Denny Hastert

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. I think most of the evenings we will be done by 7 p.m.

Mr. HASTERT. We have planned a full schedule with appropriations bills being heard. It is our intent that we will be in session that Friday until, I think, 2 p.m.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that we have completed our legislative business for the week. With the passage of the Balanced Budget Act and the Taxpayer Relief Act this week we have made an important first step in our fight against welfare spending and for lower taxes. This bill just passed brings American families the first tax cut in 16 years. With that today, we begin the Fourth of July district work period; and although the majority whip will distribute an official schedule next week, I would now like to outline some of the major legislation the House will be considering upon our return. The House will reconvene on Tuesday, July 8, at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will postpone any recorded votes until 5 p.m. on Tuesday so our colleagues from the west coast can have time to get back to Washington. On Tuesday the House will take up H.R. 849, a corrections day bill to prohibit illegal aliens from receiving relocation assistance; a number of suspensions, a list of which will be distributed next week; and the Military Construction Appropriations Act, which will be subject to a rule. On Wednesday, July 9, and Thursday, July 10, the House will meet at 10 a.m., and on Friday, July 11, the House will meet at 9 a.m. to take up the Intelligence Authorization Act and the Interior appropriations bill. We will finish legislative business by 2 p.m. on Friday, July 11. I wish everyone a wonderful Independence Day, and I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley] for yielding me the time, and I want to congratulate him on the work he has done. Mr. Speaker, we hear a lot of speeches here. Some are pretty informational, and some really border on demagoguery, just plain demagoguery. But let us look at the facts. The facts are, if KidCare services are dropped, at least 2.6 million low-income uninsured kids will lose. The analysis by CBO and CRS estimated that KidCare services will insure an additional 2.595 million children. Preserving the services of KidCare insures a grand total of 5 million currently uninsured children. So what we saw a few minutes ago is not what we get. What we really get are kids that do not have insurance today being covered, being able to go to the doctor, being able to go to the emergency room, being able to be taken care of and get the inoculations they need. The budget agreement calls for KidCare services, and not only services but the expanded coverage low-income and uninsured kids do not have today. The KidCare agreement provides children's health services. It helps hospitals and community health centers. That is where the entities are that can best help our children, the most unserved children today. The budget agreement also provides and allows services to make support for our Nation's 70 Children's Hospitals possible. I thank the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley], the chairman, for the fine work he has done.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, bigger government, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on the States. As a matter of fact, we create more loopholes for the States to jump through and what we do is deny the States providing kid care for kids. So those 2.6 million children who were going to benefit from this program all of a sudden will not have States providing health care for them. Too much bureaucracy, too much extra cost, too many new hoops to jump through. The States are not going to do it. The States are not going to follow this. And I think it is a bad idea at a bad time.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, the problem of drug use in our Nation is growing. We have heard all the statistics today. We can talk about statistics and illustrate the problems. We know that illicit drug use among our most vulnerable population, our kids, is growing. We know that the number of kids who would say that they would never try drugs have dropped. We know that parents have stopped talking to their children about drugs. We also know that centralized Federal programs, the big government, so to speak, is not always the answer. We do have a responsibility. We have the Coast Guard to make sure that we stop drugs coming across our borders. We have the customs agents and the border patrols. That is our job in this Congress, to make sure that we can stop drugs coming in. But the most effective way to stop drugs is prevention; to teach kids, to give them the support to stop them wanting to try to use drugs. This is what the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman], and I congratulate him, and my good friend, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Rangel], who has been on the front of this whole drug issue for a long time, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin], the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Barrett], the ranking member, I thank him for his good work, this is what we are doing. We are pulling together to make sure communities have the ability to fight this problem. We are not pouring a lot of money, but we are saying if communities can bring their faith-based, fraternity-based, civic-based organizations together to have effective drug prevention, then we can go ahead and we will help them. If they need a little bit of support, if they need a director or something along those lines, we can help them through this bill. This is the right direction. This is not the only direction but this is the right direction for this Congress to go in order to fight drugs. We need to start in the communities. We need to start with people back home, and this bill does it. I certainly congratulate the gentleman from Ohio, and I support this bill and ask everybody else to support it.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Dakota, who has made a great impact in his freshman year here in this Congress, and we certainly appreciate the good work he has done. The gentleman is right, this Congress is making history. I think the 104th Congress made history when we had the contract, and we started to do the things that people said, there is some commonsense things that Congress ought to do. We ought to make government a little bit smaller and smarter. We need to start cutting our cost of government. And, of course, the 104th Congress was the first Congress that spent less than any other Congress before it, I think which goes back 40 years. As a matter of fact, we saved $53 billion, but we could not pass a balanced budget amendment in that Congress, did not get it through the Senate and may not get a balanced budget amendment through this Congress. We certainly hope so, and we will come back and work at it again. But one of the things we need to do is balance the budget. That is what it is all about. And we have worked hard to do that. That is one of our goals. I think the American people, first of all, expect Congress to balance the budget. They also expect us to do the job and, if we cannot pass an amendment, then we will have to do it the hard way; that is, get down. And, of course, one of the things that we have had problems over the years is that the amount of money that Congress actually appropriates is just a fraction of what the amount of money that Congress actually spends. What Congress spends are the entitlements. Over the last 50 years, entitlements, that is money that never passes through the Committee on Appropriations, that is money that is never actually voted on by the Congress, it just is spent. It is the debt. It is farm programs. It is Medicaid and Medicare and other things out there. Those are the entitlements that have gone awry. They have had an increased inflation rate of about 15 percent per year. Any time that you have a 15 percent per year inflation rate, we find out that all of a sudden the money we have spent every 5 or 6 years doubles and that is what has happened to the debt. We find ourselves with a debt of over $5 trillion, a huge debt out there, and, as a matter of fact, $1 out of every $4 that the Federal Government brings in just goes to interest on the debt. One of the things we have also found out is that what we have done is saddle our children, the gentleman talked about his kids and he worries about his kids, we have saddled our children with a debt that they are going to have to pay off unless we do something now. And now is the time. We cannot pass it off for another year or another decade or into the next century. We have to do it now, if we are going to affect the future for our children. As a matter of fact, a child that is born today will have to go out and earn $168,000 or some huge number like that just to pay his or her share of the interest on the debt. So what has Congress decided to do? What have we tried to lay out? What are our parameters here? Well, we want to balance the budget of this year, 1997, in a bipartisan blueprint. And we have. We have worked with the other side of the aisle. That is what the American people want us to do. They elected the President and they elected this Congress. So we need to come out together and find a way to work together. And we have. So we have a bipartisan blueprint for the future in order to get Washington's fiscal house in order in the next 5 years. So by the year 2002, we have balanced that budget. So the four principles that I think that we talk about when we have tried to work on that budget agreement, budget plan, is that we are balancing that budget by the year 2002, and we have to keep it in balance. We cannot just balance it once and say we have done that. We need to keep it in balance. And if we have any kind of growth at all, if we have the kind of growth that we had in JFK's term of office, economic growth, we have certainly seen the stock market go up, we have seen job expansion, we see the lowest unemployment rate in this country that we have seen in decades, so the economy is expanding. If we have the kind of expansion that JFK had, we could balance the budget in a year. We could actually balance the budget and start to bite in and take out that debt. If we have the kind of expansion we had during the Reagan years, we could start to balance that budget in 2 years and start to dig in to that debt and pay off that debt and get it down so our kids do not have to pick it up. And if we have regular growth that we have had, the average growth that this country has had, around 2.3 percent, something like that, then we could start to balance that budget. It will take a little longer, maybe 4 or 5 years, but we are in exceptional times. And certainly if we can get the budget agreement together and have some type of exceptional growth that we are certainly experiencing, we can do a phenomenal thing and try to balance the budget and do away with that huge debt we have. So that is the first principle we have to keep in mind. Then, one of the things that I think we owe to the American people is tax relief. It is something the Republicans have talked about for a long, long time. We have talked about it in the Contract With America and then we talked about it as we came into this election year and through the election, and now here we are, we are back in Congress. Tax relief. What does that mean? Is it special groups of people? Some say we are just giving tax relief to special groups, but it is the American workers, the family, the middle-class Americans that need help. A fellow in my district who is a schoolteacher talked to me and said, I earned $35,000 last year. I wanted to do something for my wife and my kid, and I wanted to buy a computer so they had something at home to work on and enjoy this, so I went out and got a part-time job. He made $5,000. Just about $5,000. He said, by the time I ended up paying the taxes on that extra $5,000 that I earned, it was not hardly worth going out and doing it. It put me in a higher tax bracket. It changed the contributions that my wife had to make. All this problematic situation that he got into was a disincentive. It is a disincentive for people to go out and be productive. He said, I would probably have been better off if I had stayed home and did not do it. But he did do it. And he is a hardworking American, proud of his family, proud of being self-sufficient and taking care of his family and buying a home and being part of the American dream. So I said, well, one of the things that we are talking about is the child tax credit, a $500 tax credit per child. If there are two kids at home, it means that that family, for every child they have at home under the age of 21, there would be a deduction for $500. If a family has three children, it is $1,500 credit. That takes off the tax responsibility that a family has on their taxes. That is for people who work. That is something that is great for people who are providing for their family, buying a home, keeping the kids in school, working a couple of jobs to make things work. Those are the types of things we can provide for the American family, is that type of tax credit, that type of help. Also, one of the things we have certainly talked about in tax relief, we have a lot of seniors in my district and people who have bought and made an investment from time to time throughout their life, hopefully to save for their future. Well, their future is here. Those people are 65 or 70 years of age, maybe 72, and the house that they bought, the tenant house they bought, or the starter house themselves, they kept it for a tenant house and built a new house for themselves in the 1960's or 1970's, and that tenant house they bought for $25,000 or $30,000 back then, today is worth $150,000, $160,000. And then they start to figure the capital gains, the penalty they have to pay because they made an investment for their future to take care of themselves. Instead of worrying about Government or some agency or some Government handout program to take care of them, they provided for their own future. But what is the penalty? It is such a huge penalty on capital gains, they say I am not going to hand that money over to the Federal Government, I will not sell that tenant house, or I will not sell that stock, or I will not hold back the 40 acres we bought a couple of years ago because I cannot afford to sell it. So capital gains have stopped people from cashing in on those investments they made for their future because there is such a penalty. We will change that. The capital gains treatment we have in this bill will allow our senior citizens in this country to be able to start to sell some of those assets off so they can provide for their own future, something that they worked on for 25 or 30 or 40 years to make a difference. Certainly we can start moving those assets around in this country. We can talk about the development that we have. Certainly a positive thing. And, of course, the death tax that people have to live under. A small family business, the family farms that we have; people are afraid that if they die they cannot pass their farm on or they will not be able to pass their business on to the next generation. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the tax treatment out there, the death tax, so that people do not have to give up their small businesses or sell everything off on the farm for them to pass it on to their children. That is a very, very important issue and something that we provide in this bill.

Mr. HASTERT. I thank the distinguished majority leader from Texas. He certainly speaks words of wisdom. We listen to those all the time. I thank the gentleman very much for being here.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. What has happened, Uncle Sam has been penalizing folks who want to put the free enterprise system to the test and save for the future. Americans should be able to keep more of their hard-earned money, and that is what this bill would allow them to do. Mr. Speaker, I would recognize our majority leader in the House, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], for anything he may have to say.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, my colleague was talking about schools. The gentleman would be interested to know, my weekend in Switzerland and during that period I gave about three workshops and a major speech, and some interviews. I talked to one Swiss school teacher who taught in a grade school, public grade school. She lost her job for warning her students against heroin use after one of her students died from an overdose. My colleagues can imagine the pressure that school boards are under as a result of this liberalization, when a teacher is fired who warns her students not to use drugs after one of their classmates died, and this is an insidious thing and it is happening right now. One of the things that we have to look at, Mr. Speaker, and certainly my colleagues, if we do not agree with heroin legalization, and I have to say we talked about what happened in California on the legalization of marijuana for glaucoma and pain relief. Our friends in Arizona also passed legislation. The Arizona Legislature just turned that around, much to their credit. But we can say something. I would say if we do not agree with heroin legalization, if we think that administering to thousands of young people this ability for them to get marijuana, using propaganda like the gentleman used, certainly is not a great credit to our country or to Switzerland. I recommend that probably the Speaker and our colleagues, we ought to call the Ambassador, Alfred Defago, at the Embassy of Switzerland, right here in the United States, right here in Washington, if we believe that the Swiss companies, who have had the privilege of doing business in the United States, would know that we disapprove of heroin legalization. We expect them to speak out, too. They should speak out in this country and in Switzerland. The laws that these companies have to live under here where we have drug protection for workers and people who buy the products that these workers make, they do not exist in Switzerland, because the Swiss have not signed an agreement with the European Union, and they have not signed an agreement for the other European communities such as Holland and Sweden, who have had to virtually clean up their act because of this cooperation between European nations. Switzerland is completely independent, and the newspapers in Switzerland called the people who were trying to change the drug policy and push this issue of Youth Against Drugs, they called them just insidious names such as psycho gangs, because they were psychologists and doctors that are trying to change this situation. I think Swiss companies who have had the privilege of doing business here need to hear it from American citizens who buy their products. Some of the Swiss companies that are involved are right here doing business in the United States. For instance, Asea Brown Boveri in Virginia and Indiana and North Carolina; New Jersey, Florida, and Ohio. ABB should be asked to publicly oppose heroin legalization if they are going to continue to do business in America. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, let me add that a few other Swiss companies that do business in America should be asked to stand up and oppose heroin legalization in Switzerland. AGIE USA in North Carolina; Swiss Alamo Cement Co. in San Antonio, Texas; and ASA Aerospace Company in New York; and the ASCOM Holding Company in Connecticut; all of those companies are doing business here and they have an influence back home. The relationship between the United States and Switzerland is very close. We ought to stand up and say, no, in this country. They ought to stand up and say, no, in their own home country of Switzerland.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, in Minnesota, our Members from Minnesota might consider calling the Brudier Co. and tell them to take a stand in favor of Youth Against Drugs in Switzerland. We talked about our tourist trade. Swiss hotels that are across this country in Chicago and other big cities, people who fly on Swiss Air, evidently in Switzerland, those pilots are not required to take drug tests because it is against the law in Switzerland to require somebody to take a drug test. I would think twice before I wanted to fly in that type of a situation. People who go on ski vacations in Switzerland, there are literally tens of thousands of Americans that do it. There is no protection against the guy that runs the ski lifts and protect people on those slopes that somebody in there is not on drugs. Of all of the thousands of people who are drug free, it only takes one person who is a heroin addict who cannot be tested because of Swiss law and can cause real problems in those areas.

Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman. One of the things that he was remiss in saying was that he was a sponsor of a bill that said we need to look at what is happening between our country and another country, a close neighbor, Mexico. He and a colleague from Florida, [Mr. Shaw], sponsored a very tough piece of legislation, and we are not done with that yet. So we really appreciate his efforts and his strong antidrug stance. At this time I yield again to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder].

Mr. HASTERT. I think the pressure could start here in the United States. You talked about Ciba-Geigy. I think we could call the president of Ciba-Geigy, Doug Watson, and tell him to stand up against the legalization of drugs in Switzerland. Perhaps hundreds of other Swiss companies who benefit from trade from the United States, Americans Against Heroin Legalization could call the Swiss Bank, Swiss Credit, or Credit Swiss, the big bank that has been silent on this issue that certainly should be vocal in supporting Youth Against Drugs in Switzerland. Credit Swiss should be vocal in Switzerland to stop the legalization of heroin. In New York, Robert O'Brien is the regional head of Credit Swiss. In Los Angeles, the Credit Swiss head is David Worthington. In Florida, Max Lutz, who represents senior management at Credit Swiss. Those people should know that Members of Congress do not really appreciate that.

Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from Indiana. It is interesting, you can imagine my shock and chagrin when I went to a place that I had visited 25, 30 years ago, Zurich, Switzerland which at that time it was a pristine city on a beautiful lake shore. Today that city is not so pristine. There are addicts in the train stations, there are addicts off in the alleyways. The city at one time just recently gave away 15,000 free needles for heroin use a day. Today if you declare yourself as an addict in Switzerland, you have a pension granted to you of 2,500 Swiss francs, and it is 1.4 Swiss francs to the dollar. If you have a dog, you get another 500 Swiss francs. If you have a wife, you get another 2,500 Swiss francs. If you have a child you get another 350 Swiss francs. So you can have a pension, declare yourself an addict, have a pension of about $4,000 a month and live and get free heroin. What kind of a message does that send to the rest of Europe? What kind of a message does that send to the world? What kind of a message do our kids get from that country? We have enough problems. We do not have to just point to Switzerland. We have enough problems here. But we cannot afford to let countries who have traditionally been our allies slip into this type of morass. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] who has been one of the stalwarts in the fight against drugs, both in this country and trying in interdiction abroad.

Mr. HASTERT. I would hope so, and I hope that they learn from our good experiences. But you are right on target. You know we have about 36, almost $37 billion of Swiss investment in the United States so we are dealing with Swiss companies day in and day out, and we probably ought to send a message. You know, it is not everybody has been coopted in Switzerland by this. I worked with a woman by the name of Dr. Francesca Haller who had led this group, and it is called Youth Against Drugs. They have an initiative that they are trying to move in the Swiss legislature, the Swiss Parliament, even as we speak, and they hope that this referendum comes sometime in September or October, that time period, but they have 140-some thousand people who signed this petition saying: ``You know, we don't want drugs in our country. We're going to fight to stop drugs.'' But it is amazing, it is just absolutely amazing that, you know, there is three languages that are spoken in Switzerland, and the German-speaking newspapers have been for liberalization, and liberalization is a code word for legalization of drugs, and there has been a lot of suspicion that the people who serve on those boards of directors of newspapers are also boards of directors of the Swiss banks, Swiss banks that we have always held up as being the epitome of solid issues until of course the Nazi gold issue came forward. And now we know that Swiss banks harbored millions of dollars of drug money that came from Mexico and was in the account of a fellow by the name of Salinas that we have heard of before; and there is a real suspicion out there that the Swiss banks are pushing the Swiss newspapers, the German-speaking newspapers, to legalize drugs so that they can be the holders and the movers of illegal drug money. And if that comes and happens, it is just not a Swiss problem, it is not only an American problem, but it is a huge international problem, and I think that is something that we have to be very, very cautious against, we have to make sure that that does not happen, and it is just a huge thing that the world financial system has a possibility of getting embroiled in. And as I said before, the ability to move money from country to country is the whole key to drug narco-traffickers being able to move their products from South America to the United States, from South America to Europe, from Asia and Thailand and Burma and India, you know, to Turkey, to Europe. All these things have these huge interconnections, and the drug trafficking is only the other side of the coin from the whole issue of being able to move money or drug laundering. The gentleman from Florida.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I think that is really an important point. I think that is one of the things we need to look at. Mr. Speaker, for hundreds of years we looked to the Swiss for chocolate and we looked to them for Swiss watches and Swatches and things like that. We also respected the integrity of the Swiss banks. During the Hitler era, the Jews trusted the Swiss to protect their accounts from the Nazis. However, after the war, the Swiss took bank deposits of murdered holocaust victims and funneled them to Swiss businessmen to cover assets seized by East European Communist regimes. According to recent news reports, while the Swiss Bankers Association admits to $32 million in diverted deposits, the World Jewish Congress believes the figure may be as high as $7 billion. But in 1992, the Swiss bank secrecy laws, which had concealed the diversion of these funds, were repealed, and this change removed Switzerland from a short list of countries whose banks are capable of masking deposits delivered from such illicit sources as drug profits. Some countries, like the Republic of Seychelles, have banking laws that permit large deposits of suspected money. Although there is no direct evidence that Switzerland may be joining these ranks, legalized drugs could normalize financial transactions with drug kingpins. So one of the things we need to be careful of, if Switzerland does legalize drugs and legalize heroin, then the profits from those drugs can be moved into Swiss banks and that money can be transferred all over the world. Thus, the drug money that happens in the United States or Mexico or Thailand, moved into the wire system, moved to Swiss banks. So I think that is something that is very, very treacherous, something that we need to be very, very careful about. Our committee will be looking into this, will be working on this, and I hope that we will have another special order on this issue. I would encourage Mr. Speaker and all of the rest of my colleagues to be sensitive to this. Talk to these Swiss companies, be involved, and let us turn this around, turn it around in Switzerland because Switzerland is so important to this country. We can turn it around in this country as well. We are not without fault, we have our problems, but we cannot let other countries slip into this type of a situation as well. I certainly appreciate my colleagues from Indiana and Florida for joining us this evening on this very, very important issue.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to take some time and talk to you and the House about a very serious problem that faces this country, not only facing this country but it is facing many nations across this planet, and that is drug abuse. Many times we see drug abuse in the guise of our children having OD's, being in the emergency room, finding problems in schools, drug gangs that are popping up across this country, especially in big cities and in towns adjoining big cities. We see the drug problem in OD's of kids in our neighborhoods, children, but it also is in corporate America, it is also in people who do work in blue collar areas. We have worked in this country to make sure that people who fly airplanes and drive trucks and maneuver trains down the tracks certainly are drug free. We have worked hard to make sure that we have drug free workplaces in this country. And certainly the Federal Government and many, many State governments have worked to make sure their workplaces are drug free as well. But, Mr. Speaker, I have just returned from the Second International Symposium Against Drugs in Switzerland, and what I learned there was truly disturbing. At the same time it was heartening to meet with doctors and world leaders engaged in the fight against drug abuse, drug-related crime, and international drug trafficking. America and Europe are both under siege directly from international drug traffickers and internally from well-financed drug legalization movements. In Switzerland, legalizers give away 100 percent pure heroin, and between 300 and 5,000 needles a day, plus heroin cigarettes which Swiss legalizers claim are compassionate because these cigarettes, Mr. Speaker, do not contain tobacco. Proponents of drug legalization are, at best, a dangerous and misguided crowd. For many it is an elaborate game, a way to retaliate against those who condemn their own drug using behavior. For others legalization is a means of achieving other ends, undermining moral values and democratic institutions, turning profits on an expanded population, creating new industries around the maintenance of addiction, and, in a few cases, even yearning to justify a tragic loss to drug abuse. Whatever the motivation, drug legalization is wrong headed and destined to hurt those societies which indulge the instinct to experiment with the most vulnerable segments of their population, including their children. So let us be clear about legalization, Mr. Speaker. The promoters of legalization forget the basic facts. They forget, for example, that drug use and abuse always and everywhere follows drug availability. They forget that there will always be more users trying drugs when there are more drugs to try. This is clearly the experience of the United States. Between 1992 and 1995, the administration experimented with reduced drug interdiction. The result was more drugs inside our country and more kids trying those drugs. In 1994, there were three-quarters of a million more teenagers using drugs than in 1992, a reversal of the 1981 to 1992 downward trend in drug use. By contrast, between 1985 and 1992, when the United States was firmly committed to halting the inflow of drugs, casual teen drug use fell dramatically. Regular drug users fell by 80 percent, from 5.8 to 1.3 million. Crack use declined from nearly a million in 1990 to just over 300,000 in 1992. And marijuana use plummeted from 22 million regular users in 1985 down to 8.5 million users in 1992, a 61 percent fall. That is what can happen when a society is serious about turning back the tide. Legalization promoters also forget that the number of addicts invariably rises with the number of casual or experimental users. In the United States, as casual teen drugs rose after 1992, so did addiction. Legalization advocates forget that the political leadership of a country that embraces legalization is also sending a message. I was a high school teacher for 16 years. I think I know kids. Kids are not stupid. They know if adults in their lives are giving consent or are forbidding it. They need and want limits set, even if they occasionally test those limits. And when there are no limits, they respond accordingly. If someone is looking the other way and letting them get high or use drugs, they know it. If society legalizes dangerous drugs in any measure for those who wish to get high or are already addicted, kids get the message. Society will have put the stamp of approval on drug use. And, as the old saying goes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Kids know hypocrisy when they see it. Finally, legalization promoters forget three other terrible and compelling facts: First, a drug overdose, for example, by heroin is not a simple or sterile or quick or painless event. It is a horrible, choking, suffocating event. The lungs fill with liquid in a lung edema, and the person, often a child, slowly chokes to death. Second, they forget that there will always be a black market for drugs that are more pure than those being made legally available, and there will always be those who cannot get the drugs but want them. Finally, the most drug-related crime is not between dealers or gangs. Most are committed by those on drugs, or so-called pharmacological crimes. Up to 70 percent of the United States' State prisons are filled with criminals who committed their crime on drugs. Legalization only increases this population. Let me turn now to the heart of the matter: National security. This is a big area I want to discuss. The Swiss national security is threatened by legalizers and traffickers in drugs, and so is our national security. In America, public complacency and indifference by the media are permitting drugs to erode public security, personal security, and ultimately, national security. But we all must recognize the enormity of the threat. This threat to our society comes from the international cartels in Colombia and Mexico, who export literally hundreds of millions of tons of heroin, cocaine, crack, and marijuana annually. But the threat also comes from within. In the United States, we have been timid about confronting it on both fronts. In the United States, we are accustomed to thinking about national security and threats to national security in traditional ways. When I say, for example, that America faces a national security threat, and we do, most people think of bombs and tanks and espionage and intercontinental ballistic missiles, maybe theater nuclear weapons. They do not think of hypodermic needles filled with 90-percent pure Burmese or Colombian heroin. They do not think of crack or LSD or THC or methamphetamine. When I say the world's leading democracies are in the jaws of an insidious national security threat, and they are, most people think of spies and uniformed soldiers and body bags and conventional warfare. The truth is different. Often most serious threats are those that masquerade as solutions or mere distractions. In my view, the legalization initiatives passed by California and Arizona this last election season are the Trojan horses of the 21st century. My message is that this is not a game or a harmless distraction and it certainly is not a solution. The drug cartels are sophisticated and they welcome the legalization movement. This is a war, and the traffickers and legalizers are intentionally slipping a Trojan horse within the gates of the United States and Switzerland and other countries around the world. On the whole, we in the United States have been too complacent, we have underestimated the organizations, the power of this $40 billion annual industry. Yes, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, I said billion with a B, $40 billion annual industry. The power to corrupt, power to kill, the power to destroy the heart and soul of our society. We have underestimated the threat for a simple reason. Drug traffickers and promoters are not the sort of threat that we are used to responding to. They do not wear uniforms or come in battalions. Instead, they often come with stealth, in the dark, and inject society under the shroud of night. But let us not kid ourselves. Let us go to the very heart of this. This adversary is well-financed, it is powerful, it is violent. We have had hearings in the Committee on Government Operations and Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice about the huge cartels in Colombia and Mexico, their far-reaching effect, that are in places as far away as Nigeria and Russia and Japan, the use of the Japanese yakuza organization and the Russian Mafia and the Nigerian drug runners across the world. Those stories are well-known. So there is no limit to what these drug cartels are willing to do. They are well-financed, and they are powerful, and they are very, very violent. It kills more people in 1 year than died in the entire cold war. Last year, in the United States, this underrated adversary killed more than 10,000 children. Think about it, 10,000 children. If anything else in this country threatened our children, our kids that are in schools, kids that walk the streets in numbers of 10,000, this Congress and this society would be turned upside down. But drugs have done that. On a personal note, I come from Illinois, and my brother works in a public school in Aurora, IL. Already this school year he has buried one of his students, buried him because the student was involved in a gang and the gang was involved in drug trafficking. In my congressional district, in one of the major cities in Aurora, IL, 6 children have already died this year from drugs and drug-related violence. Why? Because they are involved in gangs and drive-by shootings and drug overdoses. It is something that is there in somebody else's neighborhood, not in somebody else's State, but in our own backyard. On the national level, the numbers are stark. Over the past 3 years, we have witnessed a 200 percent increase in drug use by American children, the kids between the ages of 8 and 17, our kids. The price of dangerous drugs has fallen by several magnitudes, as availability has increased. Street purities of cocaine and heroin and marijuana have all jumped to record levels, all this because we let down our guard between 1992 and 1995 and we have been slow to see the national security implications. This year, the fourth year in a row, a national reporting system by the U.S. hospitals called DAWN showed record level emergency room admissions for cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and THC or marijuana. In 1995, overall drug-related emergency room episodes jumped 12 percent; cocaine-related episodes leaped 21 percent; heroin-related episodes skyrocketed 27 percent. THC or marijuana-related emergencies, as a result of purities that are up to 25 times greater than in the 1970's and the lacing of marijuana with PCP, were up 32 percent. Methamphetamine emergencies were up 35 percent. In short, drugs are destroying young lives in record numbers. So the crisis is here. The crisis is in Switzerland. The crisis is over the face of this planet. And the crisis is real, as real as World War II, as the air battles over Britain when Winston Churchill called for his nation to respond. It is as grave as the national security threat to the generation which must follow as the threat that animated the French Resistance to act against the Nazi government. The difference here is that this threat is insidious, it is slow growing, it is like a cancer, it grows below seemingly healthy skin. It is threatening Switzerland's future, and it is threatening our own future in this country. That is why Congress is fighting legalization and fighting to fund drug prevention and drug interdiction. We must respond. We must see the Trojan horse that is slipping even now between our gates, and we must turn it back. We must recognize that drugs fund crime and dissolution of all that is best about America and Switzerland. They criminalize our banking and commercial systems. They finance terrorist groups in Russia and the Middle East and Peru and Mexico and Colombia, and they undermine the future that we wish to pass on to our children. I worry, too, that Swiss banks may not be fully on guard about drug money laundering. Even here we must do more. In closing, I must say that we have now been to, and our committee has traveled to, the drug producing and shipping nations of Burma and Colombia and Bolivia and Peru and Panama and Mexico and certainly seen what we are up against. I traveled into the jungles where coca and poppy are grown and processed, and I think we have a mighty adversary to confront in those nations. The first step for us is to support the drug war and drug prevention. The first step is for Switzerland's people to pass the youth-against- drugs referendum. But my hope is that we will not be misled or deceived and that we will see this national security threat for what it is and respond with a dedicated antidrug effort in Switzerland and here in America. I especially want to congratulate VPM and Dr. Francesca Haller, as well as the AIDS-Information-Switzerland, for fighting against heroin legalization with all their hearts, and we are with you. This problem, Mr. Speaker, is an insidious problem. It has reached down to the very heart of our society. It has reached into other societies around the world and into our commercial institutions. There are questions about banks and money laundering, because of all the efforts of people who grow illegal drugs and move them into countries such as Colombia to refine them and from Colombia move them into Mexico where drug families move them across the border and across this country and into the street corners where kids can buy them. It would never happen if we could not take the street bills, the 5- and 10- and 20- and 50-dollar bills that kids pay to drug dealers, and that money goes back to the drug cartels. Money laundering is a problem. In Switzerland, it is even a greater problem because Swiss banks carry money and wires from all over the world. Later on I am going to borrow from an article written by a gentleman named Bob McGinnis, who talks about how Swiss banks are being implicated in moving drug money across this universe. I yield to my good friend from Fort Wayne, IN [Mr. Souder], who has certainly worked with us on drug issues.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman from Chicago. I just have to say that we cannot think of Charlie without that big smile and the gentleness that he had, the love that he had for this body, and the reflection that he had on the long road it took to get here from a very humble beginning; a person who came, as was said before, from southern Illinois, from rural southern Illinois, came to the big city, the city that Carl Sandburg talked about, the stacker of wheat and the layer of railroads and the hog butcher of the world. That is where Charlie found his beginning, his real economic start in life where he did work in those stockyards in the hog butcher center of the world, that is what he did, something that was not the most wonderful beginning, was not the top job on the economic platform, but Charlie did that. He was proud of it. He was proud of his heritage, proud of what he did. He was proud of his union movement. The role that he played in the union movement in Chicago in the meat cutters union, he would talk about it. He believed in it, and he served that way. And through that service came to this body through a circuitous route. He was certainly a good man. He was a gentle man. I remember Charlie, if you were in the Illinois delegation, flying back and forth together. At that time we flew and Charlie was there, we flew to Midway Airport, Midway Airlines. Those were small planes and many times Members of the delegation, we just got bottled up together. Sometimes the flight was canceled. We would sit in the waiting rooms for hours and talk. And Charlie would talk about his heritage, about his beginning, about the people he served and his grandchildren. He loved his grandchildren, loved his family. And he will be missed in the hearts of Members who served with him in this body. He will be missed certainly among his family and those people that he served. But Charlie does not have to worry. His legacy will live on. It will live on with the people that he served, who he worked with, it will live on among the people that he served, his constituents, and certainly it will live on with the Members he served with here in this body. He was a wonderful man. We mourn his passing, but we certainly celebrate his life. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the business in order under the Calendar Wednesday rule be dispensed with on Wednesday, April 19, 1997.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Chair's approval of the Journal.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding any adjournment of the House until Tuesday, April 8, 1997, the Speaker, majority leader, and minority leader be authorized to accept resignations and to make appointments authorized by law or by the House.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that for today all Members be permitted to extend their remarks and to include extraneous material in that section of the Record entitled ``Extension of Remarks.''

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman] who is well noted for his work on both supply and demand reduction in this country.