Denny Hastert

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 and include extraneous material on H.R. 4300, the bill just passed.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), a Member who has taken a great deal of time and effort and skill in helping put together this legislation. (Mr. McCOLLUM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this bill is one part of the solution to the most insidious national security threat that we as a Nation face today. International drug trafficking is rampant across our borders, and unfortunately this does not affect our borders. It affects our street corners. It affects our neighborhoods. It affects our communities. It affects our children. It affects people in our workplaces. It affects people in our highways and our schools. This bill is dedicated certainly to the 14,218 Americans, most of them are youth, who died last year directly from drugs and drug violence. This bill aims to shut down drug growers and drug processors in places like Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and Myanmar. Over the past 5 years, first-time use of heroin by kids ages 12 to 17 rose by 875 percent, an 875 percent increase. That means for every one child who tried heroin in 1992, more than 8 children tried it in 1997. That kind of explosion in drug use, in heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine, is intolerable. It is immoral, destructive and fundamentally unAmerican. Worst of all, it is a tragedy of our own making. Deep cuts, billions of dollars in cuts, are the hallmark in the early part of this administration. In 1993 alone, the White House slashed a billion dollars from drug interdiction programs. Today, our children, in their schools, on playgrounds, in after-school environments, are reaping the deadly harvest of those ill-advised cuts. This nation is awash in these poisons. This bill does not solve the whole problem. A second major drug bill that will be up today, a prevention bill, focusing on drug prevention and treatment, is also a key to having long-term success in stopping drugs in this country and actually moving toward a drug-free America. This bill, H.R. 4300, is the blueprint for reasserting U.S. dominance over drug traffickers and permanently shutting down the international drug trafficking cartels. In summary, the sections of this supply-reduction bill do the following: They reduce drug use by enhancing aircraft, maritime and radar coverage in the source and transit zones by providing aircraft for the Customs Service; aircraft and ships for the Coast Guard; and by improving relocatable-over-the-horizon radar capabilities, especially in the Mediterranean and southeastern Pacific area. This bill enhances the source country eradication capabilities by providing sorely needed aircraft to the Colombian National Police, as well as additional resources for Peru, Bolivia and Mexico. It enhances alternative development programs through the United States Agency for International Development for Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and it also enhances counternarcotics research efforts at the Department of Agriculture. International law enforcement training is enhanced by establishing international law enforcement training centers serving Latin America, Asia and Africa. Additionally, it provides for a United States Coast Guard international maritime training vessel to enhance law enforcement training and maintenance in the Latin American and Caribbean nations. The training provided under this bill is designed to foster cooperation under international law enforcement agencies which in turn will create more efficient counternarcotics efforts and intelligence in the regions. Moreover, this bill also requires the submission of a report examining options on replacing Howard Air Force Base in Panama for use and support of counternarcotics in the source and transit zones. This bill has been carefully drafted to address the shortfalls in the current counterdrug efforts. This is an important piece of legislation that will enable our law enforcement agencies to meet head on the surge of drugs flowing into the country and into our neighborhoods. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to serve as an original cosponsor on this piece of legislation, and I commend my colleagues on their hard work in drafting this bill. Most specifically, I commend the work of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) in this area of trying to stop drugs flowing into our country and across our borders. Mr. Chairman, one of the things we face today is a huge cost to our society, a cost in dollars. Almost $50 billion a year going off our street corners and school yards into the pockets of drug salesmen. That money flows through a system and ends up in the pockets of drug lords in other countries. We need to stop that. But we need to stop it by stopping the drugs moving into our country. Certainly, if we can stop a pound of coca in Peru or a kilo of heroin on the mountain tops in Colombia, it is much more cost-effective and certainly proves the old adage of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is the design of this bill, to save the lives of those 14,000 kids who die over year on our street corners, the $90 billion of cost to our communities, our States, and this Nation to adjudicate and incarcerate, and all of those things that we have to do in the drug process. This bill cuts across the jurisdictions of seven committees. It is a huge, holistic approach in trying to stop drugs coming across our border. It is time that we do this. It is important to do this, and it is probably one of the biggest threats to our national security. Mr. Chairman, let me leave my colleagues with this one thought. If we lost 14,000 young men and women to an action by Saddam Hussein, if we lost 14,000 young men and women to an action in Bosnia or some place else on the face of the earth, this country would respond and would respond with all the vitality and all the vigor and all the energy that we could muster. Well, we have lost 14,000 kids last year and every year and will in the years in the future. We need to stop it. We need to be strong. We need to address it, and this bill addresses part of that problem. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina and certainly the gentleman from Ohio who are bringing this rule to the House floor. Mr. Speaker, this process was kind of complicated. We crossed the jurisdictions of about six different committees. There have been years of various testimony in hearings that have gone on over the last 3 years that I have been involved in this issue. Certainly there have been multiple visits to sites, in this case, in this bill, south of our border in places like Mexico and Colombia and Peru and Bolivia and other areas such as Puerto Rico and the Bahamas and other areas, even in Europe as we see drugs being moved across and actually traded by terrorists across the Middle East and also finding their way into our markets. It is a very complex thing. It is a lot of work by the FBI and the DEA and other law enforcement agencies. The people who do the work beyond our borders are Americans who give up their time and are away from families to fight the scourge of drugs in this country. When you start to look at the whole issue of cutting off supply, which is really in harmony with the whole issue of demand reduction, we have to have both sides of the equation, try to stop demand, and we are going to debate that bill later on today, but to cut off supply is really cost effective. You can stop supply in places like Colombia and Bolivia and Peru and Afghanistan and even places like Myanmar. Certainly it is the cost effective and the most effective way you can do it and least expensive. It goes back to the old adage of an ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure. I think we tried to do that for this bill. This is an open rule. People have the time to be able to debate this and bring their ideas to the floor, and I certainly welcome it. I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio and certainly the gentlewoman from North Carolina in bringing this rule to the floor.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), the vice chairman of the committee of jurisdiction on drug enforcement, certainly a person who has spent a lot of time and certainly heartfelt effort in this. (Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger).

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) who has been at the forefront of working with the Coast Guard and making sure that it is a viable force.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) certainly somebody who has been on the prosecutor side of this, very strident in trying to rid our country of drugs.

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

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I certainly support what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) is doing. One of the things is, we talk about terrorism and we talk about drug use. When one talks about 14,000-plus kids and other Americans dying on our street corners every year, that is some kind of terrorism. That is a terrorism that we face day in and day out. I have a brother who teaches in a middle school in Aurora, Illinois, who had children killed out of his classroom last year because of drugs and gang violence. That is certainly a terrorism that we face. In reality, when one looks at the international side, one cannot separate drugs and terrorism because the narcotraffickers of South America and especially Colombia today, who were once ideologues that believed in the fight for a political reason, today are using almost $100 million a month in revenue from drugs to be able to move their causes. So one cannot separate this type of terrorism of kidnapping and murder and things like that that goes on in Colombia and Bolivia from terrorism or drugs. They are intertwined. When one talks about bin Laden in the Middle East, there have been reports that there has been trafficking through Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries perpetrated by these folks and the profits that they made from drugs actually go for terrorism. So really we cannot separate terrorism and drugs because they are intertwined. We need to allow the armed services, as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) has done in his amendment, to weigh this evidence and try to make decisions that are good decisions, decisions that protect Americans, decisions that stabilize peace and tranquility not only in this country but other nations, and I really salute the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) for doing that.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I think that this is a substitute motion, and I am not sure how we can proceed with other amendments if this motion is not voted on.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is a very simple amendment. It is a technical amendment. It came at the request of the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, I think at the request of the Secretary of Agriculture. What we have done is asked the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy to develop a 10-year master plan for the use of mycoherbicides to control narcotic crops of coca, poppy and cannabis in the United States and internationally, that is, to do the research. Before, the original text of the bill asks the Department of Agriculture to do it. We think that this keeps it in more the focus of the ONDCP and it gives them authority to develop that 10-year plan for herbicides and we think that this is probably a correction and something that should be done in the bill.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I stand in support of the gentleman's amendment. I have been working on this not as long as some, but the last 4 years, and we see in the eastern Pacific where cocaine would come up from Mexico or would come up from Colombia or would come up from Peru unfettered, unstopped. Why? Because we have not one ship, Navy ship, Coast Guard ship, or anything else in the eastern Pacific to stop trainloads of cocaine in the bottom of fishing boats and luxury liners and freighters and cargo containers. Even though we have the intelligence to do it, we cannot do it. The resources are not there. I have seen classified programs in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, both in the western Caribbean and the eastern Caribbean, dropped. They are not there. Why? We do not have the resources to do it. Meaning we have literally tons and tons, and hundreds of tons of cocaine and marijuana and, in some cases, heroin coming up through our island chains through the Bahamas, through Puerto Rico, through the Dominican Republic. Why? Because we do not have the resources. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), who spoke before, talked about having an AWACS one-half a day a month. If there are 30 days in a month, round it off, and we have a half a day, that means that any narco-trafficker, moving narcotics by air or by sea from Mexico or Colombia or through the Mediterranean or through the eastern Pacific, has 59 out of 60 chances of success because we do not have the AWACS to do that. Now, do we need AWACS? No, all the AWACS are in the Middle East or they are up in Alaska. Fine. But we do have P-3s. I was in Monthan Davis Air Force Base last winter just to see what inventory we had there. We have P-3s by the score, with the radar domes and everything else we see sitting on the ground. They are there. The resources are there. Why not be able to use the resources that we already have to put eyes in the sky and stop the drugs? Finally, I have to address the problem that the gentleman just talked about. I was in Texas. I spent 4 long days in Del Rio and Eagle Pass; talked to a lot of people; talked to ranchers; talked to people who have kids in school. It was 115 degrees. And I tell my colleagues, that is a tough place to live. Walking out in that desert, and whatever else it is, there is something that will either scratch you, bite you or eat you. Unfortunately, we are losing scores of people who are dying in that desert, being brought across the border by what they call ``coyotes,'' and are forced to swim and they are drowning. They are moving through that desert and they are dying, but a lot of those people are dying with backpacks on their back with illegal narcotics. Now, we can have observers helping law enforcement sitting there watching. I had ranchers tell me, a group of about 50 ranchers that came and sat and we had a long discussion one evening, it was in Del Rio, Texas, and they were saying, ``We do not understand.'' They feel the United States Government has abandoned them. Those were their words. They feel we do not care because we have taken the troops away from the border. And they are saying that they cannot leave a tractor sit out in their field, these ranchers right along the Rio Grande River, because people come over at night, steal the tractors, steal the parts, and they are gone. They talked about people shooting into their houses, into their ranches. And these are people that have been there for five and six generations and are losing the ability of having the right of their land, the right of their homes, because there is nobody there to protect them. Now, what has happened, and this meeting was set up by the Border Patrol to sit down and be able to talk to these people, the same people the gentleman worked with over the years. And I am not sure if the outcome of the meeting was what the outcome of the meeting was intended, but this was the story that rolled out. These people feel that they are abandoned American citizens because there is nobody there to protect them. The Border Patrol can do some things, but they are rolling along. They are not sitting there and being observers hour after hour. We need the help. If the Secretary of Defense deems it necessary, if he deems it wise to do, we need to give people the options to do these things. Amendment Offered by Mr. Reyes to the Amendment Offered by Mr. Traficant

Mr. HASTERT. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I stand in opposition to the perfecting amendment, or the secondary amendment. Basically a couple of things. The gentleman from Texas said that 90 percent of all the drugs go through ports of entry. We are doing a better job quite frankly because we have given Customs better and more technical equipment and this bill does that, too. So we have a parallel interest here. But as you start to shut down the ports of entry and do a better job, especially in places like El Paso and Laredo and on and on down the line, the next place and the next porous area along the border is the Del Rios and the Eagle Passes and the place where there are no ports of entry, so these are the areas where they are coming through and it is tougher to do it. You do not bring it through by a truckload, you put it in backpacks on 20 people and have them march across the river, go through the desert to the next highway. That is what is happening. That is a fact. When they do that, they trample across people's property. They are outlaws in the first place. They are taking and shooting at people's homes, moving them out, terrorizing people along there. We are just saying, a simple fact, that if the Secretary of Defense is asked and has an option to put people down there to help observe and help the Border Patrol, it was interesting because my discussions with the Border Patrol and especially in Del Rio and Eagle Pass is that they thought they worked well with the military observers that were there. Mr. Chairman, I regretfully oppose this amendment.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, as my colleagues know, it was an unfortunate situation, tragic situation, that happened in Redford, Texas. I do not think anybody debates that. But we have tragic situations all over this country in my district, in my colleagues' districts, everywhere we are where kids are getting killed either by gang violence tied with drugs or by drugs themselves. So the teenager in Redford, Texas, who actually shot three times at the servicemen who were doing observations there, that was unfortunate. But there was three shots fired at those troops. But let us look at and talk about this. What this allows is JTF-6 has basically suspended intelligence operations along the border. Last year they did 350 surveillance operations in conjunction with the Border Patrol and Customs and everybody else that made this system work, and now that action is largely suspended. And if we talk about education, we should spend dollars for education, we can spend a lot of dollars for education, but as long as those kids have drugs in the classroom and those schools are in jeopardy of being shot up, I will tell my colleagues all the dollars in education does not do any good, at least where my brother teaches, in Aurora, Illinois.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw). I am not an expert on longshoremen. I live in the corn fields of Illinois and we see the products that are moved through our ports. It happens in our schools and our towns and our villages and the little country towns where those narcotics are available. We know that most of those narcotics come across the Southwest border, something we have just talked about. We also know that about 40 percent of those narcotics come through our ports of entry into this country, our seaports and airports. It is pretty important, I think just common sense, it is pretty important that the people who handle the luggage, the people who handle the containers, the people who load the boats, who onload the ships, who load the trucks, who maneuver cargo through the railroads, those people need to be trusted. They need to be screened. It would surely be wonderful if it was always voluntary, but we understand those people who have been able to infiltrate, and it happens in this country and it is rampant throughout this country. They are not law-abiding citizens. They would hide the fact. Mr. Chairman, I just think we ought to be able to screen them. The facts show themselves. Out of the scores of people that were finally arrested, and we found that we had 200 to 300 arrests for that score of people, we ought to do that screening. If we are going to protect our children, if we are going to protect our families and we are going to protect our communities against drugs, we need to be able to make sure that the ports of entry, those people handling cargo and those poisons coming from across the oceans, that they are people that we can trust and that we have faith in and that will do the right job. Mr. Chairman, I insert the following letters for printing in the Record: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC, September 14, 1998. Hon. Newt Gingrich, The Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Speaker. I understand that it is the desire of the Leadership to take H.R. 4300, the ``Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act,'' and H.R. 4550, the ``Drug Demand Reduction Act,'' to the floor without this committee reporting these bills. In the interest of the Leadership's desire to move expeditiously on these bills, I will agree to Judiciary Committee's being discharged from further consideration of these bills. However, this should not be construed as a relinquishment of the Committee's jurisdiction as to these matters generally, or as to any further amendments relating to them. I also request that the Committee's rights to have our Members named to any conference committee on these bills or any similar bill be protected. Sincerely, Henry J. Hyde, Chairman.

Mr. HASTERT. I am just trying to get straight what we are debating here. My understanding is the preprinted amendments, which were the rule and as the rule was passed, had two different provisions, two different amendments. And now we are going from preprinted preference to rules that are just reported by the Clerk. I do not quite understand.

Mr. HASTERT. So would we not have to offer the two preprinted amendments first?

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

Mr. HASTERT. I thank the Chair. I would just say to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) I misunderstood that. If she is to take both these together, it is a little more complex issue when she combines them.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. What this combined amendment asks is basically to do a couple of things. First of all, what the text of the bill says is that our law enforcement agencies that work in Mexico ought to have the protections that anybody who works in an embassy should have. And in exchange, people who work in Mexican law enforcement, who have duties in this country, ought to have those same types of privileges. Also, the black tar Mexican heroin that is now coming into our street corners in Los Angeles and Chicago and New York, some of the cities in New Jersey, and certainly Denver and other places, comes from the high mountains in Mexico. The only way that we can eradicate that black tar heroin is from helicopters that have the ability to reach high altitudes. Now, we need to be able to provide, in cooperation with explicit actions from the Mexican Government that we require, we need to be able to provide those helicopters. We need to have our agencies and agents in Mexico to have the same protections that other people in our embassies have, and that is basically, on the Mexican side of this issue, that is that part of the amendment. That is what we afford. Why should we take that away from our people, law enforcement agents that work in Mexico? The second part of this deals with Colombia. The law enforcement agency in Colombia that is in charge of drugs, that we have worked with, is the Colombian National Police. They have an extraordinary record on human rights. And as a matter of fact, the 18 people that got killed, that the gentlewoman from California talked about, right before General McCaffrey was there, were Colombia National Policemen. They were ambushed and killed. As a matter of fact, there has been 400 Colombian National Policemen killed in the last year; 4,000 over the last 10 years. These are people who have fought and struggled to stop drugs being produced in Colombia and have given a lot of their life and talents, for those people who have been wounded and others, to try to fight this battle. They need help. That country is at the brink, absolute brink of chaos. If they do not have help, if they do not have the ability to fight within their own country, we will see Colombia being the first Democratic nation in the southern part of this Western Hemisphere become a narco-state. That is the danger that we are in, my colleagues. Both of these amendments, combined, first strike at our ability to work with Mexico, which has been, at times, a difficult country to work with; and also try to get things straight with the ability to move this process and to stop narcotics flowing into our neighborhoods from Colombia. We need to have the helicopters, we need the eradication, we need to be able to do the job with the Colombian National Police who are vetted and who have wonderful human rights' records. Why destroy that? Why take that ability to deal with those folks away? I just question why are we doing this in this amendment? I strongly oppose these amendments and would ask other Members of this body to vote ``no''.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry. I understood the rule to say that preprinted amendments have a preference. I also understood the gentlewoman from California to stand up and ask to strike section 201. I think what has happened is there is a combination of two amendments here. I just want to know what rule are we going under? Has there been a change in the amendments? Because I did not hear a unanimous consent request.