic concern for America's future, especially our shared interest in achieving a virtually drug-free America, is certainly a bipartisan goal. I thank my colleague across the aisle, the gentleman from Wisconsin, [Mr. Barrett], and the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit], for being an original cosponsor of the bill, as well as my Republican colleagues, the gentlemen from Indiana [Mr. Souder], the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr], the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton], the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Sessions], the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss], the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman], and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] for their cosponsorship. I will briefly summarize the major provisions. First, H.R. 2610 gives new coordination authority to the White House drug czar's office, including allowing the drug czar to shift up to 5 percent of the counternarcotics funding among the national drug control program agencies upon concurrence of the agency head. It also requires that performance measures be established to give Congress a way to test the effectiveness of each and every drug control program. Additionally, agencies are asked to identify precisely where each dollar of the $16 billion drug budget is going. Other new powers include: Requiring the director to review agency budgets prior to OMB approval in order to find out the real needs of our agencies; acting as the President's chief spokesman on drug policy; and monitoring consistency between agency budgets, performance measures, and results. This bill also creates deputy directors for intelligence coordination and for State and local affairs, both of which are badly needed. At the request of the ONDCP, we also included a deputy for the office to facilitate transitions in the absence of a director. To assure the utmost accountability in our war on drugs, this bill sets forth, for the first time ever, hard targets and goals and precise percentages to be achieved by the year 2001. They are premised on a collection of Federal, State, and private studies and hearing testimony dating back to 1995. These goals are expected to form the basis of a growing national expectation that the drug war must be well coordinated and the national drug control agencies be held accountable for meeting the ONDCP's performance measures. The aim of this bill also is to establish the ONDCP, through semiannual reporting, as a central coordinating entity in the drug war and not as a mere bully pulpit or paper tiger. Finally, this bill contains a manager's amendment, the purpose of which is to reaffirm that the authorities conferred on the Office on National Drug Control Policy, and its director, by this act shall be exercised in a manner consistent with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947. In the end, there are certain to be differences of opinion about how high or how low the bar should be set in this fundamentally reengineered approach to our national drug control policy, but the important point about this bill is that for the first time ever Congress is actually setting a standard, a bar, and empowering the drug czar's office to promulgate aggressive performance measures for the agencies which will provide results. In closing, let me say that we reauthorized the Office of National Drug Control Policy for 2 years, the midpoint between now and the year 2001, which will allow a review of the foregoing innovations 2 years into the 4-year goals. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Madam Speaker, I have worked with the gentleman from Wisconsin for a number of years and certainly appreciate his hard work. The fact is that we have had over 40 hearings on the ONDCP and the drug czar. We have had a dozen hearings this year. We have had General McCaffrey up on the Hill himself. We have talked about these issues. The fact is we are setting goals for this country and for the drug czar to wipe out one of the most dreaded things that can approach this country and our children, and that is drug addiction. We want to make sure that we significantly reduce it and we want to be sure by the year 2001 that we have significantly reduced it to a point that it is not a threat in this country anymore. I do not think that is partisan. It was never set up to be partisan. We want to win this fight against drugs. We have to take an extraordinary effort to get it done. The fact is the drug czar has gotten 7 of the 8 things that he wanted in this bill. He got the flexibility that he needs. Madam Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss]. (Mr. Goss asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, my good friend, the gentleman from California, I am dismayed at what he has said. This is not a partisan issue. It should never be a partisan issue, and we should not try to put up a partisan smoke screen to say this is why we should vote against this bill. We had more than a dozen meetings with the White House. We had the drug czar's office included, and two personal meetings with the drug czar. We asked and complied with the drug czar on seven out of eight requests. The only request that he wanted is a 12-year reauthorization. We said, that is too long, nobody is responsible for 12 years, because the drug czars especially are not here for 12 years. We are saying, let us look at 2 years and then go another 2 years, and let us get the job done. Let us hold ourselves and this administration and the law enforcement and treatment to tough standards in this country. Let us say that we are going to do this, we are going to cut teenage drug use in half. Is that too much? The 20,000 kids who die in this country in hospitals because of ODing and on street corners because of drug violence, to cut drug use in half in 4 years, is that too much? I do not think so. An example, in 1985 to 1992 we cut by 79 percent the amount of cocaine used in this country. Why can we not cut by 50 percent by the year 2000, so we can start in the 21st century with less than we have now, half the amount of kids on drugs? This deserves a yes vote, and I ask for Members' support.

Mr. HASTERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. To my good friend from Chicago, I just want to say that we devote $2 billion on treatment to HHS and initially $90, $100 million to Justice. We also add and allow $3 million for treatment out of the $140 million for HIDTA's, something that is happening now, especially in areas like Baltimore. And we are strong on prevention. We even have $195 million for media prevention and passed the prevention act this year. So I beg to differ with the gentleman from Chicago but that is the fact. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Shaw].

Mr. HASTERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to address the gentleman from Maryland. Madam Speaker, there is $2.9 billion dedicated to treatment and an extra $1 billion more than there were 3 years ago. The Baltimore-Washington HIDTA will continue. It is there. It can still coordinate that treatment. We have made sure that that treatment will flow into that area. Madam Speaker, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum]. (Mr. McCOLLUM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 2610, the bill just passed.