Denny Hastert

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man whose years of service to the citizens of my District cannot be overstated. Dewey Thompson, for the past thirty-two years, has led the Association for Individual Development with both excellence and compassion. The Association serves individuals of all ages who are developmentally and/or physically disabled or mentally ill, and Dewey Thompson has played a critical role in meeting the needs of these individuals and their families. A former teacher and counselor, Dewey joined AID in 1966 as its President, and since then the Association has grown to include more than thirty programs and serves more than 1,400 clients annually. I do not have the time to read off a list of Dewey Thompson's accomplishments and the awards he has received, but it is symbolic of his esteem within the community that AID's Rehabilitation Center was renamed in his honor in 1991. Mr. Speaker, I urge you and my colleagues to join me in honoring Dewey Thompson for his years of service to the people of Illinois and my District, and wish him the best on his retirement.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pappas).

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time. I wish to say, Mr. Speaker, that I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) joining with us today. This is, just as the gentleman said, 3 pages of pages. It is merely words. It is actions that the American people want. It is the will of this country, it is the will of this Congress to get things done. It is moms and dads and teachers and preachers getting together and saying, ``We have had enough.'' On the prevention side, it is doing our job to make sure our borders are secure and the dollars go effectively to stop drugs flowing from other countries into this country. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to this Congress, we owe it to the American people; and most of all, we owe it to our children and grandchildren. I ask for a positive vote on this legislation.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), who is on the Speaker's drug task force.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller).

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), chairman of the committee on oversight that has the whole responsibility for overseeing drug operations. (Mr. Gilman asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), who has been on the forefront in working on the supply side reduction of drugs. (Mr. McCOLLUM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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 to include extraneous material on H. Res. 423.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we are facing a grave situation in this country, a situation that is not unlike scenes that we have faced within the last 20 years. Our children are being constantly nibbled away at with the threat of drugs, drugs in our communities, drugs in our neighborhoods, drugs in our schools. And we have constantly tried to wage this war. Unfortunately, it has been a war that has not been coordinated over the years, a war that policy does not always meet the appropriations, and a war where the public hears a little bit but sees little. It is time for this Congress and this Nation to move forward to lay out a plan to win the war on drugs by the year 2002, to give the American people a solid plan to do this, to coordinate a policy and appropriations so the money goes to the place and gets the job done the quickest and the best. We must raise the level of awareness that there is a serious drug epidemic in our society. This winning the war on drugs resolution takes the initial step to do that by listing the unfortunate facts about drug usage, the associated costs borne by the American taxpayers through drug-related crime and violence as well as higher medical bills. I am pleased to see that just today the Congress has even pulled the President to the table and spurred him to propose a crime initiative that at its roots claims to target illegal drugs and money laundering, key aspects of the Speaker's Task Force for a Drug Free America agenda. This is a step in the right direction. National leaders need to come together. National leaders need to be engaged on this national problem. The resolution also designates the second week of September as Drug Free America Blue Ribbon Campaign Week so every American can join together to protest illegal drugs by wearing a straight blue ribbon. Finally and most importantly for this body, it declares the House commitment to win the war on drugs by deterring demand, stopping supply and increasing accountability. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio making the statement. I agree. A 3-page resolution does not get the job done. But a 3-page resolution also makes a claim that this Congress has the will to get the job done. We lose 20,000 Americans each year to drugs and drug-related violence and gang violence on our street corners. Most of those are kids. We have to pass legislation that affects our communities, that affects our borders, that affects the flow of drugs from outside this country. I agree with the gentleman from Ohio, we need to do that. And my colleagues will see, as we start to roll out pieces of legislation every week for the next 10 weeks, that will affect exactly those issues. I join the gentleman from Ohio. I hope he will join us in putting together that legislation, voting on that legislation. That will do about six things. First of all, deal with treatment so that we have the most cost-effective treatment and available treatment in this country, to start to deal with communities so that we have the prevention programs that are important that we can deal with law enforcement, that they have the tools to get the job done, that we can deal with the borders, the Border Patrol, the INS, the Customs and those agents along that so we have a coordinated effort, and that we can put a stop to drugs moving across the border. We also need to deal with the whole issue of foreign source drugs coming into this country, and we also need to deal with the issue of money laundering. We will show a strong initiative over the next 10 weeks, and I look forward to working with the gentleman from Ohio to get that done. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson).

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to say that I associate myself with the statement of the gentlewoman from North Carolina. Seventy percent of all people in prison are there probably because of drugs, 80 percent of our crime has a basis in drugs, and 75 percent of all domestic violence is there because of either drug or alcohol abuse. She is right on point. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), a leader on our committee and the task force on drugs.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 423) expressing the sense of the House with respect to winning the war on drugs to protect our children.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the fine work of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I am pleased to join my colleagues from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in support of H.R. 3694, the fiscal year 1999 intelligence authorization bill. As chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Subcommittee on National Security, and the Task Force for a Drug-Free America, I have had an opportunity to visit a wide range of counternarcotic programs in this country and overseas during the past few years. I have seen the effectiveness of the information produced by our intelligence community in identifying and tracking major narcotics trafficking activities. This intelligence information is essential to facilitating the law enforcement community's effort to slow the flood of cocaine and heroin that is pouring into our country. I have been particularly impressed by the growing coordination between the intelligence community and the law enforcement agencies to jointly target major narcotrafficking groups. Despite this good news, I regret to report that we are stopping no more than 15 to 20 percent of the drugs flowing from the source countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. We have the best intelligence organization in the world, but we lack the capability to act effectively on the information that we collect against narcotraffickers. It is clear that the administration's current source zone strategy is having only a very limited impact on cocaine and opium production in the source countries. We need to provide sufficient political will, sufficient resources and sufficient personnel to this effort. Equally, the transit zone strategy is undermined by an unwillingness to seek sufficient air, ground and maritime resources to track, pursue and stop narcotrafficking moving through Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico. Based on numerous meetings with foreign narcotics officials and U.S. Government personnel serving in the field, I am quite persuaded that much more could be achieved if we would be willing to come forward and seek the necessary resources to step up the eradication and interdiction of cocaine and heroin. Mr. Chairman, this is an important piece of legislation. Intelligence is the key to stopping narcotics traffic in this country and this hemisphere. I support this legislation.

Mr. HASTERT

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the chairman of the full committee.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, the committee position holds the right to close. The gentleman from Indiana opened debate.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Certainly I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), who has worked with me to try to structure this language that made sense. I like to fish. I wish I had my pole here today because we have a lot of red herrings that have been floating around this place. Let me be very, very honest and straight. The gentlewoman from Hawaii talked about title IX. This is not about title IX. Some people say it takes 4 years' notice. It is not 4 years' notice. It is notice when a school decides up to 4 years to give notice to kids who are not going to have the opportunity to participate. But let me talk a little bit about what has arisen here as far as men versus women, certainly not the intent of this gentleman to talk about that. As my colleagues may know, my wife started teaching about the same time I did. She is a women's athletic coach. At that time the only opportunity that women had was GA, Girl's Athletics; it was an intramural thing. Today women have all types of opportunities; as many in girl sports in this high school as there are in boy sports, and that is great because it has changed the way. All we are saying in this amendment is let us be decent, let us be honest, and let us tell our kids when their opportunities are gone that they have the chance to go someplace else if that is the case. That is what we are asking about. But let me just say one more thing. As my colleagues may know, I had worked with the universities and small colleges, independent colleges and the NCAA. We had an agreement. An agreement was when this bill goes to conference let us work to make sure that this is a voluntary system. Now the Congress is going to work their will today, one way or another, but those who so vociferously stood up and said let us not do mandates, let us then talk to the NCAA and make sure that this does, win, lose, or draw, become something that is voluntarily encouraged by the NCAA to its members. That is the bottom line. Let us let kids have the understanding and the knowledge when their sport is terminated that they have the ability to make a choice. Let their parents have the ability to make their choice. Now, unfortunately, a lot of these kids are going to be vested in these schools, they are going to have hours. Maybe there will be sophomores or juniors and they cannot afford to change. What we are asking them, if they can, if they want to, if they are following their life's dream and this is part of what they want to accomplish with a college education, they need to have the opportunity of the knowledge, the same knowledge that the school has. It is not going to change their ability or their budgeting or anything else. It is common sense. Mr. Chairman, let us vote on the side of common sense in this Congress for a change.

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I would like to remind the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella), a good friend of mine, I think, that there is no penalty in this bill. It does not take away or threaten universities with their Pell grants or anything. There is no penalty in the bill. It just says, within a period of 4 years, up to 4 years, that if they decide in 4 years or 3 years or 2 years or 1 year or 6 months from now that they are going to do away with a sport, they ought to tell the kids they are going to do that so they have some time to plan. So I understand that this is the understanding that my colleague has. It is wrong. We do not take away. There are no penalties in this bill. That is how benign this is. We are just saying, give kids a chance. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTERT

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

Mr. HASTERT. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana and really congratulate him because, as my colleagues know, together with the chairman and this gentleman, he brought an important issue before us, something that needs to be moved forward and talked, and I think we have to do it with a balance, and I would be happy to hear what the gentleman has to say.