John Mica

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, usually I come on Tuesday nights to address the House on the problem of illegal narcotics in our society, and what the Congress can do working together to try to resolve the problem of drugs. Tonight I will only have a few minutes to sort of summarize, because our time is limited. We have watched on television, a front line report about illegal narcotics. It has gotten the attention of many Americans and Members of Congress. I came to the floor about a week or two ago and held up this chart. I chair the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. It is one of the most shocking statistics or report that I have ever received as a Member of Congress or chairing a committee responsible for drug policy. For the first time in the history of recordkeeping of the United States, drug-induced deaths in 1998 exceeded murder, homicides, in this country. That means we had more people dying from drug overdoses and drug-induced deaths than murders or homicides across our land. That, unfortunately, has been repeated in my community in Central Florida, and it is a very serious problem. One of the things we have heard is that the war on drugs is a failure. It is very important that the American people and the Congress understand that the war on drugs basically was closed down at the beginning of the Clinton administration. If we look at long-term trends and lifetime prevalence of drug use, we see that during the Reagan administration and Bush administration there was a 50 percent drop in drug abuse. If one in fact looks at that Frontline report that has been published and viewed across the country lately, we hear of all the things that were instituted: the Andean strategy, the stopping drugs at their source, the Vice President's task force, even going after Noriega for drug trafficking and money laundering of drugs in the Bush administration in 1989. Then we see a dramatic decrease in drug use in the country, a 50 percent reduction. In the Clinton administration, where we have the ``just say maybe'' policy, where we appoint a chief health officer like Joycelyn Elders as a Surgeon General who says, just say maybe, to our kids, where we abolish the international programs to stop drugs at their source, we have a flood and a huge supply of narcotics. Treatment can never keep up with what we see here and the failure of this administration, and certainly the deaths that we see and the destruction, the devastation. The other thing is that we do not spend enough money on treatment. That is the line that the Clinton administration used when they took over. Here, we will see the treatment money was being expended and increased under the Bush administration and under the Reagan administration. They also had dramatic programs to deal with the supply, and they cut down the supply. Here we see treatment spending during the Democrat control, even the Republican control, almost a doubling in treatment over these years. Yet, we see an incredible plague upon our cities. So we cannot just treat ourselves out of this problem, we have to have a combination of eradication, interdiction, enforcement, education, and also prevention programs that work. Finding the prevention and treatment programs that work is so important. We are spending a lot of money on treatment. We have doubled the amount of money on treatment. The Clinton administration closed down any semblance of a war on drugs. In hearings that we have held, even today, we found that the $300 million that this Congress appropriated for Colombia some 2 years ago, getting the resources to Colombia, were in fact bungled. We find even in a $1 billion education program we are paying 179 percent over industry standards for placement of ads, and instead of paying a 3\1/2\ percent industry average commission, we are paying 14 percent plus, so ads are not going on the public education and information media. An anti-narcotics campaign is not what the Congress intended. Getting the resources from Colombia, which is the source of 70 percent of the heroin and some 80 percent of the cocaine, has not been done. The project as administered by the administration has been bungled. This is the result we see. We are back to a dramatic increase in the number of drug-induced deaths, some 16,926, exceeding for the first time in the recorded history of the United States the homicides or murders in this country. So when people tell us that the war on drugs is a failure, the Clinton-Gore close-down of the war on drugs indeed led to failure, led to death and destruction. The statistics are very clear. But a successful program such as the Reagan-Bush administration, even though it was a tough one, even though it was a zero tolerance, had a 50 percent reduction in illegal narcotics use in this country, and dramatically gave us a different picture than what we see here today. Finally, in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I was pleased that last Friday was the first time I have heard anyone who assumes to national leadership take the forefront and mention the problem of illegal narcotics. That was Governor Bush from the State of Texas, who I believe was in Iowa and talked about illegal narcotics, brought it up as part of his campaign. I hope that we have a leader and someone who is willing to provide the direction to provide successful programs, and also to bring this to the attention and provide the national leadership that we so badly need in this area, because for so long it has been swept under the table. For too long it has been ignored by this Congress. Again, we see the results of this and the tragedy, death, and destruction to our families and our children. Mr. Speaker, I would mention that we leave with a saddened heart in the loss of our dearly beloved colleague, Mr. Bruce Vento, the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota, and with our deepest sympathy to his family as we now adjourn for the evening.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 528, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 518, I could not be present. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) for his comments, and I thank him for the leadership on our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. As we conclude, I again call to the attention of my colleagues, the Speaker, and the American people the need to be vigilant on the issue of illegal narcotics, not to make the mistake of the past, not to be fooled by the legalizers, but to make this country safe for our children and the next generation and stop the ravages of illegal narcotics. Because illegal drugs do destroy lives and do a great deal of damage to our society and our country and particularly to our families and young people.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come to the floor this afternoon, and I hope to talk about the issue that I usually come on Tuesday to talk about but was preempted by the presidential debates on Tuesday night, that is, the problem of illegal narcotics and the damage that illegal narcotics have done across our land. Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but come to the floor, though, preceding my colleagues who just spoke about some of the differences and the great balance that we have that may be undone here in this next election and some of the differences between the candidates on the issues. I sat with many of my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, and watched the debates. There are some things I would have mentioned that were not mentioned. Governor Bush has not been part of the legislative process here. The governor was chief executive of the State of Texas. Mr. Gore has been a Member of the other body, and the differences are very dramatic. He served a number of years as a Member of Congress and finally as a Member of the other body, and it was interesting. Before I get into the drug portion of my talk this afternoon, I want to talk about some of the differences that are very distinct, the failure of the Vice President, when he was a Member of Congress, to ever come forth with a balanced budget; the failure of Mr. Gore to ever come forward with a proposal to secure Social Security. He is talking about a lockbox. The Republicans did a lockbox here. He is talking about paying down the deficit by 2012. We are talking about paying down the deficit sooner than that with the plan that we have. There are things that he had an opportunity, but why did he not propose this? When the Democrats had control of both Houses of Congress, the Senate, by a wide margin, and this body here by a wide veto-proof margin, they could do basically anything they wanted to do. What did they do? He said, well, I cast the deciding vote for an economic policy. Well, Mr. Speaker, his plan was to pass a deciding vote to increase taxes to the highest level they had. The plan that they brought to this floor of the House of Representatives in 1993 when they passed that huge tax increase projected, their projections were a $200 billion deficit this year. That would have been on top of raiding social security, which they had done decade after decade when they controlled this body. What a farce, to have this side and one of the leaders of the other side come before the American people and tell them that he is going to solve the problem if he is given another chance. He had a chance in the Congress, he had a chance when they controlled this place for 2 years with a wide, wide margin. What did they do? They taxed and they spent the largest tax increase. Talk about energy policy, they do not have a clue of an energy policy. They have allowed the United States of America to be held hostage by ten dictators and by Middle East sheiks and others and allowed our reliance from around 50 percent on foreign oil to go now into the 56 percent and growing range. So we are held hostage. That is their policy. What is amazing is that we are being held hostage by people in the Middle East, we who sent, under President Bush, our young men and women to die for them, and they cannot even negotiate an oil deal to give us a better rate on the per barrel oil price. They do not have a clue of an energy policy. On our side of the aisle, we have all backed a domestic plan and tried to increase domestic production, tried to get alternative fuels. I have been up to the ANWR region of Alaska. The footprint that they had and the technology they had years ago when they took oil out of Prudhoe Bay, and even taking oil out of Prudhoe Bay, it is not the same technology today that it was 20 years ago. There is a very small imprint and footprint for oil production. There is no reason why we have to be energy dependent. We can put a man on the moon. And there is no reason why we cannot devise technology for nuclear energy. Some countries produce much, much more of their energy supply by nuclear means. They do not want to talk about that, of course. But there is no reason why we cannot do away with nuclear waste and turn that actually into energy production. There is no reason why we should be held hostage. Under this administration, we have increased our dependency to foreign sources. Those are some of the things that I noticed in the debate. They talk about a tax cut and balancing the budget without hurting people. We heard the other side here, as we attempted to balance the budget. Balancing the budget is something they could have done for 40 years here. All they had to do was match the expenditures with the revenues. It is not a complicated thing. Most Americans do it every week. They have to limit their expenditures to what they take in. We did that, and kicking and screaming and dragging some of our people through elections and calling them names and accusing them of all kinds of atrocities is unfair. They want to do that again with Mediscare, with scaring seniors about social security. Stop and think. I have great respect for senior citizens all in my family that I know because they have been around a long time, and they are not fooled by those who will tell them that they bankrupted social security when they had control of the entire process. They were not only bankrupting the country in these huge deficit expenditures, but dipping into the social security trust fund, dipping into the Highway Trust Fund, dipping into the aviation trust fund, dipping into the Federal employees' trust fund. Every one of these accounts they raided, until we were just about at our financial knees. Thank goodness a Republican majority, a new majority in the House and in the other body, came along to rescue that. So now the folks from the other side that raided these funds, we restored the funds and took the abuse from them and were putting our Nation's finances in order, and they had the gall to go before the American people and tell them that they need another 4 years in the White House to solve these problems. They need control of the House and Senate. Mr. Speaker, their history is tax and spend. Their history. We passed legislation putting our financial House in order. We also passed a $1,000 tax credit for those people who have children in this country when they said we could not do it, that we could not do that. We passed a marriage penalty tax which was vetoed by those same folks that have taken control that want to deny tens and tens of millions of working men and women a little bit of money back in their pocket and not be penalized for being married. Is that family-friendly? Is that helping working people? So I saw those debates, too. I am so glad my colleagues were here before me to reiterate some of the issues. The question of education, for 40 years the other side has done nothing but bring power to Washington, as far as education. We heard in the debates that only 6 cents of every dollar comes from the Federal Government. We have a Department of Education with thousands of bureaucrats, most of them in Washington, D.C., 5,000, and many thousands of contract employees. They disguise the true number of employees. I will talk about Federal employees in just a moment. But in education, we have 5,000, and within just a few miles of my voice in this Capitol there are 3,000 Department of Education Federal employees. One time I took a student who was visiting here. We were on our way down to the White House. We drive from the Capitol to the White House and see all of these buildings, these massive buildings. He asked me, what do people do in those buildings? We passed the Department of Education. I told him, there are 3,000 Federal education employees just in Washington, D.C. I will tell you what they do, they administer hundreds of Federal education programs. We were up to 760 Federal education programs, all well-meaning, but all that required administration and overhead. Not only do they require it in downtown Washington in those buildings, where they make $60,000 to $100,000, on average, and show me one teacher in my district that makes $60,000 to $100,000. I do not know of any. But they make it in those buildings here. I will tell the Members what those people do in the Department of Education: They pass rules and regulations. They administer those 760 programs. I have no problem with the Federal Government providing money to education. In fact, I guarantee Members, if we ask this question and people would answer, this would be the response. The question would be, if we were thinking about it, who would provide more funding for education, Republicans or Democrats? If we had an audience here, Mr. Speaker, of citizens sitting here, they would probably say the Democrats would. That is wrong. The Democrats, when they had control, again, and when they were running these deficits, they put very little money into education and increases. If we take the same period of time that we have had control of this House and we go back when they had control, we dramatically increased the funding and money available for education as a percentage compared to what they did, and put more money in student loans. The difference is that they put more money in administration. They put more emphasis on regulation. They want the control here in Washington, D.C., so that is why they not only require those 3,000 Federal employees here administering these programs, again, well-intended, but they require them in the regional offices. Then, what is worse is they require them in the State capitals and down at the school boards until we get down to the poor teacher. The teacher is held captive by rules, regulations, by the mandates coming from Washington. I guarantee Members that if we had a President Gore, he would be the king of rules and regulations, and more control in Washington. That is what the debate is about: Do we want Washington and the Federal Government to have more control, more power, more authority, or do we want the money that is hard earned by the taxpayers to go back to the taxpayers? That is the major question, the major difference, for the people who get their check at the end of the week and they look at the check and there is very little left. I remember when my daughter graduated a couple of years ago from college. Her biggest shock was to get her first paycheck. She almost cried. She said, dad, I have hardly anything left, and she was not making that much money. But she was shocked, as every American worker is shocked, at the end of the week, how much they have left; at the end of the month, at the end of the year, how much they have left. This is one of the best fundamental debates this Congress and this country has ever heard, because the debate is about where that money is going to end up and who controls that money: whether we control it, have it back in our pockets, or whether they send it to Washington and tell us how our school will be run, whether they add more administrators in that Department of Education in Washington, whether they force more administrators at the regional level, whether they force more at the school level. I served in the State legislature in Tallahassee, Florida, the capital, back in the seventies. If Members go to Tallahassee, Florida, there is a huge capitol building. I was there when they built it. But the second biggest building in Tallahassee, Florida, is a skyscraper which is a Department of Education, a State Department of Education. That Department of Education grew to a huge bureaucracy, one, because of some of the rules and regulations and mandates that came out of Washington. Again, they only supply 6 cents on every dollar. The rest of the money comes from local property taxes, State sales tax and State fees and local money. But they pass down to the local level this huge bureaucracy, this red tape, so a teacher is held hostage in her classroom, so a principal cannot control the school, so the school board has to have hundreds and hundreds of mandated Federal employees carrying out Federal mandates. That is where the education money goes. That is why this is a great and fundamental debate. If people want government to have more control, there is a very clear choice. If they want education mandated out of Washington, there is a very clear choice. If they want more regulations in education, there is a very clear choice. Some of this is not rocket science. We know that children need basic education. Governor Bush, I heard his proposal for Head Start. What a great proposal. What he has done in Texas with his young people, if we could do that for our country, for our children, which are the poorest and most at-risk children in this country, they need basic education. They need to be able to read and write and do simple math. It is not complicated. My wife was an elementary schoolteacher, and this is some of the answer. Let me tell the Members what they put in place. Even I tried to change it, and we cannot change the bureaucracy because they will veto it. This President will veto it. With Head Start, a great program, I was involved in helping, when I went to the University of Florida some 40 years ago, before some of my colleagues here were even born, I was trying to help young people, particularly with an institution, with the University of Florida. Here is a great education university next to a community in Gainesville that had many poor children who did not have an opportunity for education. The Great Start concept is to take good resources, teaching resources, and to give those young people the ability to have a head start, to have access to education so that they have the basic skills so when they enter school they can do simple math, they can read. Governor Bush, and I hope will be President Bush, proposed that we convert Head Start into a reading program or at least an emphasis on reading and basic skills. I have a good Head Start program in my local area, but we also have a Head Start program which I examined in my area. My Head Start program, the public one, is a great example of what we should not be doing with taxpayer money. One of the Head Start programs spends between $8,000 and $9,000 per year per student for a part-time program which is basically a glorified baby-sitting program. It has turned into a minority employment program so that the student who is coming out of a disadvantaged home is going into a disadvantaged program and not learning. I examined the program, and the program had administrators, over 20 administrators in a program for around 400 students, 20 administrators earning between $16,000 and $60,000. The teachers, there was not one certified teacher in the program, not one certified teacher. The so- called teachers were making between $12,000 and $16,000. Is that a head start? That is a farce. But if those children who are so disadvantaged had just a minimal opportunity to learn to read, to learn to do simple mathematics. Try to hire someone today who can do simple mathematics and read out there, it is very difficult. One of my community college presidents told me that over half of the students entering community college in my area need remedial education. We have an education recession, and that is because they have taken the power to Washington with all of these mandates and regulations. Do my colleagues know what they have done? They have failed. They have failed. A teacher cannot teach. A teacher goes into the classroom in many areas and is threatened with bodily harm. One of my district aid's wife is a teacher in one of the schools in central Florida and has been physically attacked. There is not much the teacher can do. The teacher has lost control of the classroom. Why? Because of the liberal policies and left wing policies of well-intended people who have managed to take control away from parents, from teachers, from principals and local school administrators and amass them all here in Washington, D.C. That is the clear choice that the American people are going to have: Do you want more power here in Washington over education? Do you want more mandates? Do you want more rules? Do you want the people who, for 40 years, have brought power and regulation to education and so encapsulated the regulation of education that a teacher cannot teach, a parent cannot discipline, that we cannot teach basics, that we have programs that were intended to give children a head start? What do they do? They keep them at the lowest common denominator. We look at what Governor Bush did just with education in the State of Texas for his young people. These are the young people. If we fail them, ask any teacher what will happen, ask any principal what will happen. First, these will be the disruptive students in the classroom. Next, they will be the dropout students who used to be in the classroom and who are now roaming our streets and neighborhoods. They will be the social problems. These children will be the social problems because they cannot read, they cannot do mathematics. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, I have had the opportunity to sit in some of our prisons and some of our drug treatment programs and penal institutions and talked to young people and talked to also those older who were incarcerated behind bars, the lost souls of this country. A common denominator among almost all of them is that they failed in school. They did not succeed in school. Of course many of them came from disruptive families, and they had substance abuse problems, and I will try to talk about that in the rest of my talk. But one of the basic problems with young people getting into trouble is the lack of education, lack of being able to compete in and participate in school and having basic educational skills. So if for no other reason if on the basis of education, we turn over to the tax and spenders and the regulators and the mandators, this Congress and that White House, it would be a very sad day for America. It would be a very sad day for education in this country. I talked a little bit about education bureaucrats. I do not advocate the necessary abolishment of the Department of Education. The Federal government can play a role. I do not know that we need 5,000 people or 3,000 people in Education. My God, we might have to have some of them go out and teach for a living and actually be in a classroom and stop regulating. We might have to take those dollars instead of the gobbledegook administration of them and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on administration and block grant that money. We passed a simple proposal here to try to get 90 percent of Federal dollars into the classroom and to the teacher. To get a good teacher, one has to pay a good teacher. To have a student able to learn in a classroom, one wants the dollar to go there, not the dollar to go to Washington. This is an unbelievable statistic. But under their plan, the Democrat plan, under what they have done for 40 years in bringing education and bureaucracy to Washington, almost 90 percent of Federal dollars go to everything but basic education. Our plan was to turn that around for teachers, for students to benefit. Now, just take a few minutes. I would pray that the American people would take a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, and look at what is being proposed here and what has been done here to their schools, public schools. I was educated in a public school. My wife was educated in a public school. My wife was a teacher in a public school. I think public schools are one of the best institutions this country has ever created. But they are managing to ruin them. That is why they go to charter schools. That is why they are proposing vouchers as an alternative, because they are failing. So if we want them to fail more, we can regulate them more from Washington. If we want them to succeed, we can put parents and teachers in control. We can have that money come from here and be a partner with them, but let local parents and students and educators make the decisions. Let us take back the schools. That is what I think Governor Bush is talking about, successful programs and education that teach basics. Basics. If one cannot read and write in this society or do simple math, how can one function? So that is a great difference. I am glad my colleagues were here to talk about it. Before I talk about the drug situation, I have to talk about Federal employees. I heard the Vice President of the United States taking credit for, and I could almost cry when he did it, for reducing the size of the Federal bureaucracy, I think he said by more than 300,000 Federal employees. Mr. Speaker, those 300,000 Federal employees were almost all Federal Defense employees. They have not met a bureaucrat that they do not like on this side of the aisle. They love to expand the size of government, and they have had a great deal of experience at it, whether it is the Department of Education. They cut the Defense civilian employees, and almost every one of those cuts came out of those agencies. If one looks at it, EPA is bigger than it ever has been, the Department of Commerce. Then if we see any shrinkage, Mr. Speaker, do not let them fool us. Do not let the Vice President of the United States, who knows better, tell us that he has reduced the size of the Federal bureaucracy because it just is not so. I will tell my colleagues, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, I will tell my colleagues where the bodies are buried. What they have done is they have contracted for employees. So we have millions and millions of Federal contract employees rather than Federal employees on the payroll. So that is where some of these folks are. The only agency I know of that Bill Clinton cut when he came in, he reduced the Drug Czar's office from 120 to about 27. We have managed, fortunately, with General McAffrey and others to try to restore the viability of that office. But it has been a struggle. That is where they made their cuts. That might be a good lead into the subject that I came to talk about that I usually talk about on Tuesday night but was preempted by the debates. I wanted to make a few points. It is very frustrating as a Member of Congress to have seen the folks who brought this country into fiscal disarray, who operated this Congress, this House of Representatives like a poorly run southern plantation with taxpayers subsidizing the Member's restaurant downstairs, with the House bank run as a piggy bank for anyone who wanted to write a check and bounce a check and have the taxpayers fund it, who wanted to see 17 people deliver ice, even though they instituted refrigerators here in the recent years, they still had 17 people spending three-quarters of a million dollars delivering ice the morning and afternoon, who ran this place like a poorly managed southern plantation is the only comparison I could give. The shoe shine operation was subsidized. The haircut was subsidized. What did we do? We came in. We cut this committee staff by a third. I was sitting with a Member here, and I related this to the Member, a new Member of my side of the aisle. Republicans do not even recall what the Republicans have done in the Congress. We cut the committee staff by one-third. We cut the number of committees by one-third. We privatized the dining room and turned it over to a private operator. We no longer subsidize the barber shop, the shoe shine shop. They are private vendors. We took out the printing office which was doing sweetheart deals for Members, and now you must compete with everyone. Let me tell my colleagues one more that just galls me. They had disabled people that were blocking the Republican National Headquarters yesterday. I saw them, I guess it was, last night. I thought I would stop and talk to those people, but they did not want to hear the truth. When I was a Member and came here as a minority member in 1993 when Bill Clinton took over, when the Democrats had control of the House of Representatives and the other body, I had visually disabled blinded people coming to visit me as a Member of Congress, and they bounced off the walls going down the halls. There were no accommodations for disabled. I wrote the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, and I said, it is a disgrace that the House of Representatives does not live under the laws that we have. I came from the business sector, and the business sector was not allowed to ignore the law. Business people must go by the letter of the law, the Americans With Disabilities law. There is no reason why this Congress should not accommodate it, particularly the House of Representatives, the people's house. Do my colleagues know what the Democrat chairman did? He ignored me. I wrote him again, and he ignored me. I wrote him again. They ignored the disabled. The disabled Americans who come to this Capitol, came to this Capitol when they controlled by wide margins the House of Representatives and the other body, and they ignored the disabled. I begged them if they would please accommodate. These are good people. They deserve to have the law enforced as far as the House of Representatives, their people's house, even when they come to lobby or talk to or visit their Members of Congress. They ignored me. One of the greatest satisfactions I had was, when we took over the House of Representatives, we passed the Congressional Accountability Act. We put the Congress, the House of Representatives under the same laws as the business people. One of the greatest days of satisfaction that I have ever had, and if I never serve another day in the House of Representatives, is when they put a plaque on my door, and it said John L. Mica; and underneath in braille, it had a braille reading for my constituents, so when they visited me they could be treated the same way they would in the private sector. That was denied when they controlled this entire body by huge margins and could have done anything they wanted to do. That was denied the disabled in my district. If one goes around the Capitol, and I am now on the Committee on House Administration, it is ironic how tables turn. The Committee on House Administration that would not even hear a minority member asking about helping the disabled, it is ironic. I now serve on that as one of the Speaker's designees on House Administration. Go around and see what we have done. This place was a disgrace, and we are still trying to get it so it is accessible to the disabled. The fire alarms. We are still working to get them in order so it is a safe workplace even for the people who work here, which they ignored, as well as the access to people who are disabled. But I am very proud of what we did. Every Member of the Republican side of the aisle can be very proud of what they did and of their legacy, not only as far as putting this country's financial house in order but in the area of putting the people's House in order. So, as Paul Harvey says, ``That's the rest of the story,'' or a little bit more of the story. I guess they got my dander up between watching the debates and not hearing what should have been said. But we do need to continue the progress that we have made: keeping our financial house in order, helping Americans have a few more dollars in their pocket, working Americans, and helping people get off of government. I guess those who want a lot of control by government and want power in Washington, it is better to have people relying on them here in Washington. God only knows what JFK would be saying these days. He said, ``Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.'' The other side seems to think it is ask how much more Washington can do for you, and we will get your vote and your money. It is sort of sad, and I hope the American people pay attention to what is going on here. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, I have a very small responsibility of all the responsibilities here. I do not have control over the budget. I am one vote out of 435. I do not have control over the appropriations process. But I do have responsibility to try to focus on our national drug policy, and for the past year and a half, as chairman, and since assuming that and leaving as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service of the Committee on Government Reform, I have tried to do my best to deal with a problem which we inherited as a new majority. The other side was convinced when they came in to office that we did not need a war on drugs, so they began systematically dismantling what was truly a war on drugs. Now, if we all think back to the administration of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, they instituted a number of policies, community-based policies, against narcotics. The First Lady led a ``Just say no'' effort. The President was engaged in this, we had a vice presidential task force, we had an Andean policy where we went after the drugs at their source. We brought in the military and the Coast Guard, not into arresting people but into drug surveillance; and we had an almost 50 percent decline in drug use in this country back from 1985 to 1990. I brought that chart up and showed it many times. With the Clinton administration, the first thing they did was fire everybody, just about everybody, in the drug czar's office. They took the military out of the war on drugs. They stopped intelligence sharing with our allies, who were going after drug traffickers. And it is better to have them go after them than to spend our resources. They blocked aid to Colombia, and that is why we have a $1.3 billion aid package to Colombia because they very directly stopped aid and information sharing and any type of assistance going to Colombia. Now Colombia has gone from practically having no production of heroin and no production of cocaine in 1993, this is the total supply of heroin produced in Colombia in 1993, this is a zero, I hope my colleagues can see this, this is a zero in 1993, and in 6 years of the Clinton-Gore lack of a drug policy, and an actually obstructive drug policy in Colombia, what they have managed to do is to have that come from zero production of heroin to being up to 75 percent of the world's supply. And most of that is coming into the United States from South America. This is the most recent report I have had as the chairman. We know where the drugs are coming from. Heroin is coming from South America. We see it is at 65 percent of all the heroin. We know this and DEA knows this. They have supplied me with these figures because they can do a DNA signature analysis and almost tell the field that the heroin has come from. So we know that now in the Clinton-Gore administration, in 6, 7 years, they have managed to turn Colombia from producing zero to 65 percent of everything on the streets seized in the United States; 75 percent of the world's supply, as we see. These are DEA figures given to me. The other huge increase we see is Mexico. From 1997 to 1998 they went from 14 to 17 percent, a 20 percent increase in the country that we gave trade assistance to; that we helped to secure their peso during their financial disaster. We loaned them money. We have given them the best trade benefits of probably any nation in the history of negotiation over trade. We gave them the best benefits. This administration certified Mexico as cooperating; yet they increased by 20 percent in one year the production of heroin. They blocked any aid going to Colombia and turned it into the biggest producer. So here are two of our problems: we know where it is coming from. It is coming across the border from Mexico. It is being produced, the last 6, 7, years, under the Clinton-Gore administration, in Colombia, where they denied aid; they denied assistance. And even several years ago, when we appropriated $300 million to go to Colombia, that money was bungled in getting delivery of goods and resources to Colombia to go after narcotics trafficking and also eradicating the narcotics production in that country. We will hear next week from DEA and from GAO and others that have looked at this situation, and they will outline that ``the gang that can't shoot straight'' could not even get the aide that we appropriated more than 2 years ago to Colombia to try to get this situation under control. That scares me as far as the $1.3 billion we just appropriated. Even when it is appropriated, they cannot get it straight. The same is true for another deadly drug, which is cocaine. In 1993, President Bush had gotten the production of cocaine almost under control. They went after the cartels. They had an Andean strategy. We have to remember, from a position of wimping out on the narcotics issue, which is sort of the trademark of this administration, back to what took place in 1989. President Bush found one government trafficking in illegal narcotics, primarily cocaine, and what did he do? He sent our troops in and they surrounded the house. If my colleagues will remember, those of us that followed this, they surrounded and captured Noriega. He was captured because he was dealing in drugs and drug trafficking, and that is what he was charged with. And then there is this administration that has turned its back on trying to stop the production. This was a successful program. When we reduce drug use 50 percent from 1985 to 1992 in this country, when it is reduced by 50 percent, that is a successful program. But they will tell us that the war on drugs has failed. Their war on drugs has failed. Their war on drugs was a dismantling of any effort on drugs, and the evidence could not be more clear. Now, finally we have gotten the President's attention. In 7 years, I believe the President mentioned the war on drugs eight times, just before the Colombian appropriation. When we do not have leadership from the top, when we do not have an effective strategy, when we take the military and surveillance out of the war on drugs, what do we have? We have a huge supply of drugs. That is why they are dying in Vermont, that is why they are dying in Oregon, that is why they are dying in my State, that is why they are dying in Baltimore, right down the street from here in Baltimore. ``Drug Overdose Deaths Exceed Slayings,'' this is a recent headline, September 15, in Baltimore. That means that there are more drug-related deaths than homicides. This would be a horrible headline in any community. It has appeared in the headlines in my community. But the national media will not pay attention to this. We held a hearing a week ago on this, but in the United States of America, for the first time in the history of statistics, drug-induced deaths, drug-related deaths in the United States of America exceeded homicides. For the first time. They do not want that information out. The media would not cover it. God forbid anyone should think that they are not doing a great job. But when the drug czar and Donna Shalala held a conference several weeks ago that drug use among eighth graders had dropped slightly, they championed that like we had solved the whole problem. I tell my colleagues, the problem is serious. Ask any parent, ask any young person. These are the headlines that we see: ``High Schoolers Report More Drug Use.'' Ask any high schooler, ask any parent, ask any single parent, any mother, any set of parents what one of their greatest fears is, and that is to have their child addicted to narcotics. Not only the problem of addiction, it is the problem of death. And now we have all kinds of drugs on the street. We have a huge supply. We saw where some of the supply is coming from. I am not sure if the Speaker has an HDTV or how many of my colleagues here have an HDTV. Probably not too many. Some might say, well, what is an HDTV? And what does high definition television have to do with drugs? It is a simple economics equation. When there is a short supply and a high price, there is not the demand. We have heroin, we have cocaine, we have methamphetamine, we have Ecstasy, we have all of these drugs flooding our streets; and the administration has dismantled any effort to go after the supply, to go after the producing countries, to stop drugs most cost effectively at their source. And that is why we have an incredible supply of heroin, that is why we have heroin overdose deaths. Not only do we have heroin overdose deaths, we also have on the streets of our country the most pure heroin and cocaine that our drug enforcement people have ever seen, and our young people are mixing it with alcohol and with other drugs, and they are dying like flies. That is why drug-related deaths, and many of them with our young people, now exceed homicides in the United States. Now, some people would say that the answer is treatment. And I heard this Geraldo Rivera debate the other night with one of the pro- legalizers talking about this is just a health problem. This is just a health problem. We treat everybody and we will be fine. Well, they tried the health problem approach in Baltimore and they grew from a small number of addicts to somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 addicts. Of course, the population went from 900,000 to 600,000 because people left Baltimore. They had a mayor who had a liberalization policy, no enforcement policy. And what happened? Almost the same number of homicides every year. And we saw where now drug- induced deaths exceed homicide in Baltimore. That did not work and it does not work. The alternative is zero tolerance. Rudy Giuliani did it in New York. He cut the murders from over 2,000 in a year when he took office to 600. Six hundred is about double what Baltimore had, and Baltimore has 600,000 population. And there are millions and millions in New York City. Rudy Giuliani, through a zero tolerance policy and going after drug dealers, cut all crime in New York City. Walk through New York City and you will see the evidence of it by 58 percent. The seven major felony categories were cut by 58 percent. So it not only cut murders from 2,000 down to 600, it cut down all of the mayhem and the felonies. But this is treatment. Now, they say we did not put enough money in treatment and we hear that from the other side. We put money in treatment, even under the Republicans, a 26 percent increase in treatment since 1995 funds. Every year we put money in treatment. And we see what has happened with interdiction, with international programs, when the other side, the Democrats, and under the Clinton-Gore policy cut the interdiction, cut the international source country programs. We have a huge increase in drug use in almost every category in the United States because we have a huge supply coming in. And we can never treat enough people. So we will continue to put money into treatment. But do not let them fool you that this is a health problem that we can treat our way out of this. You cannot have a war or any kind of a conflict and only treat the wounded in battle. And once someone is addicted to narcotics, our success rate in public programs is a 60/70 percent failure rate. Only a 20/30 percent success rate. And these people are repeat and repeat. Ask any parent who has an addicted young person. Ask any adult who has been addicted to narcotics. And it is the hardest thing in the world to treat these people. If we follow the Baltimore model, we will have tens and tens of millions of people who are addicted. We cannot afford that. We have asked this administration to go after drug dealers. And the Clinton- Gore administration from 1992 to 1996, this is a chart that was supplied to us by the administration and all the statistics come from the administration, it is entitled Individual Defendants Prosecuted in Federal Courts in Drug Prosecutions 1992 to 1996, they cut the prosecution of going after drug offenders from 29,000 here to 26,000 in 1996. So when we got after them to go after drug dealers and drug offenders, and we are not talking about people with small amounts of possession, we are talking about people dealing in death and destruction in huge quantities trafficking in illegal narcotics, they dropped the prosecution. And what happened is these are the headlines from the ``Dallas Morning News'': ``Federal Drug Offenders Spending Less Time in Prison Study Finds.'' We went after them, and we started to get the prosecutions up. And now we find in 2000 the drug offenders are spending less time in prison. We cannot win with these folks. First they will not prosecute folks; and then when they prosecute them, we finally get them to prosecute them and they do not let them serve prison terms. That is unfortunate. What is also unfortunate is our country is now being ravaged by not only heroin, not only by cocaine and other drugs of high purity and deadly levels, but we have a new plague across this country and that is the plague of Ecstasy and designer drugs. We just had a young person at the University of Central Florida die from an overdose of designer drugs just the past few days. We have young people who are dying from Ecstasy. We had a hearing of our subcommittee in Atlanta and heard a father talk of his daughter who about 2 years ago took Ecstasy and went into convulsions. And for 2 years that family went through hell. The daughter was in a coma and finally died. We have had hearings where we had fathers talk about their sons who have tried Ecstasy and did not get a second chance. They are part of those statistics of drug related deaths that exceed homicides. One father from Orlando told me, ``Mr. Mica, drug related deaths are homicides.'' But one of the great misconceptions young people have is that Ecstasy is a harmless drug, designer drugs you can take and feel good. This is a brain scan provided to us by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, who does scientific studies. This is a brain scan of a normal brain. This is a brain that has dealt with Ecstasy. Ecstasy destroys the brain tissue and it creates a Parkinson's type disease almost in the brain, a destruction of the brain. This is a brain scan after use of Ecstasy. The young people and adults of this country must realize that they have a dangerous commodity out there. And now some of it is mixed with all kinds of substances and used with other drugs and is deadly. It is amazing how this stuff is packaged. This is not a little cottage industry. This has turned into a huge industry of deadly drugs in designer packages. I do not know if we can focus on this, but they put all kinds of fancy designer labels on these drugs. This was provided to us by U.S. Customs Service, and that is what is out there. They try to make it attractive to our young people, and this is what our young people get is a brain, if they survive, that is damaged. And you do not repair this damage to the brain. So right now we are facing an Ecstasy epidemic. We are facing it in California. I see my colleague the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) is here. We were in his district for a hearing. I might want to yield to the gentleman to comment about his perspective. Maybe he can relate, too, to the House part of this problem. The gentleman does a fantastic job working on the subcommittee but shares, as a father and a parent, my concern for what is happening with illegal narcotics. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose).

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman. I think we have about 4 minutes, but I think it is important that he gets this message out to our colleagues, the Speaker, and the American people.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having this time this afternoon to come before the House following the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Government Reform. I have had an opportunity, since I came to Congress in 1993, to serve on the Committee on Government Reform. I came as a freshman Member in that year, in 1993, and served on that committee because I think it is a most important committee. Many of my colleagues may not be familiar with the history of the Committee on Government Reform. It was called the Committee on Government Operations, and it has had several other names through its history. But I think the Committee on Government Reform is one of the most important committees in the House of Representatives and in the entire Congress. It has an interesting history that dates back to when our Federal government started building a bureaucracy. After the Presidencies of Washington and Adams, in 1808, actually, Thomas Jefferson was quite alarmed by the bureaucracy building, he termed it, in Washington. He did not like the huge bureaucracy in his estimation that had been constructed previous to his taking office. The founding Members in the Congress, early Members at the turn of that century, the 19th century, again in 1808, created the predecessor of the Committee on Government Operations. They did not trust the appropriators. They did not trust the authorizers. The authorizers would initiate a program, the appropriators would fund the program, and they wanted an additional check. All the checks and balances they put into our system of government are really incredible when we think back that this was done some 200 years ago. They wanted a government that worked and also a government that had oversight and investigation responsibility. So in 1808, they created the predecessor of the committee on which the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) is the ranking member. He is the chief Democrat. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is the chairman of the full Committee on Government Reform. So from the very beginning of the House of Representatives and the Congress, and the beginning of our system and the checks and balances, our Founding Fathers wanted that committee. Again, it serves a very important purpose and that is to investigate, to conduct oversight independent of all the other committees. We heard criticism of the chairman, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton). I would say that no one has done a more admirable job. We have to look at the history of this Congress and we have to look at the history of administrations. There have been many administrations. I would venture to say that never in the history of the United States of America and our government have we had an administration that has had more scandals. They probably have had more scandals in the Clinton-Gore administration than we have had in the 20th century and the 19th century back to the founding of our government. This administration has been riddled with scandals. I cannot even keep track of the number of scandals that we have had. And for a Member to come forward and criticize the chairman for his conduct of investigations and oversight, I think, is unfair, because he had a responsibility and a tough responsibility. I submit, having served on that subcommittee, that never before had I seen anything like this, and I have been a student of government since high school days some many years ago. Again, in serving on the committee under the Democrat control of both the House, the Senate and the White House from 1993 to 1995, I saw how they ran that committee, and it did not serve its purpose well. In fact, there was a great defect in that because the committee was run in a fashion unintended by the Founding Fathers. I remember coming to this floor and holding up a sign that said ``55 to 5.'' And I will tell you how the other side ran the committee, the committee that kept us straight in the House of Representatives. Again holding up that chart that said ``55 to 5,'' I said, my colleagues, that is not the score of a badly mismatched sporting event. That is how the Democrats ran the investigation and the oversight committee. They gave us five investigative staff and they kept 55. We did not even have a chance. And they controlled the White House, the House and the other body; and that was not what the Founding Fathers intended. So if you want to talk about misuse of one of the most important committees in the Congress or in the House of Representatives, merely look back in a reflective manner on how the other side operated this committee. And time and time again, when I was in the minority, I came out and said, this is unfair, they should not run it in this fashion. And time and time again, they ran it in that fashion. So to criticize the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) for his record in conducting oversight and investigations for the most scandal- ridden administration ever to set its face in Washington, and I will include Philadelphia and New York, and we could go back to the Continental Congresses where they met in Trenton, Annapolis, Harrisburg, and some dozen State capitals, there has never been an administration so racked with scandal. And it has been dumped in our lap. Now, do you think that is a lot of fun? Do you think we came to Congress just to pick on the other side? No, we did not. We came here because the Founding Fathers set up this check and balance to make this system work. There are some countries I found that have even adopted the Constitution of the United States of America. They have adopted the entire document. Yet they do not function like ours. And I submit one reason they do not have that additional check that the Founding Fathers established, such as we have with the investigations and oversight, is because we are always trying to cleanse the process. Sure, we may make a few mistakes in the investigations. It is not intentional. Sure, we may have gotten some inadequate information. But let me tell my colleagues, when we were in the minority, I saw how they ran the show at least as far as investigations and oversight, and it was not anything to be proud of. In fact, again, I came many times asking for reform. And we did institute that reform, and we shared staff on a more equitable basis so we could do an honest job in conducting oversight of the House of Representatives. But to come here today to criticize the chairman. I have also served on the committee, and I have seen what we had to contend with. And you can talk about witnesses, you can talk about Webb Hubbell who served time in prison, can you talk about run-away Federal prosecutors; but I am telling you, never before in the history has there been such a scandalous misuse of the investigative process by the other side. And I hope, for the good of the country, I hope for the good of this Congress that it is never repeated. My colleagues, the House, Mr. Speaker, over 120 witnesses either would not raise their hand and swear to tell the whole truth, they raised their hand and took the fifth amendment. Over 120 witnesses fled the country. We have never been able to conduct a thorough investigation. And the other side that calls for campaign reform, 98 percent of the violations were on their side of the aisle, 98 percent of the violations. I submit that 98 percent of those serving in Congress obey the laws, they do not get into the gray area. They know there is a controlling legal authority. They have made a mockery of the law. And for them to campaign on campaign finance reform is a mockery. Because almost every one of the offenses that we see and we have seen, whether it is the Vice President at a Buddhist temple raising funds, whether it is making calls with no controlling legal authority, whether it is other gray areas and now we see that the White House has reported the use of the Lincoln Bedroom like a Motel 6, campaign contributions coming into various people running for high office here or there, and the lights are on at the Motel 6 White House. So again, we have a very serious situation we have had to contend with on that committee attempting to conduct investigations and oversight in a responsible manner, whether it is campaign finance; whether it is Travelgate, which was one of the worst misuses and abuses of Federal authority planned, cooked, sealed, a misuse of that office, a misuse of professional White House employees abusing them in the fashion, and some of them have been compensated fortunately for that; whether it is Filegate. And we can go back to Filegate. Do we still know? Do we still know? And our committee, under the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and other Members, investigated Filegate, the illegal use of hundreds and hundreds of personnel files obtained through the FBI into the White House. Everybody knows what they were up to. We know they were trying to get dirt on their political opponents. We even know who did it. Now, do we know who hired Craig Livingston? We do not know to this date because this is the way these folks operated. I had a conversation with a Democrat colleague, and the Democrat colleague and I shared our concern that a future administration might use the Clinton-Gore administration as a model in which to use the system, and that would be so sad for the future of the country. Hopefully, we can banish the Clinton-Gore method of operation because the operation of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight has always had involved bipartisan cooperation and people coming forward raising their right hand and telling the whole truth to the committee so we could proceed, not taking the fifth amendment, not fleeing the country, not withholding information, shredding information, information disappearing, and only reappearing when we were able to get it somewhere else, information that unfortunately we have never been able to obtain. So it is sad to come and have attacks against the chairman. And I will not say that, again, everything I have done is 100 percent. I make mistakes. I am human. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) makes mistakes. But I will tell my colleagues, he has done an incredible job. The same method they used to go after everyone who questions or tries to hold them accountable is find dirt on them, try to expose them in some way with their friends in the press and belittle them and degrade them in public is sad. My Democrat colleague and I both share our concern that this is not the method of operation for future administrations whether they be Democrat or Republican. So I take great exception. I wanted to spend part of tonight, I usually talk on the drug issue, but following the ranking member and having background about how this committee, which I have served on since the first day I came to Congress and am knowledgeable about, I wanted to tell, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story. Let me also mention while I have the floor that there are some funny things happening at this juncture. Of course, we are in a political time and people are talking about what they have done and what they have not done. And I think it is important to reflect. I came into the Congress, again, as a minority Member in 1992. I was from the business sector. I am not an attorney. I came here because I was concerned about the future of the country, about us having a balanced budget, about the huge deficit we were running, about getting our country's finances in order. I am pleased to come before my colleagues tonight to tell them that in fact we have been able to do that. And it was not done during my first term when there were huge numbers of majority from the other side. They did not bring spending under control. In fact, what they did was tax and spend more. In a few weeks, the American people have an opportunity to decide whether they want to turn back to tax and spend or they want to remain on a sound fiscal basis, they want the finances of this country run like they would run their own finances so the income matches the outflow. And if they do not do that and they have a personal checkbook, they know exactly what happens, they keep spending and spending and they get further and further in debt. Except they had the ability to tax. In 1993 and 1994, they did increase taxes on the American people. They did not balance the budget. And we could not pin the President down on when we would balance the budget; and every time we made a proposal, he would come back with a different date and propose more government spending, more government programs, more control in Washington, more takeover here, and they did not balance the budget. They had their opportunity. In fact, I remember them presenting their budget and for this fiscal year after they came to the floor and proposed the largest tax increase in the history of our Republic and told us this was going to balance the budget, they found in fact that the information they gave us for this year they would have had a $200 billion deficit. That was their plan to this year have a $200 billion deficit. Now, something changed there. I will tell my colleagues what changed there. It was the Republican majority took control in 1995. And what we did was not anything special. It was not rocket science. It was not some magic formula from a Harvard economic Ph.D. We limited the annual increases, we still have allowed increases, and we matched it with our expenditures and income. It was a simple plan. We balanced the budget. And we did that without harming senior citizens, without harming education, but actually by, and I will show in a few minutes, by helping education, by resetting priorities. Because this place basically had run amuck. The finances of the country were out of control. Let me just tell my colleagues the way I found the House of Representatives running when I came here. The banking scandal, as my colleagues may recall, Members on both sides of the aisle would write checks and the bills would be paid by bouncing checks that were covered here really with taxpayer money. The restaurant downstairs, the House restaurant, was run at a deficit and the food there for Members of Congress and their guests was subsidized. I have given the example of ice being delivered and some 16 and 17 people working to deliver ice. Well, they instituted delivering ice to the Members' rooms back in the 1930s and 1940s before they had refrigerators and they were still spending three-quarters of a million dollars a year to deliver ice to the offices when I came here and had some 16 to 17 employees doing that. I gave that speech many years ago, and someone could not believe it. I had to send them the documentation. He said I was not telling the truth. But that is how they ran the place. The place was in shambles. The House of Representatives, the people's House, was a disaster. And I sat with a Member of Congress, a freshman Member, and I was telling him the things that we have done since 1995 just starting here with the House of Representatives. The first thing we did, and we said we would do it, was we cut the staff in the House of Representatives by one-third. That is what we started out with. We cut the staff by one-third. We cleaned out one building and a half a building on Capitol Hill of the huge bulk that the other side had taken on board and bulged the bureaucracy of the administration of Congress. We cut the committees by a third. I took over the Civil Service subcommittee, which at one time Civil Service and Post Office had over 100 employees. I chaired Civil Service, and in fact we operated with seven staffers as opposed to more than 50 that had been devoted to the Civil Service subcommittee. So we cut the staff. If you walk around the halls of Congress today in some of the House office buildings, you will see some empty rooms there that are there for meeting. They were formerly filled with this huge bureaucracy that the other side built up. That would be very sad to return to those days of yesteryear when they had control, when they misused their power. We instituted many reforms in addition to cutting staff. Incidentally, since we cut the staff, we had a lot of parking spaces left over here because we did not have the 3,000 employees that were cut from the congressional payroll when we also cut the expenditures of the House of Representatives. So we turned that into a public parking lot. That parking lot actually has revenue into the House of Representatives. The subsidized dining room is now privately operated and not operated at a subsidy on the House side. A big change. The shoe shine stand, the barber shop, all of these things have been privatized and now accomplished. As I said, I sat with a freshman Member of Congress, he did not know, and if a freshman Republican Member of Congress does not know what we did, how can the American people or the rest of Congress remember the reforms that were instituted here in this House of Representatives? One of the other great things that we have done, as long as I am going to spend a few minutes talking about, again, a contrast between the Republican control and the Democrat control, is our Nation's capital. Our Nation's capital was a disaster in 1993 to 1995 when the Democrats controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. It was a national shame. The murder rate approached some 400. There was a murder almost every weekend. Some weekends there were half a dozen murders here. There was slaughter in the streets of Washington. The public housing authority was bankrupt. The children who were supposed to be protected, most protected, not at a disadvantage, were fed jello, rice and chicken for a month because they did not have money to pay the vendors. Sometimes you had to boil your water in the District of Columbia. The morgue was not able to pay again for burying the indigent dead and bodies were stacked up like cord wood because they could not meet their obligations. This Congress was funding three-quarters of a billion dollars of deficit for the District of Columbia before the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. Three-quarters of a billion dollars a year in debt. Marion Barry who was a disgrace to not only the capital but to the Nation, who set a horrible example for the young people here, he had employed some 60,000 employees. About one in every 10 people in the District of Columbia was employed by the District staff. What did the Republicans do? This year we have nearly balanced the budget for the District of Columbia, first of all kicking and screaming and you would think we had imposed martial law but we did impose a control board over the District of Columbia. The District is our responsibility. It is a trust given to the Congress under the Constitution and we must work to try to maintain that trust as a good steward of the District. You do want home rule and we have tried to do that, but we did have to institute a control board. We have gotten some of the agencies, not all of them, in order. But the District again is running at a near balanced budget. They were spending more on education than any other entity in the United States on a per capita basis and performing at one of the lowest levels and we have turned some of that around. We had to turn the water system over to another agency to operate. We have had to redo the District of Columbia building which once was a beautiful building and it looked like a Third World practically bombed out shelter when we took over. We have cut the employees from some 60,000 to in the mid-30,000 range, I believe, but we have dramatically decreased the number of employees in the District of Columbia. And we have cut the murders in the District. The person we brought in as the financial officer to oversee the District's finances and try to get them in order fortunately was elected the mayor and he has done an admirable job in bringing the District finances under control, and now we have returned most of the rule back to the District of Columbia. But what a sad case. How sad it would be for the District of Columbia or for the American people to turn the Congress over, the running of the House of Representatives to the side that put it in such shame and disrepute, how sad it would be to turn the District of Columbia back over to the people who had that stewardship and in some 40 years ran the District of Columbia into the ground. They were responsible. They failed. We took on that responsibility both to run this House, run the District, and I think we did an admirable job. So today, my colleagues, I think it is time that we remember as Members are prepared from the other side to come and bash what we have done, I want to put in the Record and let the Congress and the American people know what we have taken on as a responsibility. I was appointed by Speaker Gingrich to be the chairman of the Civil Service subcommittee. I spoke about that a few minutes ago. I talked about some of the things we did with the Civil Service subcommittee. I am not here to tout my own horn but let me tell you, we took the Federal employees personnel office, which is the Office of Personnel Management, and in the 1993 to 1995 period, just go look at the statistics. Close to 6,000 employees in our personnel office, Office of Personnel Management. We were able to get that down to some 3,000 employees. And 1,000 of those employees, although there was kicking and screaming, there were Federal investigators, I was able, working with others, to turn that into an employee stock ownership plan. So we cut the number of employees. We took a thousand of those Federal investigators and turned that into an employee stock ownership company. I am sure you would not read about this but it is a success of again a Republican initiative and something that we should be very proud of. They now own that company. They now pay taxes, millions of dollars in taxes. They do business with the Federal Government, with other government agencies, with the private sector. But it is employee-owned. They fought kicking and screaming, but we did it. We can cut government. We can cut bureaucracy. We can make things run more efficiently. I had never been chairman of Civil Service. I had never been to a Civil Service subcommittee hearing. Again, it does not take a lot of rocket science or a Harvard Ph.D. in economics or administration management, it just takes some common sense. And somehow in 40 years these people lost common sense. Let me talk about one more thing that really got my gander last week. We had the President of the United States at the White House in a signing ceremony for long-term care. The President and the White House announced the statement that the President and the administration had passed long-term care for Federal employees and retirees and others in the Federal workforce. The President of the United States had the gall to say that this would serve as a model for the private sector. Little did the President of the United States know the history of what had taken place on long-term care. Nor would his aides ever reveal this to the American public nor his press machine. But long-term care, ladies and gentlemen, when I became chairman of Civil Service was not ever on the radar screen. There was never ever a hearing in the Congress on long-term care. When I took over and I came from the private sector, I took over Civil Service, I started to look at some of the employee benefit programs. And coming from the private sector, I wondered why we did not have long-term care benefits for Federal employees. So I looked into it, and I actually conducted a hearing. The first hearing ever in the Congress was held on March 26, 1998, I chaired that, and I said, why do we not have long-term care as a benefit for Federal employees? Now, this does not again take anything but common sense. I came from the private sector. Businesses I had been familiar with had proposals for long-term care for their employees. The bigger the business, the better discounts you can get. With 1.9 million Federal employees, with 2.2 million Federal retirees, with 1 million postal people and millions in the military, why could we not have a long-term care benefit for our Federal employees, go to an insurance carrier for long-term care and get a discounted rate for providing a group policy? I posed that. ``Oh, we can't do that. My goodness, we can't do that.'' The administration fought, kicked, opposed, blocked, did everything they could, said that this was a radical idea and fought us tooth and nail as we moved along or put impediments in the way. Finally, the President signed the bill. I was not invited to the signing ceremony. There were other places I have not been invited to that probably would be more offensive to me, but we must set the record straight. And for the President of the United States to say that this would serve as a model for the private sector, well, to the President of the United States, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I must remind him that this idea came from the private sector. It was delivered through the person of Mr. Mica from Florida who held the first hearing on it and who introduced the first legislation on this August 4, 1998 and worked to try to get them to provide this simple benefit for one of the largest groups in the United States. But Federal employees, Federal retirees, if you think that Bill Clinton or Al Gore did this for you, you need to have a serious counseling session with me and I will be glad to provide you the data. Of course he took credit for it and he had himself surrounded by people who did not have a whole lot to do with this particular issue. Another issue, just to reflect as long as I am on the subject of a comparison of the Republican administration, the new majority, I must say that the other side really has had a deficit in new ideas for some 47 years, long-term care being one of them. But again in chairing the Civil Service subcommittee, I looked at the benefits that Federal employees have, and I came again from the private sector, I had some term insurance I had acquired in the private sector and as you get older and if you have term insurance, you know you pay more for that term insurance, and I thought, well, why not add on? I am now a Federal employee. Even though I am a Member of Congress I fall in that category. Why not add on to the Federal employees life insurance benefits program? I could pay a little bit more in a group and have those benefits. Now I am in that employ, I do not have the private sector benefit, so I looked at the rates, and I said, ``My God, they're paying higher rates for life insurance than I can get in the private sector.'' I thought, something is dramatically wrong. So I conducted a hearing on Federal employee-retiree life insurance benefits. Come to find out, the other side had not bid the life insurance policy for 40 years. For 40 years they had not bid it; they only had one product available. If you are even familiar in the slightest sense from the private sector of all the new options that are out there in insurance coverage, and you have a group of 1.9 million Federal employees and 2.2 million Federal retirees and other Federal employees, why could you not get a better rate with a group that size? A no-brainer. I talked to my friends in the insurance industry, and they said it was absurd not to have more choices. It was absurd to be paying those rates. Now, we did make a little bit of progress. We have some more choices out there. Kicking and screaming, the Office of Personnel Management is coming into the 21st century, whether it is long-term employee health benefits, whether it is life insurance. Let me just set up as a bit of warning something else that I found as Chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Service that is on everybody's radar screen. One of the most important things to me personally is that we find ways to provide health insurance coverage for all Americans. I personally remember when I was in college and my brother was in college, we dropped out, my dad did not have health insurance, and we went to work and were able to help the family meet their financial requirements and then go back to school. But I know what it is like to be in a family that does not have health insurance, and there are millions of families that do not have health insurance. My dad was a working American who did not have health insurance, so I know what it is like; and I think it is important that we as Republicans, that we as Democrats, that we as an Independent Member of this body, work to find ways to find access to health insurance coverage. I oversaw the largest health care plan as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service in the country when I chaired that subcommittee, and I saw what this administration did to that program. It concerns me, because they are doing the same thing in prescription drugs; they are doing the same thing with HMOs and other reform. What they are doing is they are bogging it down, they are packing on mandates, they are phrasing things like ``Patients' Bill of Rights'' and all of this that sounds good. So I held hearings on what the administration was doing back several years now when I chaired this subcommittee. They came out with this Patients' Bill of Rights, and they could not get agreement in the Congress, so the President, by executive order, imposed the Patients' Bill of Rights on the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. I held a hearing and asked the people from the administration, what does this Patients' Bill of Rights do? Tell me what it does specifically. And each of them would say, well, it provides more paperwork, it is more regulation, it is more mandates. I said, well, what medical benefit is there to all this? And they could not mention a specific medical benefit. But the President by executive order, which he has used so much because of the slim majority, and we do not have override ability here, imposed that on the employees health benefit program for the Federal Government, and not on all plans. We had close to 400 plans at one time, before he imposed this, and he did not impose on it the most contentious part of the Patients' Bill of Rights, which is the right to sue. He imposed part of it, mostly the regulations and paperwork, I guess to make it look like he was doing something. I will tell you what the result was. Instead of having, say, some 400 to choose from, we lost 60, 70 plans. When they added more mandates, we lost more plans. So many areas that needed that coverage for Federal employees out in the yonder started seeing fewer HMOs. In addition, they saw the costs rise dramatically, and the private sector costs have not risen for health care plans anywhere near the extent, almost double digit for Federal employees, again with a system that the administration could get its hands around and sort of strangle, which they have done. So Federal employees, retirees, have seen these dramatic increases in costs in premium, and also have fewer choices. We have to be very careful that we do not do the same thing here with HMOs. I had a great letter from a constituent in my district. It was really a prize letter. I think it started out with ``Dear Congressman Mica and you other dummies in Washington.'' He had sent it to not just me. He said, you all are up there arguing about whether or not I have the right to sue my HMO, and he said you all are out in space, because I do not even have an HMO to sue. Three of them have disappeared. That is a great concern to me, that something that was set up to provide health care on a cost-effective basis, that we do not destroy it. Now, there are patient protections and things that can be written without damaging the intent and purpose of HMOs to provide access to health care, but we do not want more people like this who make a mockery of the ability to sue because he does not even have a plan he can go to. We see more and more plans being dissolved. So if the Federal Government does continue to impose mandates, if we put on a Patients' Bill of Rights that only adds paperwork and regulations, and we increase the cost and we have fewer HMOs to choose from, the gentleman who wrote me, unfortunately, will be very correct. But he did have a great point: we cannot destroy something that is so important to us, and we have got to find ways. It is interesting that we have some 30 or 40 million people who do not have health insurance coverage, and two-thirds of those people are working Americans. On our side of the aisle, again, kicking and screaming, we made the President sign welfare reform. I can tell you there is no way, if we had not boxed him into a corner, if it had not been close to the election, he ever would have signed welfare reform, but he did sign it. We have some 6 or 7 more million people working, thanks to the Republican initiative. It is hard. I know it is easy to come here to come to Washington, to say I am going to give you this, free prescription drugs; you do not have to work; we will send you a welfare check from Washington, or through Washington, and you will be taken care of cradle-to-grave. They tried that in the Soviet Union. They had it all cooked, and, unfortunately, the system was destroyed. You even see it in Europe and some countries that have these huge tax rates, unemployment, people not working, lack of productivity, and it is reflected now in their economies, as opposed to our's. But we must address the people that we have taken from welfare to work and find a way that they can have access to affordable, quality health care. I think that has to be through a partnership of the working individual on the basis of their ability to pay. We also have to do that through the employer; and most of the employers who are providing these benefits are small businesses. The majority of businesses in this country, the vast majority, is not big, big business; it is small employers. A huge percentage of our population is employed by small business people. So business, the employer and government also has a responsibility, and it is something we can do. They had their chance to balance the budget. They did not. What is interesting is this year, I believe we are going to have this year in excess of $200 billion in surplus. They would have had by their plan which they submitted to us, I was here, a $200 billion deficit. Not only would they have had a deficit, but they were also taking out of Social Security and putting in nonnegotiable certificates of indebtedness of the United States. So here is the crew on the other side of the aisle that brought us these huge deficits, and all the finances of the country start right here in the people's body, in the House of Representatives. They had their chance to propose getting this right, but they now claim to say that they can do a better job. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell you. These are the same folks that not only had us in a deficit position, had no way to get us out, tried to tax their way out, tried to spend their way out, and had projected for this year a $200 billion deficit, their best guess, and we have a $200 billion-plus surplus. It has not been easy to do. Every time we have made a reform, they have thrown the kitchen sink at us, saying we are going to have people rolled out of nursing homes on the street, there will be breadlines in America, welfare reform is a cruel thing, to insist that people work and not stay on welfare. But I submit that we have done an admirable job. One of the things you can do when you balance the budget is you can talk about prescription drug benefits, you can talk about adding more money to education. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a few minutes about education, because I think that is important. Now, I am a Republican Member of the House of Representatives. I come from a background, I actually have a degree in education from the University of Florida. I am very proud of that, and I never taught. I did my internship. My wife was a public schoolteacher, taught elementary school in Corning, New York, and West Palm Beach when we moved and were married some 28 years ago, and she was a great teacher. I admire her ability with young people, and she has been a great mother to my two children, and I respect her judgment. So she went to public schools, I went to public schools, we worked our way through college. I want to give that as a background. I am interested in education. My grandparents were immigrants to this country. One was an Italian immigrant who came in after the turn of the century, worked in the factories and got into business in upstate New York. My grandfather on my father's side, they were Slovak immigrants from Slovakia, now a free and independent nation, once part of Czechoslovakia. They came to this country. I will tell you, from the time I was a young child, I never heard anything repeated more in my family than get your education, that education is the most important thing. So the background of my family, again, came from immigrants, and they were intent on educating their children and grandchildren, and it was so important to us because they saw education and they saw it so rightly as the key to being able to function in a free democratic society that is dedicated to free enterprise. So education was a very, very important part of my family's background. I want to give that as a predicate. Mr. Speaker, part of our work is trying to pass some 13 appropriations bills and do it in a responsible fashion. The contest is between the spenders, they had their chance to tax, and they could not impose any higher taxes on the American people because they are not in the majority. And the other alternative is spending, trying to keep the spending under control. The easiest thing for a politician to do is just spend more of the money and get it out of the people's hard-earned paycheck. But, again, on the point of education, education has always been important to me. And once we get the finances of the country in order, once we get our personal finances in order, we can do a lot. We found that. If I asked a question to Members of the House of Representatives, or of the Mr. Speaker today, who would do more financially for education, Republicans or Democrats, I am sure, Mr. Speaker, many people would respond, Democrats, because they are bigger spenders. But a strange thing happens when we balance the budget and have fiscal responsibility in Washington. We have more money, as I said, for prescription drugs; we have more money for education. I can tell my colleagues that in the Republican Majority, K-through- 12 funding has been a priority. Now, we only fund about 5 to 6 percent of all education dollars. The rest comes from local and State, usually from State governments through sales tax or other taxes at the State level or local property taxes. So we are the small contributor. But these are the funding levels. Take a look at this. During the time the Democrats had control of the House of Representatives from 1990 to 1995, they increased spending for K-through-12 some 30.9 percent. If we have our financing in order, we can set priorities. We are not going further in the hole, and we are not robbing money out of Social Security, Medicare, or letting other programs go astray and here is what can be done. Under the Republican Majority from 1995 to 2000, we have increased the funds for education. So we can do this with a balanced budget. We can put more money into education and the facts show that. In fact, our side of the aisle has done that. Now, there is a big difference between the way we spend money and the way they spend money. Again, as a teacher, a former teacher-to-be, because, again, I never taught, but as a graduate of an education school and the husband of a teacher, I can tell my colleagues, and from talking to teachers throughout my district and anywhere I meet them, the last thing a teacher is able to do today is to teach. There are so many regulations, so many rules, so many restraints. There are so many court orders, so many edicts from Washington from the Department of Education, that the last thing a teacher can do is teach. So this Republican majority has a difference. We have a difference in philosophy too about education. With Democrat control of the House of Representatives and the Congress, we found that nearly 90 percent of Federal dollars were going to everything except the classroom. We have first of all put more dollars into education, but also to have them go to the classroom and to the teacher. Those are the most fundamental differences between what the other side has proposed and what we propose and what this great debate is about. They want that power; they want that control in Washington. They think Washington knows best. Better than parents, better than teachers, better than local school principals. In the meantime, they have created a bureaucracy. They have 5,000 people in the Department of Education; 5,000 people in the Department of Education. Look at this administrative overhead. We have tried to get the dollars to education. They have tried and actually succeeded in getting the money to education administrative overhead. This is a chart from 1992 to the year 2000, and that has to be reversed. We do not need to be paying for a bureaucracy in Washington. Of the 5,000 people in the Federal Department of Education, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 are located just within a few miles of where I am standing here in Washington, our Nation's capital. Most of them are making between $60,000 and $110,000. I do not have teachers that are making $60,000 and $110,000. So we have a simple philosophy. Get that money out of administrative overhead. And no matter what program they get into, when they took over the Congress to have a Direct Student Loan Program as opposed to having the private sector, and the costs every time have risen dramatically. Look at the costs back in 1993. It has absolutely mushroomed. This is in a student loan program. So we have been able to put more money in education. We are trying to do it without strings. We are trying to do it without a huge bureaucracy. There were 760 Federal education programs when I came to Congress. We have got it down to somewhere, I think, just below 700. All well intended, as we will hear the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the chairman of that committee, cite on the House floor. All well intended. But there is no reason why we cannot get that money back to the classroom, back to the teacher, back to basic education. I tell my colleagues, and my wife will tell them as well as an elementary educator, students must be able to read, write, and do simple mathematics in order to succeed. And if students do not learn that at the earliest stage. I just saw, and I wanted to say President Bush, but Governor Bush's proposal and for what he did in Texas, what he has done in teaching young people to read, to write, to do mathematics. If we could duplicate this across the United States, what a great thing we would be doing for all young people, especially our minorities. Again, we have to remember the value of education, to succeed in this country. Because if a student cannot read and write and do simple mathematics at the beginning, then they become the dropout problem, then they become the discipline problem. Then they are the social problem. Then they are sometimes even the prisoner problem and greater social problem that we face. So Republicans have a very simple proposal. Get the money to the classroom. We have balanced the budget; we have additional resources. But not the control in Washington. Not the strangling. Let teachers teach. Do away with some of the Federal regulations. We have seen it with charter schools. We have seen it with voucher systems. Voucher systems do not destroy public education; but they allow everyone, whether they are poor or black or Hispanic or white, whatever, to have an opportunity for the best possible education. And we find success, tremendous success in those programs in improvements in basic skills. We have done it in the District. We helped clean up some of the District of Columbia problems. We have done it in the House of Representatives. We have done it with the Social Security program that was in disarray. We have done it with our Federal balanced budget. We have tried to do it in a responsible manner. And here in education with our seven key principles: quality education, better teaching, local control, which is so important, accountability. It is so important to have education accountability, dollars to the classroom, not to the bureacracy, not to administration, not to Washington control or mandates, but dollars to the classroom where they are most needed. And not telling each school district they have got to use this money only for this or that. They know, the parents know, the principals know how to use those dollars. Then parental involvement and responsibility. Responsibility which is so important in our society. Sometimes it is a word that is forgotten. No one wants to be responsible. And certainly we have had some 8 years of people not taking responsibility, of also promoting a nonresponsible society. That must change, because we must be responsible. We must be accountable. And our young people must also be ingrained with that philosophy if they are to succeed. So we want to, again, take this message to the American people this afternoon, my fellow Members of Congress. We are pleased to compare what we have done, what we said we would do, and what we have accomplished and what we want to do for the future. We have a great model that we have presented. Sure we have made mistakes. Republicans are human too. Sure, we have not done everything the way we should do. But I can tell my colleagues that this is not the time to turn to irresponsible management of the Congress, irresponsible management of the District of Columbia, irresponsible management over Social Security or Medicare that the other side let go. This is the time to be responsible, to have programs for the future based on sound experiences of the past. Today, I have been able to hopefully outline some of what we have done; what I have been able to do as a Member of this distinguished body. And we are here to do the people's business and do it with honor, and on a bipartisan basis. But, again, the American people must be aware of the facts, particularly as we approach this most important generational election. This is a critical election; and we do not want to turn back to 1993, 1994, 1995, to tax and spend and regulate and administrate from Washington in an irresponsible manner. Mr. Speaker, this is the time for responsibility. It is the time for us to really reflect upon the accomplishments that we can point to at this juncture. With that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you taking time and the staff taking time as the House concludes its business this afternoon and returns on Monday. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present this special order.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House of Representatives on another Tuesday night to talk about one of the most serious problems facing our Nation and the American people and the United States Congress; and that is the problem of illegal narcotics and drug abuse. I have taken probably more than 40 occasions, usually on a Tuesday, or at least once a week in the past year and a half plus to come before the House and talk about what I consider the most important social problem is facing our Nation. There is nothing bar an attack from a foreign enemy that could do more destruction or impose more tragedy upon this Nation than that problem of illegal narcotics. I took the responsibility of chairing the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the House of Representatives under the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight some 18 months ago; and I took that responsibility very seriously. I wish I could come before my colleagues tonight and say that we have solved this problem. I cannot as a parent tell my colleagues that we have solved this problem. I cannot as a Member of Congress tell my colleagues that we have solved this problem. I cannot tell my colleagues as the chair of this subcommittee that we have solved this problem. In fact, sometimes I think we make a step forward, and I think that we take a couple steps backwards. The news, unfortunately, has been even more grim recently, and part of this, I think, is a lack of national leadership and national focus. Let us face it, the Clinton-Gore administration has not been interested in addressing the problem of illegal narcotics. It has not been one of their primary concerns. In fact, the President of the United States, our leader, our Chief Executive only mentioned up until the passage of several months ago of the Colombia package, the war on drugs some eight times in 7 years. So it has not been in the vocabulary or part of the agenda of this administration. I do not mean that as a partisan statement. It is a matter of fact. This administration came in with a different agenda, with a different approach. Now, some 7 plus years later, we see the results. This President has been looking for a legacy and this Vice President, his companion, have a legacy. That legacy is not printed by the media. The media will not print this story. But every family in America knows about this story. There is almost not a family in this Nation today untouched by the ravages of illegal narcotics. Just ask one's son, one's daughter, just ask a young child, and they will tell one about drugs in their school, drugs on their street, drugs in the community. Just pick up any newspaper. We have conducted dozens of hearings throughout the United States, field hearings and here in Washington; and countless law enforcement officials came in and told us that more than half the crimes, in my area 60, 70 percent of the crimes in my area, are related to illegal narcotics. I held up some 2 years ago in 1998 this headline from Central Florida. And I come from one of the most beautiful areas of our Nation, a Nation that is very vast, a Nation that has a lot of diversity. I come from a district that is truly one of the blessed in the Nation with high employment, one of the highest educated populations, highest per capita income, all the things that any Member of this Congress would like. This was the headline 2 years ago in my district: ``Drug deaths top homicides.'' Drug deaths exceeded homicides in my district some 2 years ago. I was appalled by this. That was one of the reasons why I took on the assignment to chair the subcommittee that deals with our national drug policy. I wished I could tell my colleagues that this headline was limited to Central Florida; but, Mr. Speaker, this headline has now spread across the Nation. Last week I made an announcement, and the press did not pay any attention to it because they do not like to cover this story. They do not want to print anything that would reflect in any way badly on this administration. But this is the legacy of the Clinton-Gore administration when it comes to the biggest social problem, the biggest problem that is imposing death, destruction, tragedy, sadness beyond belief to American families, and that is the problem of substance abuse and drug abuse. For the first time in the history of our Nation, drug-induced deaths reached 16,926. And that is significant because in 1998, the last figure that we have for drug-induced deaths, murders were below that figure. I will never forget what a parent who told me about this headline when we held a hearing in Orlando several years ago. After the hearing, and seeing this headline, a parent said, when I said drug deaths top homicides, I read that, he came up to me afterwards and he said, ``Mr. Mica, my son died from a drug overdose, and drug deaths are homicides.'' In fact, what is absolutely appalling, and the media will not talk about it, is the murders that we see here, some 16,914. Well, they are actually decreasing, and there are reasons for that: zero tolerance enforcement. Rudy Giuliani's program alone in New York has reduced the number of deaths by murder in his area from some 2,600, or 1,400 less deaths per year on average. And that is with Rudy Giuliani as mayor with a zero tolerance. But these deaths here, these murders, half of these are drug related. And if we added this up, we would have an absolutely astounding figure. And this does not mention another up to 52,000, according to the head of our Office of National Drug Control Policy. And our drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, has testified before us that in fact there are some 52,000. If we took all of the deaths that are related, the deaths they do not want to talk about, the deaths where they parade all the horribles about weapons, for example, the biggest threat as far as weapons in our Nation to our young people in fact are illegal narcotics. Take the 6-year-old killing a 6-year-old. That child came from a drug-infested environment. We had another single digit 6- or 7-year-old who went in with a gun, and everyone was appalled by the story that he had his classmates, and I think the teacher, on the floor. This individual that did that, when he was interviewed later, said he wanted to be with his mother, and his mother was in jail on a drug charge. Our Nation, our families have been devastated by illegal narcotics. And for the first time in the history of our country, in the history of statistic gathering, we have drug-induced deaths exceeding murder in the United States. And here is the chart that we can see from the beginning of this administration, the Clinton-Gore administration. And this is, fortunately, the legacy that will be printed in the statistical books. People will look at the Clinton-Gore administration; and, of course, they will remember the scandals. And my goodness, we could spend the rest of the night talking about the scandals of this administration, but this is the scandal of death and destruction. And this is repeated year after year, from 11,000 to 13,000, to 14,000, to 15,000 and topping off at just about 17,000 drug-induced deaths. And how did we get that way? Well, the first thing is we do not have that as part of our agenda. The first thing the administration did was to employ in the White House people that could not even pass a drug test. I remember sitting in hearings, having the Secret Service people testify before our investigative hearings, that they could not institute proper checks of security of people who were going in the White House at high positions because so many of them had failed drug tests. So when we have drug users setting drug policy, then we end up with a result like this that the press does not want to talk about, the media does not want to talk about, and certainly those on the other side of the aisle do not want to talk about. Who would defend a record of death and destruction like this? Then the administration hires as the chief health officer of the United States of America, who? Joycelyn Elders. The most infamous health officer. Our surgeon general who just said to our kids, ``Just say maybe.'' Just saying to our kids ``just say maybe'' has results. Now, of course a lot of people snicker about marijuana use. And the marijuana that we have on our streets is not the marijuana of the 1960s and 1970s. This stuff has high TCL, THL contents, and it does a great deal of damage that is done to the brain, that is done to the body, and we know that. This is not the same drug that used to be on the streets. So here we have a series of drug policy setters who in the White House, we have a change in policy, dismantling what had formerly been a successful war on drugs. And do not tell me that the war on drugs cannot be a success. In fact, we can look at the success of the Bush- Reagan era, from 1985 to 1992, where drug use in this country was reduced by some 50 percent. This is what took place with the policy of ``just say maybe,'' or ``If I had it to do over again I would inhale.'' I am a parent. How do we tell our children not to use marijuana or some illegal drug when the highest elected official of the United States has said to our children, ``If I had it to do over again, I'd inhale.'' These kids are not dummies. And this is exactly what the kids did, they inhaled. And now we have up here some 47 percent of the students that have used marijuana. And this statistic has been repeated over and over. And not just with young people. Some 78 million Americans have used an illicit drug some time in their lifetime. This is according to the Department of Health and Human Services. This is, again, a statistic that should make us be concerned, because we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 percent of our population already using drugs. We have a chief executive who employs people who use drugs in a policy position. We have a surgeon general who, as part of the Clinton-Gore legacy, said ``just say maybe.'' These are the results. Now, some might snicker about marijuana. Again, we have a much more deadly drug on the streets now. We cannot snicker about the death and destruction. This is the headline from a recent newspaper, August 16, from the Washington Times: ``The Threat of Ecstasy Reaching Cocaine and Heroin Proportions.'' Some of the news that the drug czar recently gave to the country, along with Secretary of HHS, they took a small area of eighth grade use of marijuana and actually found some slight decline in eighth grade use of marijuana. With this they held a news conference and said, ``We are doing a great job; we are doing an incredible job.'' What they did not tell us is that these kids are shifting now from marijuana, which maybe can be snickered at, to Ecstasy, which basically destroys the brain. It induces a Parkinson's-like effect. It causes death and destruction. We are seeing death by Ecstasy, death by cocaine, and death by heroin in incredible numbers; numbers that we have never seen in the history of recording any of this from all of our statistical gatherers. In fact, drug use in the United States among our youth has skyrocketed. In addition to marijuana, which the study that I reported said increased from some 14 percent of the students who were surveyed that said that they currently use marijuana in 1991, before this administration came into office, that number steadily rose to 26.7 percent in 1999, almost doubling. Again, a startling statistic. I want to go tonight beyond marijuana. I want to go to the inner- agency domestic heroin threat that was presented to me as chair of this subcommittee. This was produced by the National Drug Intelligence Center earlier this year. What it talked about is what is happening in the drug scene as they shift away from some of the soft drugs to the hard drugs. The Drug Abuse Warning Network, also known as DAWN, received reports of 20,140 drug-induced deaths in the United States where heroin or related opiates were detected from 1994 to 1998. During the same time span, heroin overdose deaths increased some 25.7 percent. Again a part of the Clinton-Gore legacy. You close down on the war on drugs, you cut the source country programs where you can cost effectively stop the production of illegal narcotics at their source. You want to see an astounding figure? Talk about cocaine production. Where does cocaine and where does heroin come from? Tonight I am going to talk quite a bit about heroin. In 1992, at the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, there was almost zero cocaine, zero heroin produced in Colombia. In 7 years, this administration, through some policy decisions that are as inept as anything that has ever been adopted by any administration, created a production facility of heroin and cocaine, coca and poppy, in Colombia. This is the cocaine production of Colombia. In 1993, almost nothing produced, almost no cocaine produced. This is in metric tons, 65 metric tons. Under President Bush and under President Reagan, they cut drug use by some 50 percent from 1985 to 1992. They started an Andean strategy which stopped drugs at their source. It was cost effective. They engaged the military in surveillance, not in military actions against the drug traffickers but in sharing information which the Clinton administration as one of their first steps closed down. This is what turned Colombia from a cocaine transit country where coca was coming from Peru and Bolivia into a cocaine production. Look at this production, and it is off the charts. It is swarming across the United States. It is in Europe like it has never been. And it is through policies by not providing information sharing, by stopping antinarcotic equipment getting to Colombia, in fact blocking it through policies of the United States. This is cocaine production. Heroin production. There was almost no heroin. The only poppies you could see were grown for floral bouquets before the Clinton-Gore policy. Zero. This is absolutely astounding that this administration, Clinton-Gore, could turn Colombia into the world supplier of heroin and poppy in 8 short years. And that is why this Congress had to pass a $1.3 billion spending bill to pull their cookies out of the gutter, so to speak, to bring this situation under control. And this production of heroin and cocaine not only disrupted Colombia, which has had thousands of police, thousands of legislators, jurists, citizens slaughtered there, but it has helped finance that slaughter through both the right wing militias and the left wing FARC organizations who finances their activities and their war and their destruction and their total devastation of now a region. It spilled over into the region which suddenly the President goes down for 6 or 7 hours and takes credit for solving the problem. He and his policies and the Clinton-Gore policies created this situation. And I learned in one hearing they diverted assets passed by this Congress to stop illegal narcotics trafficking production at their source. They diverted to Haiti I think some $40 million was some of the testimony in their failed Haitian nation building attempt, pouring money down a rat hole while illegal narcotics are being produced in this area. And do not tell me that we cannot stop drugs at their source, because we can stop drugs at their source. Here is the record of our spending programs, and we track this. I remember going down with former chair of the subcommittee. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now Speaker of the House, was chair of this subcommittee with this responsibility. He and Mr. Zeliff and myself helped start the programs in Peru and Bolivia. If we look at coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia, this chart here is Bolivia. Look at this, in 1995 a policy that we adopted, we got a few million dollars down there in alternative crop programs, in crop eradication of illegal narcotics crops. Here is Peru. And look at what has happened here. This is Colombia. This is the administration's policy of stopping sharing information, stopping resources getting to Colombia. That is why we have had to spend billions of dollars now over a billion dollars to bring Colombia under control. But this shows you that you can stop the production of illegal narcotics in those source countries and you can do it very cost effectively. Unfortunately again, with the Clinton-Gore administration, the news is bad. They do not want to talk about it. The deaths again have risen to a record level as a result of these polls. This is the other chart that I continually bring out. And when I hear people say the war on drugs was a failure, yes, this is a failure in a reduction of long-term trends in lifetime prevalence of drug use. This is a failure. This is the 50 percent reduction under the Reagan and Bush administration. This was a war on drugs, a president like President Bush, who found a central American president, a leader dealing in drugs, his name was Noriega in 1989. And what did President Bush do? He did not wimp out. He sent our troops in and they captured Noriega and they tried him and he sits in prison because he was a drug dealer dealing in death and destruction that was coming into our shores. This is the Clinton close-down-the-war-on-drugs success. You see this dramatic increase in every type of drugs, heroin, drugs that were not even on the chart, ecstasy, cocaine, methamphet-amines. And this is not something that I make up. This chart was presented by one of the administration's agencies. We look at crack and we look at methamphetamine State by State, 1992 presented by one of the administration offices and agencies. In 1992, almost no crack, very little. You see in a couple of areas. In 1993, the adoption of the Clinton-Gore policy of just say maybe to illegal narcotics. Look at the growth here of methamphetamines, of crack. In 1994, their policy really kicks in. They had closed down the war on drugs. They slashed the interdiction programs. They took the Coast Guard out. They stopped information sharing. This is what you get from that policy. Look at 1995. Look at 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, the whole country. You can go anywhere in the United States of America, you can go to the West Coast in California where we held hearings and people are dying by the thousands. There they are abandoning their children on methamphetamines, again a great legacy of this administration. Just say maybe. I heard Ralph Nader the other night. This guy is really out to lunch. He is trying to tell the American people that this is just a health problem, that this can be treated. Ladies and gentlemen of the House, that is bull, because they tried just treating people, they tried a liberal policy. This is the result of a liberal policy. This is Baltimore, a great legacy. It probably should rank up there with the Clinton-Gore administration. This is a policy of a mayor who came in for 2 terms. Schmoke was his name. He is out. Thank God that he is not in office. He left a legacy of death and destruction in Baltimore, a great historic city, wonderful people who live in Baltimore. They managed to have the population decline from nearly 1 million, it is probably below the chart we see here. These are the figures that were given to me by DEA on the deaths in Baltimore, where they said, ``Just say maybe. Come and get your needles. Don't enforce the drug laws. Don't cooperate with the high intensity drug traffic areas. Do drugs, it won't hurt you. This is a health problem. We'll treat our way out of this.'' Look at the murders, steady every year in the 300 range. You have to remember, New York City with 20 times the population only had double the deaths under Rudy Giuliani who brought the deaths down from 2,000 to the mid 600 range with his policy of zero tolerance. With this policy of Just Say Maybe, Do It, death and destruction. Do you have any idea of how many people are now addicts in Baltimore? We held a hearing in Baltimore. One of the council people we had their statement from the newspaper there, it was estimated that one in 10 are heroin or a drug addict in Baltimore. This is a legacy of a liberalized, legalized policy that failed. This councilwoman said that one in eight, her estimate is one in eight in the population of Baltimore is an addict. That is the result you get. Ralph Nader can go jump in the ocean. This does not work. Using this model, we would have in our Nation one-tenth of the population as drug addicts, and you cannot treat your way out of it. And treatment assumes something very insidious. Think of treatment, my colleagues. Treatment means that you are already addicted. I defy anyone to show me a public program that has a 60 to 70 percent success rate for treatment of addicted people. There is nothing wrong with treatment. I support treatment. We will spend every penny we can on treatment. The Clinton-Gore strategy was just spend money on treatment. We went along with that and that is what we have done. Since 1992, this is the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, we spent money on treatment. Even the Republican Congress which sometimes takes a conservative approach has increased since 1995 26 percent in the drug treatment area. But you cannot fool yourself and say you can treat your way out of this problem. What does work? I will tell you what does work. This is New York City. Look at Baltimore. We put on this chart the murder rate. Baltimore and New York City. In 1993 with Rudy Giuliani, this again was New York City. This is Baltimore. Baltimore stays the same. A zero tolerance policy. Rudy Giuliani's zero tolerance policy was so successful that it has actually impacted the national murder figures. He has been so successful in New York City with the way he has approached this, not only in his successful treatment programs which we have gone up to look at which are outstanding, far better than anything in the country but not only have they tackled murders in an unbelievable number, look at the seven major felony categories. If you feel like you are trapped in your home, fellow Americans and my colleagues, behind bars because of crime, just look at a zero tolerance policy, from 429,000 in seven major felonies, they were murder, robbery, rape, first-degree felonious assault, burglary, grand larceny, grand larceny auto, look at the reduction, from 429,000 to 212. They will tell you that Rudy Giuliani was brutal, that there were acts by the police department that were harsh and that they went after minorities and Rudy Giuliani was a bad guy. That is also bull. That ranks in the Ralph Nader category. This is a liberal twisting of the facts, in fact. Let me just cite what our subcommittee found. The New York City police department at the same time as this zero tolerance policy was instituted was one of the most restrained large police agencies in the Nation. For example, the number of fatal shootings by police officers in 1999, 11, was the lowest year for any year since 1993, the first year for which records were available, and far less than the 41 that took place, and they do not want to talk about this in the previous Democrat administrations, the 41 that took place in 1990. Moreover, the number of rounds intentionally fired by police declined by 50.6 percent since 1993 in New York City. And the number of intentional shootings by police dropped some 66 percent, while the number of police officers actually increased by about 38 percent, 37.9 percent. So Rudy Giuliani put in more police, and they had less incidence of firing. What about complaints about officers? Specifically in 1993, there were 212 incidents involving officers in intentional shootings. In 1994 there were 167. In 1998 it was down to 111. In David Dinkins' last year in office in 1993, there were 7.4 shooting incidents per thousand officers. That ratio is now down in New York City under Giuliani to 2.8 shootings per thousand officers. The statistics go on to support my point.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding. Again, I just want to conclude by saying that we cannot forget the legacy, the true legacy of this administration. It is a sad legacy. This is not a partisan statement. I feel I would be here regardless of what party was in power making this speech because this is one of the most important challenges facing this Nation. Some serious mistakes have been made. We have repeatedly asked the administration not to take the course they have taken relating to the national drug policy. We have seen a failure that has resulted in death and destruction across our Nation. We are going to have to pick this up, whoever the next leader of our country is, whoever the next leaders in Congress are. But certainly we should learn by these mistakes. These are not fudged figures. In fact almost all of these charts and information have been given to me by the administration. But unless we address this in a serious fashion, unless we learn by these mistakes, unless we try to bring the most serious social problem our Nation has ever faced under control, we will continue to see death and destruction, there will be no family spared in America. The pain will not be just in quiet deaths across this Nation, but it will be in tragedies of lives destroyed by illegal narcotics and drugs. So I hope to work with the next administration. I hope to work with the leaders of the next Congress. We may have one more shot at a special order to bring this to the attention of the Nation and the Congress and I am hopeful even in these last few days that will make a difference, that we will not repeat the mistakes and we can do a better job. There are so many people counting on us, especially people whose lives have been ravaged by illegal narcotics. Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to thank the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Metcalf) for yielding me the time and also for the patience of the staff who have worked with me during these many special orders to bring the subject I hold near and dear to my heart, illegal narcotics, to the attention of the Congress and the American people.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, regretfully I was unavoidably detained and could not vote on rollcall No. 487. Had I been here, I would have voted ``yea'' for H. Con. Res. 399.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House again tonight to talk about the issue of illegal narcotics and its impact upon our society. Tonight I am going to focus on a topic that I have discussed usually on Tuesday nights in the past before my colleagues and the American public, and that is the specific impact of illegal narcotics on our communities and on our population. Tonight I will bring up again the chart that I did before, the little poster that I have had here on the floor before. And it, basically, says that drugs destroy lives, a large poster background. I think this background is fitting tonight to bring out again. It is a rather large poster. It talks about a rather large problem: drugs destroy lives. It is a simple message, simple poster. I have had it on the floor before. We have used it in my district to demonstrate that illegal narcotics are, in fact, wreaking havoc upon young people's lives and also all Americans' lives. Tonight I want to specifically release some data that was given to our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources today, and that is a startling announcement and a startling revelation that, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, the drug-induced deaths exceed homicides across our land. These are the figures that we have. Some 16,926 Americans lost their lives to drug-induced deaths in 1998. Murders in that year were 16,914, an incredible milestone in a problem that we are experiencing across the land from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Canadian border down to the Mexican border. And for the first time, again in the statistical compilation of the United States, drug-induced deaths exceed murders. It is a sad milestone but, again, one reflected in so many communities affecting so many families and destroying so many lives. This is indeed a sad turn of events for our Nation. And it is sad, too, that the administration under which this has occurred, the Clinton/Gore administration, has not paid attention to this problem and has tried to sweep the problem aside. What really disturbs me as Chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources is the attempt in the last few weeks since I guess we are getting close to election to try to put a happy, smiling face on the problem of drug abuse and illegal narcotics misuse in this country. There have been some staged events with the Secretary of HHS and other drug officials of this administration to try to come up with anything that puts a happy face on the problem that we face with illegal narcotics. Unfortunately, this is probably their worst nightmare. We announced these findings today. It will be interesting to see what kind of a spin the media puts on this and also the administration. The spin they have attempted to put on is that they are making progress. I think we have some facts tonight that dispute that. The drug-induced mortality rates, and let me read from the National Vital Statistics Report, which is produced just within the last 60 days, talks about this total of death. It says, in 1998, again a total of 16,926 persons died of drug-induced causes in the United States. It says the category of drug-induced causes includes not only deaths from dependent and nondependent use of drugs, but it also excludes accident, homicide, and other causes indirectly related to drug use. So the figure that we have here, this 1998 figure, which is our last record, is actually a much smaller figure than if we take into account all of the drug-related deaths in this Nation. Now, the drug czar, Mr. Barry McCaffrey, has testified before our subcommittee that if we take all the drug-related deaths in the United States on an annual basis, we are approaching 52,000, equal to some of the worst casualty figures in any war in which we have been engaged. This goes on to report that between 1997 and 1998, the age-adjusted death rate for drug-induced causes increased 5 percent from 5.6 deaths, now this is in 1 year, increased 5 percent from 5.6 deaths per 100,000 U.S. standard population to 5.9 percent, the highest it has been recorded since at least 1979. The rate increased by 35 percent from 1983 to 1988, and that was back in the Reagan administration, the beginning of the Reagan administration, then declined 14 percent between 1988 and 1990, part of the Reagan administration and Bush administration; and it increased every year since 1990, beginning I guess the last part of the Bush administration. Between 1990 and 1998, the age-adjusted death rate for drug-induced causes increased by some startling 64 percent. In 1998, the age-adjusted death rate for drug-induced causes for males was 2.3 times the rate for females and the rate for the black population was 1.4 times the rate for the white population. And this also confirms other statistics that have been presented before our drug policy subcommittee that in fact those who are harmed the most by illegal narcotics are the minority population, including the blacks and Hispanics who are suffering right now not only from the problem of drug abuse. But also, if we looked and examined the deaths here, we would see that the minority population is affected on a disproportionate basis. In fact, during the Clinton administration, the number of drug- induced deaths has risen by approximately 45 percent in just 6 years. What is interesting, too, in these statistics that we have here is not the 1999 murder rate, and we do have the 1999 U.S. murder rate according to the FBI's uniform crime statistics. We do not have the drug deaths. The last compilation we have is 1998. But in 1999, we actually had a falling of the murder rate in the United States to 15,561. So we have a much greater number of drug-induced drug deaths; and we are certain that the figure we will get in 1999 will even exceed what we see in 1998. So by a dramatic increase even over this year's murders in the United States, we see drug-induced deaths surpassing that number. Most people are concerned about weapons and destruction of life through guns and knives and other means of murder and mayhem. Now we have a statistic that should startle every Member of Congress and every American, particularly every parent and every community leader, that drug-related deaths have exceeded homicides. It is ironic that last week one of the communities most hard hit in the Nation by illegal narcotics is Baltimore, a beautiful historic city just to the north of our Nation's capital. Baltimore has had the misfortune of having in the past a very liberal mayor, a very anti- enforcement mayor, a very pro-narcotics and liberal utilization of illegal drugs lack of enforcement in that city over that mayor's tenure. Fortunately, they have a new mayor, Mayor O'Mally. But Baltimore has been ravaged by illegal narcotics and again by a very tolerant policy. This headline was last week in the Baltimore Sun. It says ``Overdose Deaths Exceed Slayings.'' It again cites that the number of deaths in that city by illegal narcotics and drug overdoses exceeds murders in the city. In fact, the State medical examiner's office reported that 324 people died of illegal drug overdose in Baltimore last year, passing the total of 309 homicides. In 1998 there were 290 overdose victims and 313 homicides. I hope later on to spend a little bit more time talking about the policy in Baltimore that turned into a disaster. And certainly this community is facing now the same thing that we see on a national level. This is an urban setting. Baltimore is an urban community. I come from a suburban area, the area just north of Orlando, Florida, a very family-oriented community and region. We have had, and I have held up here headlines from 2 years ago that the number of drug overdose deaths exceed homicides in central Florida, also. So we have suburban areas that are well-to-do; we have urban areas such as Baltimore that now see the same thing happening. We see rural areas impacted by illegal narcotics. We see every age bracket impacted by illegal narcotics. Unfortunately today we announce that for the entire Nation, drug- induced deaths have exceeded murders across our land. If I may, I would like to also focus on this chart that shows from the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, some 11,000 drug- induced deaths, up to 16,926, just shy of 17,000. Again, that represents a 45 percent increase under this administration's watch. Now I see why they want to talk about prescription drugs now. I see why they like to change the subject. Now I see why they like to report any glimpse of favorable statistics relating to drug abuse and illegal narcotics use, because this in fact is one of the most dismal figures and dismal legacies by any administration, Republican, Democrat or in any Nation. It is a very sad milestone for this country. What really disturbs me, too, is the misuse of some of the data that has been released recently. Our Congress has required the administration under Public Law 105-277 to establish measurable goals in the funds and programs that we assign for combating illegal narcotics, particularly in a multibillion-dollar drug education and prevention program. We ask the drug czar and the administration to report back to the Congress on their efforts to curtail illegal narcotics on a performance basis that is measurable so we know that we are putting money in and we are getting results out. One of the objectives of the report that has come to us was that we would reach an 80 percent level of our 12th graders, or young people, by the year 2002 perceiving drug use as harmful. That was the goal that we reach. Unfortunately, in some of the statistics that have been released lately to put a happy face on the drug abuse and misuse situation in our country, I have found the administration is changing baselines. For example, in 1996, 59.9 percent of the 12th graders perceived drug use as harmful. Even after we have run the media campaign, we find that in 1998, it dropped to 58.5 percent of the 12th graders perceived drug use as harmful. In 1999, they have even backslided more according to the information that we have obtained, and we are down to some 57.4 percent of the 12th graders now perceive drug use as harmful. The goal, remember, was to achieve 80 percent by 2002. So it is rather scary that they would take a new base year, 1998, rather than 1996, and now claim a 1-year decline, a modest decline and change from assessing 12th graders to eighth graders because they did find that 73.3 percent of eighth graders saw marijuana use as harmful. By using the 73.3 percent of eighth graders, they now only fall somewhere around 7 percent from reaching their 80 percent goal. These are some of the statistics touted by the administration, but a clever change in the group that was surveyed and judged and also changing the baseline. But the facts remain pretty clear that in fact we have an epidemic of illegal narcotics use among almost every age group. According to a January 26, 2000, white paper which was published by the National Center on Addiction and Substance abuse, which is also known as CASA, eighth graders in rural America, if we take out those eighth graders in rural America, 83 percent are likelier than eighth graders in urban centers to use crack cocaine; 50 percent are likelier than eighth graders in urban centers to use cocaine; and 34 percent likelier than eighth graders in urban centers to smoke marijuana. And 104 percent likelier than eighth graders in urban centers to use amphetamines including methamphetamines. If we start looking at some of the subsections of eighth graders, and in this case this study looked at rural eighth graders, we see a horrible trend in illegal narcotics use; and we are talking about crack cocaine and methamphetamines which have caused a tremendous amount of damage, death and destruction and I am sure in this figure of death we would even find those young people. We find another report from May of this year that the number of heroin users in the United States has increased from 500,000 in 1996 to 980,000 in 1999. Again, this is not part of the administration's report to the American people. Nor would they want to talk about this statistic or this legacy, especially so close to the election. The rate of first use by children age 12 to 17 increased from less than 1 in 1,000 in the 1980s to 2.7 in 1,000 in 1996. This is not a statistic that we heard touted by the Secretary of HHS or our drug officials. First-time heroin users are getting younger, another legacy of this administration, from an average of 26 years old in 1991, just before they took control of the administration, to an average of 17 years. That means the first-time heroin user in 1991 was 26 years of age. They have managed to bring that down to 17 years of age by 1997, not a pretty statistic; but we see why drug deaths are dramatically increasing in the United States. According to a very recent Associated Press article, June 11 of this year, a survey conducted by the national drug control policy office itself said that about 80,000 12- to 17-year-olds and 303,000 18- to 25-year-olds admitted using heroin in 1998. According to DEA, our Drug Enforcement Administration, in 1990 the average age again of someone trying heroin was 26.5. We said in 1992 27 years of age, and again this administration managed to turn it around to an average of age 17. A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 15,349 students grade nine through 12 revealed that in 1991, again just before this administration won office in 1992, 14 percent of students surveyed said they used marijuana. That number increased to 26.7 percent in 1999. Students reporting that they tried marijuana at least once increased from 31.3 percent in 1991 to 47.2 percent in 1999. Unfortunately, what we see during the past 7 years has been an increase in drug use and abuse in almost every category. We have some statistics that do not get publicized. For example, 4 percent, or 595,640 students, enrolled in grades nine through 12 have used cocaine according to the most recent study in the past month. That is up dramatically over again the beginning of this administration. Methamphetamines, which were not even on the charts at the beginning of this administration, we have 99.1 percent or 1,355,018 students enrolled in grades 9 through 12 have now used methamphetamine, almost 10 percent of the students enrolled in grades 9 through 12. If you want to worry about drugs and prescription drugs for elderly, and that is a serious concern that we must address, and we must make certain that those who are elderly and infirm or in need have prescription drugs, that is an important topic. But this topic that I present tonight is extremely important, particularly to our young people, when again we have a startling statistics like this. Mr. Speaker, almost 10 percent of our young people have tried methamphetamines, and we have again 2.4 percent of our students enrolled in grades 9 through 12 have used heroin. Heroin, which we find now in a more deadly and potent form than we ever have, and I have cited the increases in marijuana use, which have nearly doubled in the terms of this administration. 2.8 percent of the students enrolled in grade 9 through 12 have injected illegal drugs, that is 268,038 students, again, in our most recent report. These are not statistics again that you will hear from the administration, and the media unfortunately does not want to cover this problem. They, the media, have a more liberal bent, and they have, along with the administration, been guilty of sweeping this problem under the table. One of the problems that we have, how did we get ourselves into a situation with these statistics, with drugs, drug-induced deaths now exceeding homicides in the United States. I want to say it was not easy. It took the Clinton administration almost 7 years to dismantle and systematically take piece by piece apart what was a very effective war on drugs. Mr. Speaker, in fact, if we look at a period from 1985 to 1992, we saw over a 40 percent decrease in drug use in this country. The Clinton-Gore administration has failed to make the drug war a top national priority. Now, how can a President of the United States make drug enforcement, drug prevention, drug education, drug interdiction or a war on drug real when only eight times in 7 years, just prior to our work this year on the Colombian package, did the President mention the war on the drugs in his public addresses. As a result, we have witnessed an explosion in drug use and abuse. We have witnessed an incredible amount of production of coca, the base for cocaine and opium poppy, the base for heroin, in Colombia. And I have cited in past special order presentations how this administration systematically first stopped in 1994 information sharing to the chagrin of even the Democrats, who protested their move, who stopped providing surveillance information that could be used in shoot down by other countries trying to stop drugs within other countries borders, not U.S. forces, but other countries which saw a resurgence in drugs leaving the source countries. We saw again a policy where aid and assistance was blocked for some 3 years by a misapplication of our drug certification law, and we saw the stopping of aid even appropriated and designated by the Congress to get to Colombia that did not get to Colombia, and then finally when some few helicopters that we asked 3 years and 4 years for to get there to get to the illegal narcotics to go after the traffickers in the mountain terrain. When they finally arrived, it was almost in a ludicrous situation and a condition that they arrived without proper armoring which led us to require this Congress to pass a $1.3 billion package in emergency funding just recently. And we saw the President of the United States attempt to grandstand and also blur the issue of the tragedy that he had helped create in Colombia through very specific missteps and policy. Despite that billion dollars in aid, we still see a tide of illegal narcotics coming into this country, that is because our Panama forward surveillance post was closed down, the administration bungled the negotiation of keeping our antinarcotics surveillance base in Panama, and it may be some 2 years before we get the surveillance capability, the forward-operating capability, the interdiction capability. That is why we have an incredible supply of drugs coming in and they are killing our young people. Why are they coming in? Again, because of some direct and inappropriate missteps by this administration to stop drugs cost effectively at their source and also stop them by taking the military out of the surveillance business. And we know that this administration from 1992 to 1999, according to this report provided to me as chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, this administration cut antinarcotics flights, they declined from some 46,264 to 14,770 or some 68 percent from fiscal year 1992 to 1999. That is why we have a flood of illegal narcotics, heroin and other drugs in our streets and in our communities. This report further details, again prepared by the General Accounting Office, that the administration cut ship days devoted to supporting interdiction of suspected maritime illegal drug shipments, which declined 62 percent from 1992 through 1999. So if you wonder why we have illegal narcotics in incredible quantities coming in to our country, here in fact is the evidence. When you close down a real war on drugs, the result is death in our streets and now drug-induced deaths have exceeded homicides in our land for the first time. Mr. Speaker, the other problem that we have and many young people do not realize, and even adults who are using the narcotics that are coming in, for example, the heroin that is on the streets today, the purity levels are incredibly high. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were 3 percent and 4 percent, 5 percent purity levels in the heroin that was on the streets. Today it is not uncommon to find 70 percent or 80 percent pure heroin when mixed with other drugs or alcohol is resulting in the deaths drug-induced deaths, that we have seen that again have now skyrocketed above murders in the United States. Even though the Republican-led Congress has instituted a $1 billion antidrug media campaign, we still see us losing the war on drugs in the United States for several reasons. First of all, we have not had a war on drugs since 1993. The Clinton administration, one of its first steps was to dismantle the drug czar's office and slash the positions from some 120 down to several dozen. We have helped build that back up and with the aid of a new drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, we have made some progress in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. The interdiction and source country programs are both cut by some nearly 50 percent, and that was a further blow to any effective war on the drugs. And even with the institution of a $1 billion media campaign matched by a billion dollars and donated, we are still far away from winning or recreating a real war on drugs. Unfortunately, we found that in our subcommittee, the reports that we are getting even dismay us more. Heroin users, as I said, are even younger than ever. We are finding also that emergency room reports and incidents of drug overdose in our hospitals and treatment centers are also dramatically on the increase. Mr. Speaker, I am told by some local officials that the only reason that we do not have even higher death rates by drug-induced deaths is that, in fact, we have gotten a little bit better at the emergency treatment, but emergency room doctors reported in 1997 and 1998 that heroin is involved in four to six visits out of every 100,000 by use, 12 to 17 up from 1 in 100,000 in 1990. For young adults, from 18 to 25, 41 emergency room visits in every 100,000 involved heroin up from 19 in 1991. Among women, in general, the numbers have doubled in a decade. Again, more troubling information that comes before our subcommittee. Mr. Speaker, we also have reports that dismay me not only about illegal narcotics but about other types of addictive habits, and we have heard some talk from this administration about cutting down tobacco use. Unfortunately, from the President, from the Executive Offices of the Presidency, we find that they may talk about tobacco, but they have their own way of sending the wrong message. When you see the President of the United States smoking a cigar and talking about cutting down on tobacco use, it has obviously sent a dual message to our young people. Some of the reports that again my subcommittee have received that cigar smoking and the numbers of cigar smokers and the amount of cigar use is on a dramatic increase. This report that our subcommittee received, and this was prepared by a number of doctors and a medical report, said the trends in cigar smoking between the years 1993 and 1997, the consumption of all types of cigars in the United States increased by 46.4 percent, reversing a steady decline of 66 percent in cigar consumption from 1964 to 1993. Between 1993 and 1997, consumption of large cigars increased some 69.4 percent. Unfortunately, this is also affecting our college population and a survey of some 14,000 college students done in 1999, last year, found that 46 percent had either smoked cigarettes, cigars or used smokeless tobacco in the previous year. Cigar consumption increased by 50 percent between 1993 and 1998, reversing a 30-year decline. Of course, I take the legacy of having more drug-induced deaths much more seriously than I do the cigar smoking report, but it just shows that when you set a bad example a bad example is followed by our young people, by our college students and by our general population. One of the problems we have with this whole illegal narcotics issue is lack of national leadership on the issue. When you do not talk about it, when you destroy programs that were built up to deal with it, or you misdirect resources appropriated by the Congress to resolve the problem, we see the results, and they are not very pretty. One of the most serious problems that we face today in the area of illegal narcotics is a new drug that is on the scene in large quantities. Some of these drugs are referred to as designer drugs or club drugs. In particular, I want to talk a few minutes about ecstacy. We have a July 2000 Joint Assessment of MDMA Trafficking Trends, that is ecstacy trafficking trends, which is produced by the National Drug Intelligence Center, in cooperation with the Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Customs Service. This assessment talks about trends in ecstacy. Sometimes our statistic- counting does not even keep up with what is happening in the real world. Some of that was evidenced today in the hearing that we conducted when we announced that for the first time in the history of our Nation that drug-induced deaths, drug-related deaths, exceeded homicides in our country. We talked to the statistic-gatherers and sometimes their statistics do not keep up with what is happening on the streets. That is unfortunate. But we found with this recent report, through, again DEA, Customs, Department of Justice, a trend with ecstacy that is startling. Nearly 8 million ecstacy pills have been seized by the U.S. Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration from January to July 2000. That is 20 times the numbers seized in all of 1998. An article in USA Today, just a short time ago, stated that U.S. Customs seizures of ecstacy have risen some 700 percent in the past 3 years from some 381,000 tablets in 1997 to more than 3.5 million in 1999. One of the things that we have learned about ecstacy is most of the ecstacy coming into the United States is produced at a very high profit, sometimes just a few pennies to produce this ecstacy and sometimes the ecstacy tablet sells for somewhere between $20 and $45 a tablet in the urban and rural areas of America, so there is high profit in this. It is a new drug of choice. It is a drug that young people are told is harmless, and it is a drug that is very common in some of the raves and youth dance clubs around the country. DEA intelligence reports, our drug administration intelligence reports, find that ecstacy dealers in Europe have joined with Israeli organized crime groups, have also found that more than 80 percent of the ecstacy coming into the United States is manufactured in the Netherlands. I am pleased to report that our U.S. Customs Service is going to reopen our operation in the Netherlands, and we will have agents stationed there. We will also increase our resources there to go after some of these traffickers, and I appreciate the cooperation of DEA and Customs in that effort. When we know where illegal narcotics are coming from, we can apply the resources to go after people who are delivering death and destruction to our communities. Customs officials at Kennedy Airport in New York seized over 1 million ecstacy pills in just the first nine months of 1999. Ecstacy was first identified as a street drug in 1972, but we have never seen anything like the amount of ecstacy that has been seized. Just this year, since January 1, the U.S. Customs Service reported to our subcommittee that it seized over 219,000 ecstacy tablets just in Florida, my home State, and they had a street value of almost $7 million. In May of 2000, U.S. Customs officials seized 490,000 ecstacy tablets, the largest single amount seized in the United States to that date, from a courier at the San Francisco Airport. Right now the Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that over 90 percent of all ecstacy smuggled into the United States is in capsule or pill form and 10 percent is in powder form. MDMA, again ecstacy, that threat is expected to approach the methamphetamine threat that we now see in this country by the year 2002 or the year 2003. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse shows an increase in lifetime use of ecstacy, MDMA, by almost every age group in the country, especially the 18 to 25 age group whose use increased from 3.1 percent in 1994 to 5 percent in 1998. I would just like to say a few more things about ecstacy. We received many more reports of bad ecstacy and ecstacy mixed with other drugs that is having fatal results across the land. This is a copy of the Boston paper, the Boston Globe from last week. The headline on the local section said Ecstacy Additives Trouble Activists. It says, law enforcement authorities and antidrug activists are warning that new and dangerous additives are being mixed into one of the most popular drugs sold and used in the city's nightclubs. Law enforcement officials say many makers of ecstacy eager to cut costs and meet demand for the euphoria-inducing drug among high school and college students are lacing the pills with cheaper and more dangerous substances. Of particular concern, authorities said, is the use of PMA, a chemical recently blamed for the death of an 18-year-old woman in Illinois. Our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources is receiving more and more of these reports of bad drugs. They are bad in the first place but they have these deadly poison additives to them, and young people are dying from them. We had testimony yesterday in Atlanta, in a field hearing, from the father of a young girl who had ingested one of the designer drugs, and she died a most horrible death. Some two years she was on a life support system, convulsing. Her body temperature reached 107. At several points her heart rate had fallen to 25 and up to 170, literally destroying her body until she finally died; two years of suffering through a drug that she had taken most innocently. Today we held a hearing as we announced again the news that drug- induced deaths in 1998 exceeded homicides and murders in this country. We brought from Florida a couple whose 15-year-old son Michael had ingested designer drugs and died, one of the 16,926 who died in 1998. Unfortunately, this puts a very human face on a problem which we have outlined tonight, and which, again, only shows a part of the problem. From time to time, I like to cite some of the happenings around the country. I just cited an article about what is happening with ecstacy in Boston and this article appeared recently on August 18 in the L.A. Times, and it says, Teen Executed Over Drugs. A 15-year-old boy allegedly kidnapped from his San Fernando Valley neighborhood was shot execution-style as he lay bound and gagged in a shallow grave because his older half brother had not paid a $36,000 marijuana debt to a drug dealer, authorities said. Now, when we compile the year 2000 figures, this death will not appear there because it is not drug-induced and it does not meet the qualifications. It will be in the 50,000 drug-related deaths cited by our drug czar, unfortunately. The area that I come from which is, again, a very peaceful, family- oriented part of our Nation, central Florida, continues to be racked by illegal narcotics. While I was home, I had this clipping that I saved dated, again, August 29, where a young life was lost; Drugs Take Life is the headline; friend charged. Sherry Rich, 19, died early Sunday morning of an apparent overdose of ecstacy laced with heroin in an apartment complex in my area. This is one, September 2, a couple of days later, Apparent ODs At Club Kills Two. Two men died and another was hospitalized from apparent drug overdoses after they visited an Orange County bottle club. This report said they purchased marijuana and some sort of pills, according to the Orange County sheriff's deputy. While we hear crack cocaine is now down, even my area continues to be inundated. A recent article says Central Florida's crack cocaine problem is no longer a front-burner issue; it has been replaced in importance by heroin's comeback and the surge of new designer drugs. However, this says that crack continues to be a problem along with these other drugs. That is referring to my area of representation, which is Central Florida, again plagued. Mr. Speaker, I received a letter from Mel Martinez, the chairman of Orange County, our central legislative body in Orange County, Florida, and he writes to me just a few days ago, ``Congressman Mica: Eighty heroin overdose deaths have occurred in the 7-county Central Florida high-intensity drug traffic area in 1999 alone. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement recently released a report prepared by the Medical Examiner's Office indicating 48 heroin overdose deaths occurred in Miami last year, and 42 occurred in Orlando.'' Almost every State, every community, every locale, every region of this Nation is facing the same thing. Tonight we released the statistics that again state that U.S. drug deaths from drug-induced deaths in 1998 exceeded murder for the first time. Again, if we use 1999 murder figures, we are down in the 15,000 range. These continue to drop, while drug deaths continue to rise. The headlines spell out the story, the threat of Ecstacy reaching cocaine and heroin proportions, and tonight we have outlined some of what is going on with Ecstacy. Mr. Speaker, I do want to take a moment for my colleagues and others who may be listening to show what Ecstacy does to the brain. Many young people think it is a harmless drug. Dr. Allen Leschner of the National Institute of Drug Abuse presented a different grasp, but this just shows what happens to the brain. This is the normal brain; this is a brain that has absorbed or been affected by the use of Ecstacy. Basically, it induces a Parkinson's-type affect on the brain, destroying the brain cells, not allowing regeneration of the brain cells. Not only do we have that, but Ecstacy that is attractively packaged in with all kinds of designer labels, which the U.S. Customs Service provided us, even fancy symbols that are put on of various designer clothing and the cars and things to induce young people to try these drugs. But this is the fancy packaging. These are the results. If we do not think the results are bad enough, again, to destroy the brain, look at the deaths, and many of these, I just read one from my local community, they used Ecstacy and other drugs or alcohol with these drugs, and also, the drug dealers are now cutting Ecstacy across the land with all types of deadly chemicals. So this is what we end up with, a horrible situation and the destruction of life and limb and also brain. Ecstacy again, reaching cocaine and heroin proportions, and high schoolers report more drug use from June 9, 2000. Again, the administration would rather probably talk about prescription drugs, and I do not want to demean in any way the importance of that, particularly for our elderly or those who have problems paying for legal narcotics, and I am talking tonight about illegal narcotics. But, in fact, we have a situation that has basically spun out of control. In spite of our good efforts over the past 3 or 4 years by the new majority, we have somehow missed the mark with the administration of the resources that have been provided to this administration. It is sad, again tonight, as I conclude, to report that for the first time in the history of our country, we have deaths by drug-induced means, drug-related deaths exceeding murder across our land. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the patience of the staff who have remained tonight. This is an important topic and should be on the minds of Members of Congress, it should be on our agenda, and it should be important to every American that not another American is lost to illegal narcotics in this country.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to return to the House of Representatives after our August recess and district work period and continue this series that I began nearly 18 months ago as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, a series that I began on the topic of illegal narcotics and its impact upon our Nation. Tonight, I thought I would recap some of what has taken place during this congressional recess, some of the activities that have occurred relating to illegal narcotics and our attempts to bring illegal narcotics and drug abuse in some control and order in our society, and also give an update on some of the actions of the administration in this interim period while Congress was in recess. I think that it is important that we keep in perspective the history of the efforts by Congress and this administration and other administrations in trying to curtail what has become probably the most serious social problem facing our Nation and certainly the youth of this country. I think that the statistics that have recently been released about crime show that some of the murder rate in this country is down. And I think that, in the next week, our subcommittee is looking at some of the statistics that have been released; but I think they are startling figures that will show that more people are now dying as a direct result of drug abuse and misuse in this country than some of the murders that are committed. And I know that that is the case in the area that I represent. I represent a beautiful area in Florida from Orlando to Daytona Beach, the central Florida and greater Orlando area, and the headlines blurted out some nearly 2 years ago that deaths by drug overdoses had exceeded homicides in our area of central Florida. And I think that is now occurring, and we will be able to substantiate these figures, on a national basis. So if people are concerned about the use of firearms, about commissions of murder, mayhem in our society, I think that we have now reached the point where drug deaths and overdose as a direct result of illegal narcotics are now taking an even greater toll than other forms of murder. I will never forget that a parent who had lost a child in central Florida said, Mr. Mica, that in fact drug overdoses are a form of murder, and certainly when you have a son or a daughter lost to illegal narcotics, either someone providing them or the individual dying as a result of someone distributing to them illegal narcotics, you certainly view that as murdering or destroying the life of your loved one. But tonight, I want to try to shed a little light. I try not to do this in a partisan fashion. I do not think that our efforts to curtail illegal narcotics is a partisan matter. I think that both sides of the aisle are sincere in trying to find solutions. But I think we also have to look at some of the facts involved and some of the spin that is even put on what is happening at the national level, possibly for the sake of politics, maybe for the sake of applying some cosmetics to a record that is not too attractive. That is something that we have to deal with. And we must, in fact, deal with facts if we are going to find real solutions to the problem we face with illegal narcotics. So tonight I want to talk about the Clinton administration's attempt to blur some of their failure in Colombia in their shutdown of our war on illegal drugs and some of the steps that were taken even during this recess by the President to try to put a happy face or a successful face on really a policy of disaster that has taken place since the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration in 1993 when they took office and began systematically dismantling any semblance of a real war on drugs. The President, as we know, visited Colombia with great fanfare for some 8 hours. He spent 8 hours there out of nearly 8 years in the White House. And again, I think, to put the best face possible on a situation that they helped in fact create through some of their actions. Let me first review how we got ourselves into the situation in Colombia where the Congress had to, in an emergency fashion, dedicate $1.3 billion just in this fiscal year that we are approaching for aid to Colombia. According to the President's own drug czar last year, Barry McCaffrey, he called Colombia, and I will use his quote, he said it was a flipping nightmare last summer and then asked, in fact, that the President consider it an emergency situation. This is after tens of thousands of Colombians were slain, members of the police force, members of the military, civilians, legislators, members of their Congress, local and national judges, attorneys general and other officials from top to bottom in Colombia were slaughtered in a war that has been fueled by narcoterrorists. So finally the administration woke up last year and said the situation had gotten out of control, and in fact it had gotten out of control. Now, to get out of control, it was not easy. In fact, I believe some very specific steps by the Clinton administration, and I want to go over them tonight, led us to be forced really to pass an aid package of historic proportions. $1.3 billion for any country, we know there is something dramatically wrong. This did not happen overnight. It began with a systematic shutdown of assistance in combating illegal narcotics and the situation that was developing and deteriorating in Colombia. So let me first start by reviewing, if I may, the situation. Members know that most of the illegal narcotics are now coming from Colombia. This chart which was prepared by the drug enforcement agency shows that most of the cocaine and heroin, in 1997, and it is true today, is coming from Colombia. This was not the case as I will point out in 1993 at the beginning of this administration. But this administration took some steps back in 1993 when they first came into office that turned out to be disastrous. In 1994, the Clinton administration stopped providing information and intelligence to the Colombians regarding drug flights tracked by the United States, which, in fact, eliminated the effectiveness of Colombia's shootdown policy. Now, prior to 1994, Colombia was participating with shootdown drug trafficking planes, and Colombia was primarily a transit route for narcotics. And in that era, 1993, some 7 years ago, the beginning of this administration, it was mostly cocaine that was coming through and transcending or being processed. It was not grown in Colombia. This administration managed to turn the situation, where Colombia again was just a transit point and a transshipment point, into a major producing country. The first step, as I said, was the refusal to share intelligence. Now, this is an interesting chart we had prepared. In 1993, the cocaine production in Colombia was some 65 metric tons, very little, almost off the charts in 1993, 65 metric tons. The poppies grown in Colombia for producing heroin was almost zero in 1993. And in 1999, we have 520 metric tons of cocaine; and this, I believe, is in the 80 percent range of all the cocaine produced in the world. They managed to develop a market in Colombia and, again, by some very specific policy decisions. These are the charts that the President certainly would not want to show and the administration would not want to show. Almost no heroin produced again in 1993, some 7 years ago. Now, this figure refers to probably 75 percent of all the heroin that is seized in the United States. According to DEA signature testing program, they can take the DNA of the heroin that is confiscated and seized and actually tell almost to the field where it is produced, but some 75 percent of all of the heroin produced in Colombia and seized in the United States comes from Colombia. Now, this took place in this administration. The first decision was to stop the shootdown policy, stop information sharing. Now, in this vast arena of going after drug traffickers at their source, which is most effective, because we stop shipment of a ton or quantities, we stop it at its source, once it gets into the United States and beyond these distribution points, it is costly, it is ineffective, and we are never going to get it all. One DEA official I met in the jungle of Central America described it so aptly. He said, Mr. Mica, down here we can stop the drugs at their source where they are produced cost effectively for a few dollars. In fact, when the coalition started cutting the source country programs, some of the DEA agents chipped in and put some of their own personal money to stop some of the production and activity down there, because they were so dedicated to the program, knew it would work. This agent said, Mr. Mica, trying to stop the illegal narcotics once they get to our shores is sort of like getting a hose, hooking it up to a spigot and then putting a 360 degree sprinkler out in your lawn and running around with coffee cans trying to catch the water as it sprinkles out. And that is the analogy that this agent used in the jungles to me. He said the best thing to do is to turn that spigot on and turn off the illegal narcotics. That would be a simple strategy. It was a strategy that worked under the Reagan and Bush administration and as far back as the Nixon administration. There was a heroin epidemic under the Nixon administration. He stopped it at its source. He went in and through purchasing and through other programs that he set up, President Nixon, they stopped that. President Reagan and President Bush created an Andean strategy, a Vice President's task force, and as my colleagues may recall, even when we had a Central American leader involved in narcotic trafficking and money laundering. Remember President Noriega of Panama? In 1989, President Bush sent American troops in. In fact, American lives were lost in that case, but they went in with force and with determination and stopped that trafficking at the choke point. In this case, it was Panama and the Ismus of Panama and the head of a country who was involved, and they captured him, as my colleagues may recall from television days, and put him in jail for dealing in illegal narcotics and for money laundering and corruption. So that was the way they dealt with it. The way the Clinton-Gore administration dealt with the problem is they stopped the shootdown policy. So the first thing they did is stop the shootdown policy and stop information sharing so we could not go after drug traffickers at their source. This policy so enraged Members of Congress. I remember my colleague, I just gotten elected in 1993 and the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) was elected the same year. In 1994, when they did this, they took this first step, everyone was shocked, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) said, ``As you will recall as of May 1, 1994, the Department of Defense decided unilaterally to stop sharing real-time intelligence regarding aerial traffic in drugs with Colombia and Peru. Now, as I understand it, that decision, which hasn't been completely resolved, has thrown diplomatic relations with the host countries into chaos.'' That is 1994. Now, that was the Republican viewpoint in 1994 when the administration took this step. This is what the Democrats had to say. Remember, the Democrats controlled the White House. In 1993 to 1995, they controlled the House of Representatives by a wide majority. They also controlled the other body, the United States Senate. And this is what the Democrats said in August of that same year, 1994, committee chairmen of two House subcommittees blasted the Clinton administration yesterday for its continuing refusal to resume sharing intelligence data with Colombia and Peru that would enable those Andean nations to shoot down aircraft carrying narcotics to the United States. So we see the beginning of $1.3 billion problem developing through very specific policy decisions not criticized just by Republicans, but this is how we got ourselves into this mess, with, again, stopping the information sharing, stopping having Colombia get a handle on this situation early on and repeated requests by both Republicans and Democrats not to take these steps. So these policy decisions had some very serious implications, and those implications resulted in a change in trafficking patterns and production patterns of narcotics. This is an interesting chart, because it shows Andean cocaine production. And we see in 1991, 1992 the situation; and this line that we have going through here is Bolivia. This line, the blue line going through here and down is Peru. And the line, the red line that we have we have going up here is Colombia, and this is cocaine production. What the administration did was, in fact, stop information sharing. Then in 1996 and 1997, the Clinton administration decertified Colombia. We have a certification law that I helped work on when I worked back in the Senate and develop, and it is a simple law. It says that every year the President must certify that a country is cooperating in stopping both the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics. The President must certify. The President sends that certification, and he says that they are cooperating. In return for when the President certifies that there is cooperation, these countries get foreign assistance; they are eligible for foreign aid. They are eligible for trade benefits of the United States of America, and they are also eligible for finance benefits. Benefits of our country are bestowed on them for their little bit of cooperation in stopping illegal narcotics. A nice trade we thought when we developed the law. Now, we found in developing the law that we wanted to make a statement and say that a country was decertified as not fully cooperating and cooperating, and that might have been the case with Colombia because of its leadership. But we also put in the law a provision that said you could decertify, but you could issue a national interest waiver, and even though a country was decertified, in our national interests, the interests of the United States, we could continue to give assistance to fight illegal narcotics. In 1996, 1997 this administration, Clinton-Gore, decertified Colombia without using the provision put in law so that we could continue to get aid, let them help us with the illegal narcotics problem. So what happened here is cocaine production, actual growth of coca in Colombia dramatically increased. Look, it just took off the charts, with their policy of not getting aid down there. What happened? Now, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, and we were able to pass measures. We also took control of the other body; but we were also able to pass measures and funding to start two programs, and I know because I was involved with these, with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the Speaker of the House, Mr. Zellif, the former chairman of the subcommittee jurisdiction that I now chair, we went down to Peru and Colombia and Bolivia to see what it would take to get this under control. Again, this is not rocket science. It is a simple thing. We stop the production of these drugs at their source, cost effective; and we put very few million, maybe $20 million, $30 million, in some of these programs in Bolivia and Peru. And guess what? In our alternative crop programs, in our enforcement programs, in our eradication programs, look what happened here. In fact, we have reduced by over 50 percent, 55 percent the production of cocaine in Peru. President Fujimori has done an incredible job, not only in bringing stability to that country, but cooperation. Recently, I must commend him, he has shot down drug traffickers after the United States, again, after we went through the fiasco of not sharing information and intelligence for drug trafficking air shootdowns to these countries, we found that the administration repeated the mistake and even our own Ambassador from Peru was saying, continue to get information to us. This is in a report I got this last December. In the report the United States Ambassador from Peru, I believe in 1998, said they were making the same mistake and they should continue the information sharing. That information sharing, I believe now we have gotten some of that started again. President Fujimori has ordered the shootdown of drug trafficking planes, and they are given fair warning. We know that they are carrying death and destruction out of that country and across other borders and into our streets and our communities and our schools. So we have a situation in which we know what works. In Bolivia, we put together a plan, and the plan has worked with the incredible cooperation of President Hugo Suarez Banzer, the President of Bolivia, who has cooperated. The vice president has helped lead the effort. And in the package that we are now sending, that we have now passed and are sending to Bolivia, and actually it is in the $1.3 billion, there is $100 million for Bolivia of the total Colombian aid package, because we do not want this to continue here. We have the possibility within the next 24 to 36 months of completely eradicating cocaine production in Bolivia. I tell you, if you can do it in Peru, and I went to Peru at the turn of the last decade, 1990-1991, before President Fujimori took office, there was pure chaos. There were people sleeping in the streets, there was gunfire at night, the parks were full, the Shining Light Path Mao terrorists were blowing up buildings, power supplies, they had control of some cities, you could not travel there. Within a short period of time and two administrations, President Fujimori has not only brought stability and peace to that country and a stable way of life, but he also has dramatically decreased the cocaine and coca production in that country, and with very few dollars. He was punished some by this administration and by the liberals from the other side of the aisle because of his so-called human rights violations, or that his election was by popular election, an additional term and approved by the people. His opponent asked that the election be delayed. Could you imagine in this country that you do not like the results of the election, and you say, oh, let us have another election at another date? Fujimori again won the majority vote. Now there are those that are again giving President Fujimori, who has done an incredible job in assisting the United States, a difficult time. But this is a program of success. This will eradicate for very few dollars coca production and cocaine production. We can do the same thing in Colombia. Of course, the situation has deteriorated much more in that country, and, again, because of specific policies of this administration and specific steps that were taken by this administration that got us in this mess. So here we are with this production going off the chart. Here we are with the House of Representatives, the other body and the administration providing $1.3 billion now in aid to get our cart out of the ditch in Colombia, which is the major producer of heroin, some 75 percent as we demonstrated by the other chart, and some 80 percent of the cocaine production for the entire world now out of Colombia. This was not easy for the Clinton-Gore Administration to achieve. I mean, to make this country into a disaster in 7 short years, the leader in production in cocaine, the leader in production in heroin coming into the United States, was no easy step, but they managed to do it by distorting the intent and also the provisions of the drug certification law. One of the interesting things you hear the administration talking about, and we even heard some of the leaders from South America talking about, is, first of all, having the United States abolish the certification process, and then turning that over to an international body. Could you imagine having the United States benefits of foreign aid, eligibility for finance assistance and trade benefits, given to another organization outside the sovereign United States, to determine who is eligible for foreign assistance and benefits, trade and finance from the United States? It is almost ludicrous, but the administration has been nodding and bowing to some of these suggestions, and I would fear that they would fall into the trap of letting someone else determine who gets benefits of the United States. I cannot believe it, but it is being talked about. Repeatedly since the new majority, the Republican side, came into office, and even before that, I know we have requested that steps be taken not to allow the situation in Colombia to deteriorate. During the 1993 to 1995 period when again the Democrats, the other party, controlled the House of Representatives in vast numbers, I had over 130 Members request a hearing on our national drug policy, and in a period of 2 years there was really one hearing, if you did not count appropriations, routine hearings, on the question of our national drug policy and what was happening to it. I had 130 requests for hearings, and almost none were held. I am pleased to say we have probably done some 40 hearings, almost one a week, since I have chaired the subcommittee, looking for solutions, looking for ways in which we can tackle this great social challenge and social and health problem that our country is facing with the illegal narcotics, and really it has become a national security problem. But one hearing was held in 1993-1994. In 1995, when the new majority took office and control of the House and the other body, we again pleaded with the administration to get assistance to Colombia. We sent letters, we sent joint requests, we sent resolutions, and we actually even funded monies to go to that country. Each time the administration blocked assistance getting to Colombia. After tremendous pressure by the Congress, in 1998 we did get action by the administration to certify with a national security waiver by the administration, so finally some 2 years ago they granted this waiver. Now, they granted a waiver to allow narcotics fighting equipment and resources to get to Colombia. That was their so-called policy. But in practice what they did was a disaster. Let me just show you some of the things that they did. We funded money; they diverted money. They diverted resources. I am told the vice president had directed some of the AWACS aircraft that we had flying, surveillance aircraft, from the drug producing region to Alaska to check for oil spills. The President took money from what we had pledged to give to this region, the drug producing region, and diverted it to Haiti in his nation building attempts in that country. I could spend the rest of the night talking about the disaster of the Haitian policy, and Haiti has now turned into one of the major drug transit countries in the entire hemisphere and world, despite nearly $3 billion in diversion of some of the money that the Republican-led Congress had authorized for that war on drugs. They moved the money into Haiti. They moved the equipment into Bosnia and to Kosovo and to other administration deployments. So even when we finally got them to grant this waiver that is allowed to get the resources there, the resources were diverted in fact. Then what we found is we asked not only that appropriated funds by the Congress get there to help bring this situation which was deteriorating in Colombia under control, and we saw the production dramatically rising, which the charts supplied even by the administration confirm, but the other thing that we always asked to help if you are going to have a war or effort or a fight to assist in tackling a problem is you need equipment and resources. This is an interesting article from last year, ``Colombia turns down dilapidated United States trucks.'' We tried to get surplus equipment. Okay, if you will not take the money that the Congress has appropriated, the Republican-led Congress has said to get there to do the job, how about just supplying some of the surplus? Heaven knows we have tons of surplus equipment in our downsizing, and some of it is not used or is in mothballs. They took these trucks, which actually I am told were designed for a northern or arctic climate, and sent them down to Colombia, and sent equipment that could not be used or was so expensive to repair or convert for use in the jungle or the tropic application that it was useless. Now, this would not be bad enough, but the Congress saw this coming, and again the Republican-led Congress tried to do its best to get the resources to Colombia in a timely fashion. Again, the policy of not sharing information, of stopping the shoot down policy in 1994-1995 created a disaster. In 1996 to 1998 they decertified without a national interest waiver, so no aid was going down. 1998, they finally granted a waiver to allow aid to go down. They send down aid that cannot be used. The Congress passed some 2 years ago a $300 million appropriation to send Blackhawk helicopters and equipment resources to Colombia to get the situation under control. Now, you would think that with the direction of the Congress, the administration could carry this out. Wrong. Until January of 1999, I am sorry, until January of 2000, this year, we were not able to get the helicopters to Colombia in a fashion that could be used. Almost an incredible scenario of bungling, of mismanagement in delivering the Blackhawk helicopters, which arrived, sent by this administration to Colombia without proper armoring and without ammunition. What made it even worse is some of the ammunition that we ended up asking be sent to Colombia ended up during the Christmas holidays, from December to January looking for this ammunition, which should have been there over a year ago, ended up on the loading dock of the Department of State, another bungled disaster in trying to get aid that the Congress, the Republican-led Congress, had worked since 1995 to get to Colombia in a timely fashion, and, again, aid that could be used in an effective manner. So the major expenditure of the $300 million that we asked some 3 or 4 years ago to get these resources and funded several years ago, the major component of this package were these helicopters which they need to get to high altitude to go after both the traffickers and also do the eradication. Other equipment will not work, but we know what will work, and we could not get that there. In a very limited quantity it finally got there the beginning of this year, but not armed, not properly armored, and not properly equipped, with the ammunition that was outdated. So one does not get oneself into a $1.3 billion disaster emergency appropriation by accident. One does not get oneself where we have a country which is a transit country for narcotics into the major producing country now in the world for the supply of hard narcotics coming into the United States, we do not get this accomplished by just a couple of easy steps. Unfortunately, we take some steps that I have outlined here tonight that in fact turn the situation into a disaster, and cause the Congress to expend hard-earned taxpayer dollars to sort of mop up the mess. All this was now sort of blurred by the President in his grandstanding and going down to Colombia for some 8 hours to make this all look good. I am sure his action, the reports I have, are poll- driven that in fact the situation had deteriorated so badly, not only in Colombia, and the public was aware of it, but also with illegal narcotics flooding into the country in unprecedented quantities that it began to affect the credibility of this administration and those running for higher office. I will quote from the New York Times. I do not want to prejudice this, because I am a partisan from the Republican side, and I do not want to prejudice it with my statement, but we will take the New York Times August 30 article. It said, ``The U.S. authorities describe Colombia's drug trade, which supplies about 80 percent of the world's cocaine and two-thirds of the heroin on U.S. streets, as a national security concern. But analysts suggest domestic politics rather than foreign policy may be behind the timing of Clinton's trip.'' I did not say this, the New York Times said this. Let me quote again from this article: ``Since Clinton took office in 1992, Colombia's cocaine output has risen more than 750 percent, to 520 metric tons last year, leading to Republican charges that the Democrats have soft-peddled on drugs.'' The rest of the article says, ``Diplomatic sources say Wednesday's trip will give Clinton the perfect stage to strike a tough pose on drugs and allow Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore to say the current administration did not fall asleep at the switch.'' This is the New York Times article. I did not say that, they in fact said that. But these accidents in fact have created a disaster. The failed policy in Haiti has created a disaster, turning Haiti into the key transit zone for illegal narcotics coming through the Caribbean today. Again, do not take my word, let us take the administration's drug czar's word. General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of Drug Policy, said ``My only broad-gauge assessment is that Haiti is a disaster. We've got a weak to nonexistent democratic institution, a police force that is on the verge of collapse from internal corruption, and eroding infrastructure that is creating a path of very little resistance. We are watching an alarming increase.'' This is, again, not my comment but the comment of our drug czar. This is after the administration's policy of nation-building, after spending probably some $3 billion in Haiti and much of the funds in the institution of nation-building, building the police force and building the judicial system, building a legislative body, and this is the assessment by the administration's drug czar that this has turned into a drug haven. I have not gotten into Panama. I just described how the policy of President Bush was to go in and go after a drug trafficker. In this case it happened to be the President of a country, Noriega, who he sent our troops for, who captured him and jailed him. The contrast is that the Clinton and Gore administration allowed Panama to be given up, which it did have to be given up, we will give them that, as far as our base, but they turned over $10 billion in assets. We requested that we at least be allowed to lease and use the bases which we had established there, even if we had to pay for them, as a continuance of our forward drug surveillance operations. We have to remember that before May 1 of last year all of our drug surveillance operations for this entire region of the Caribbean, where all these narcotics are grown and sourced and transited from, all of that surveillance operation was located in Panama at our bases. In a bungled negotiation with Panama not only did we lose everything as far as the canal is concerned, and we were expected to lose that, but we lost all of the other assets. The Air Force bases, all of our strategic locations, and every operation for our forward drug surveillance and intelligence operations were housed at Howard Air Force base in Panama. This was, again, a total loss, and it is sad to report to the Congress and to the American people that the administration is now trying to still piece together a substitute for Howard Air Force Base. So rather than pay a little bit of rent or assistance for using the facility that we had even built in Panama for this operation and other national security operations, we are now paying Ecuador, and we will probably pay over $100 million to build an airstrip, and we will have a limited contract with that country. We are going to pay for improvements and facilities at Aruba and Curacao, and we are going to pay additionally in El Salvador. But what has happened, since May of last year, until we are now told today it is 2002, we have a wide open gap. So not only do we have Colombia producing incredible quantities, actually producing heroin, actually poppies that produce heroin and they come from there, but we have cocaine coming from there in unprecedented quantities, and also the coca bean grown there. We have this incredible producing country, and our surveillance operations cut dramatically. In fact, we are told until 2002 that we will not be up to where we were when Howard Air Force base was opened. What is of even more concern is the administration, when they came in in 1993, took some very specific steps, Clinton-Gore, in closing down the source country programs, in closing down the interdiction programs. They have great disdain to begin with for the military, and they wanted to make certain that they took them out of the war on drugs. Now, of course, Members can hear the comments that the war on drugs is a failure. The commentators are always saying that. But the war on drugs, Mr. Speaker, basically closed down with the advent of this administration. That was in 1993. They stopped the interdiction programs, cut the source country programs, took the military out of the surveillance operations, and last year we lost the forward operating location. So if Members wonder why we have a disaster in Colombia, there are specific steps that led to that. If Members wonder why our streets are flooded with heroin in unprecedented quantities and cocaine in unprecedented amounts, there is a reason for that. That is that surveillance operations are basically closed down, and are in the process of being replaced at great expense to the American taxpayers. The latest estimates are probably in the $150 million range, in addition to what we lost in assets in Panama. That is some of the situation that we got ourselves into. The President went down with great fanfare, and we would think that he had solved the problem when in fact he helped to create the problem through some very specific steps that I think I have documented here tonight. Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do is just talk for a few minutes about another thing that has taken place during the recess. During the recess, we had with great fanfare not only the President visiting Colombia to make it look like they had done something, and of course I did not describe what they did tonight in detail about how they got us into this pickle, but we heard just in the last few days the drug czar and Donna Shalala, our Secretary of Health and Human Services, come out and proclaim that illegal drug use is down among teens. Of course, there is this headline in the Washington Times that says also that it is up for young adults. They were trying to stage during this recess, in addition to the President's staging appearance in Colombia, that drug use was down among teens. What they had to do really was to counter the other headlines and reports that had been coming out one after another. This is from the Washington Times: ``Threat of Ecstasy Reaching Cocaine, Heroin Proportions.'' This is August 16 of 2000. This is a report, and we had before my subcommittee the folks from the Centers for Disease Control who issued a stinging report that said ``High- schoolers Report More Drug Use.'' This is the New York Times. This is from Friday, June 9, 2000. So the administration staged an event to try to make it look like they had gotten a handle on teen drug use, and it was in response to these reports coming out, the Centers for Disease Control and other reports that we have. What disturbs me as chair of the subcommittee is that it is almost a deceitful use of statistics. We passed a $1 billion program to combat illegal narcotics use and drug abuse, an anti-drug media campaign some 2 years ago, and some $200 million plus per year is being expended over a period of time to try to get this situation under control. When we passed that we wanted some measurable results, and we required in the law that we passed that there be measurable performance standards and a report back to Congress. I didn't think that the drug czar's office could do this or the administration would do this, but they took statistics and they molded them in this presentation as a follow-up to the President's staged appearance in Colombia, and used them in a fashion which I think was deceiving and which violates the intent. In fact, there is an article which says the administration may have violated the law by not properly reporting to the Congress as required by the law. But what they did was they took the perceived drug use as harmful of 12th graders, and they took a 1996 baseline that we started out with, and showed that 59.9 percent in 1996 perceived drug use as harmful, these 12th graders. Each year that had decreased. We wanted to find out if the $1 billion we are spending is effective. They came out with a report, and what they did was they changed the baseline. They changed the baseline from 1996 to 1998 so that they could show it was a smaller baseline. In this drug control strategy we require that they set a goal, so we know that we are getting something for our money, and we try to reach this goal. The goal they set was for 80 percent of the use, the 12th grade use to perceive this as harmful, drug use as harmful. What we have seen is actually a deterioration in this. The administration cleverly took, and it was not discovered by our subcommittee but by a reporter, and changed the baseline to 1998, used the new baseline. They shifted from 12th grade, because they had slightly more favorable statistics for eighth-graders, and used those statistics. So what they did was they said they were getting closer to their goal, and eighth-graders were 73 percent more likely to perceive drug use as harmful, and said they were 7 percent from reaching their goal, when in fact they had actually deteriorated in the 12th-grade range, and researchers will tell us that 12th grade is a better measure of long-term drug use. Twelfth-graders usually set the stage for their lifetime action with the illegal narcotics. So we have seen a clever and rather deceitful distortion of a law that we passed to try to gauge performance and find out if we are meeting our objectives, and I find that very disturbing. I do not know if time permits to bring folks in and to conduct a hearing; but we certainly will be, if necessary, subpoenaing records to find out how they could take the intent and law passed by this Congress to set meaningful goals, to set performance standards, and then evaluate and report back to the representatives of the people. So I take this matter very seriously that the law, intent and spirit of the law may have not been measured up to by this administration in an attempt to make it look like they have done something to help us, when in fact, if we start looking at statistics, we find that Ecstasy use is absolutely skyrocketing. This shows the Ecstasy use. If we look at methamphetamine, almost no methamphetamine back at the beginning of this administration. These charts were given to me by another agency of this administration. We see from 1993 to 1999 the country, these colored parts here showing methamphetamine going at a rapid rate. If we look at 12th grade drug use and the charts that again were provided and information by this administration, we still see serious increases, some leveling off. If we look at the prevalence of cocaine use, we see again dramatic increases under the watch of this administration. So I do not particularly like to call this to the attention of the Congress and the American people, but I think it is a distortion of the intent of Congress to try to get measurable results and effective expenditure of our dollars and our antinarcotics effort. So tonight, I appreciate the time and patience of my colleagues. I will try to return maybe again this week and finish the rest of this report. But we still face a very serious illegal narcotics problem that is taking a record number of lives, destroying families, and imposing great social devastation across our land. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate again the attention of the House.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I do not ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I implore them to support this amendment. If we want to listen to people who are making statements about needle exchange programs, take the word of our drug czar, this administration's drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, who said, ``by handing out needles, we encourage drug use. Such a message would be inconsistent with the tenure of our national youth-oriented antidrug campaign.'' That is our drug czar that made that statement. If we want to look at examples where they have instituted drug and needle exchange programs and see the results, a 1997 Vancouver study reported that their needle exchange program started in 1988 with HIV prevalence in drug addicts at only 1 to 2 percent and now it is 23 percent. The study found that 40 percent of the HIV-positive addicts had lent their used syringes in the previous 6 months. Additionally, the study found that 39 percent of the HIV-negative addicts had borrowed a used syringe in the previous 6 months. If we want to see what a liberal program will do to a city, just look to the sister city to the north, Baltimore. With a liberal mayor who adopted a liberal policy on needle exchange, everyone could do it. The murder rate is a national disgrace. The addicts, and this information was given to our subcommittee by DEA, in 1996 were at 39,000. Recently, a councilwoman, Rickie Specter, said that the statistics are not one in 10 of the city population, according to a Time Magazine report in September of 1999, but, and these are her words, ``it is more like one in eight.'' So if we want to ruin this city, adopt the policy in the bill and defeat the amendment.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come to the floor of the House tonight to address the House on the topic of illegal narcotics and drug abuse, the problems that it presents for our whole Nation, the challenge for the United States Congress. I would be remiss, however, if I did not comment for just a moment tonight on the passing of our dear colleague in the other body, the United States Senate, the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Paul Coverdell, who passed away today. Certainly, our hearts and prayers are with his family at this time and the whole Congress mourns this great loss, his many contributions I know in the war on narcotics. I know in the war on narcotics there was always a true leader and friend who we had the opportunity to work with. His presence will be sorely missed by the entire Congress, I know by the state of Georgia that he so ably represented, and by the American people for his dedication to our nation. So our heartfelt sympathy is extended to the State of Georgia and his loved ones as they now cope with this tragic loss. And we have indeed lost one of the fighters in our war on narcotics, illegal drug trafficking, and the problem of substance abuse. So, with those comments, again, we mourn this great loss to this esteemed institution and again to our country. Tonight, as is customary for me as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, I attempt to use this special order and usually try to take an hour and discuss some of the problems and challenges we face with the problem of substance abuse in this country, with the problem of illegal narcotics, the problem of drug and illegal narcotic production and trafficking that has affected our entire Nation, that has affected every city, every community small, large, rural or urban. Almost every family in America has been affected by substance abuse and the ravages of illegal narcotics. I always cite that the most recent statistic of 15,973 Americans have lost their lives as a direct result of illegal narcotics. And those are again the numbers in direct death. Our drug czar estimates that over 52,000 Americans have died in the last year because of substance abuse, illegal narcotics direct, and indirect results. And the toll does go on and on. Again, so many families are tragically affected. It is not only a cost in lost lives but a cost in our economy in the third of a trillion dollar range each year, a loss of jobs, and also of income, the glutting of our judicial system, our jails with nearly 2 million Americans incarcerated behind bars. Some 60 to 70 percent of those behind bars in most of our communities and States are there because of drug-related offenses. As I have also tried to point out in my presentations based on the facts and substantial studies that have been conducted, the most recent being last spring in New York which analyzed the effects of the 20 some thousand incarcerated in that State for drug-related offenses, most of them are there for repeated felonies, most of them are there because they have really gamed the system and not cooperated. Some 70 percent, as I said, are there because of multiple felonies, but again you go back to illegal narcotics, drug abuse and the problems that it creates among those individuals and you cannot help but to say that we have a situation that is intolerable for our judicial system, that is intolerable for those incarcerated, their families, and for our society at large. So our challenge has been the last year and a half plus of the subcommittee to try to weave together a coherent national drug policy, to look at all the options that we have for dealing with this problem, to review some of the initiatives and actions that have taken place across the Nation, see if they make sense, see if they can be adapted to other situations, and see if they provide some opportunity for relief from the situation. I always like to take a minute and review how we got ourselves into this situation. I heard this weekend, just within the last few days, people repeat the question, is the war on drugs a failure? What is happening in the war on drugs? If people listen and take a few minutes to understand what has happened, I think there is a very clear picture of what works and what does not work. You would have people tell you that the war on drugs is again a failure, and I say absolutely not, that a war on drugs as devised by the Reagan administration and the Bush administration was in fact a success. In fact, the statistics, the facts, the pure facts, bear out the success of the war on drugs conducted by the two previous Presidents. I have cited and I will cite again a national household survey that said based on the data that they collected, and this is consistent data over a good time period, illicit drug use declined by 50 percent from 1985 to 1992. That is a pretty dramatic decrease. If we look at the statistics from the beginning of the Clinton administration to the present time, we have almost the opposite, almost a 50 percent increase in illicit and illegal drug use. So the facts bear out, there are again surveys that have been conducted over a long period of time show that indeed a true, full-fledged effort, leadership by the President, leadership by the Vice President, at that time Mr. Bush who went on to be the President and also continued the policy, a multifaceted approach in which you have presidential leadership, you have a program to stop drugs at their source, a successful international drug program that deals with elimination of the crops, elimination of the narcotic at its source, which is most cost effective, and an interdiction policy, one that incorporates the use of our national resources and assets such as our military in a war on drugs to stop drugs as they leave their source where they are grown or where they begin and stop those drugs, those illegal narcotics in their tracks, a comprehensive program of prevention and treatment. We know that it takes again a multifaceted effort, that you must have successful treatment, you must have a successful prevention program, you must have a campaign that reiterates that illegal drugs do harm even if it is the first lady who has a ``Just Say No'' program or a DARE program in school, many of the programs that again were so successful under the Reagan and Bush administration that resulted from 1985 to 1992 in a 50 percent reduction of illicit drug use. Again part of a multifaceted approach, the utilization of all of our resources at the Federal level, the Coast Guard, the military, surveillance and intelligence information and, of course, a tough zero tolerance in law enforcement. All that changed and took a 180 degree turn with this administration's coming into office, but again the success was really incredible during the past two administrations. Let me, if I may, put this chart up here. Again, this shows the statistic that I just relayed from the national household survey. You see from the beginning of the Reagan administration through the Bush administration, a real war on drugs, a decline in the prevalence of lifetime drug use and abuse. You see the beginning of the Clinton administration, 1992, 1993, the tragedy we now see ourselves in. Only since the advent of the new Republican Congress have we seen any slight leveling out in again this long-term picture. Overall casual drug use was cut by more than half if we went back to 1997 and 1992. Casual cocaine use fell some 79 percent while monthly use fell from 2.9 million users in 1988 to 1.3 million in 1992. So if anyone tells you that the war on drugs, and this is when we had a real war on drugs, was a failure, these are the hard statistics, hard facts, something that I have not made up, something that has been part of a national survey, a very legitimate national survey. This is the record of the Clinton administration. Now, the difference with the Clinton administration is when President Clinton took office in 1993, he began dismantling the war on drugs, and they dismantled piece by piece. The very first steps were in fiscal year 1994-1995, the Coast Guard was cut, their budget, and they have an important role in this effort and to conduct a real war on drugs. Their drug operations were cut from $310 million to $301 million. The customs, also an important part of this effort, their drug funds were cut by the Clinton administration, and the Clinton administration, remember, in 1994 and 1995 controlled the House of Representatives by a wide, wide margin, the other body by a wide margin and the White House, the executive branch. They cut the customs budget from $16.2 million to $12.8 million. DEA, our drug enforcement agency, our Federal agency dealing with the antinarcotics problems and enforcement was slashed from $16.2 million to $12.8 million. And DOD, our first line of defense. Now, the Department of Defense does not arrest anyone in a war on drugs. The Department of Defense is prohibited even by the Constitution and provisions of our laws from being an enforcer in domestic law enforcement. What the Defense Department has done as enlisted in the Reagan and Bush administration was to provide intelligence and information. Our planes and our ships and our satellites, our AWACs, other equipment is already in the air for national security purposes. Now, if I told you that an enemy was to kill 15,972 Americans last year or 2 years ago and result in the deaths of over 50,000 Americans each year, Americans and Members of Congress should and would rise up and say, let's stop that, let's go after that. Using our military, we in fact in this period, in the Reagan-Bush period in interdiction and also in intelligence information gathering were able to stem the flow of illegal narcotics coming into the United States, also go after traffickers most successfully. You have heard the results of a successful war on drugs, a 50 percent reduction from 1985 to 1992 in illicit drug use. You heard that casual cocaine use fell by some 79 percent while monthly use fell from 2.9 million users in 1988 to 1.3 million in 1992. Now, the Bush and Reagan administration did not erase the problem of illegal narcotics or substance abuse but they made a dramatic decrease in them. This is the Clinton record. Some 50 percent cut in interdiction programs and dramatic cuts in international programs, cost effectively stopping narcotics at their source. This chart shows again the picture of the dismantling of the war on drugs and the reason we see this incredible flood of illegal narcotics coming into the United States and problems throughout every jurisdiction across our land. You see the levels in 1991, 1992, this shows the end of the Bush administration. The red shows interdiction, the blue shows international. Again, international would be stopping drugs at their source. You see the dramatic cuts in half of international programs. You see the dramatic decline in interdiction. This is the use of the military. You see this begin to pick up again with the advent of the Republican-controlled Congress. And we are getting back, and if we use 1991-1992 dollars, we are getting back just about to the level we were with the successful efforts at the end of the Bush administration. But this has been quite an uphill battle. Now, we know where the illegal narcotics are coming from. This chart provided by the National Drug Intelligence Center to me shows us that the drugs are coming from South America and primarily today from Colombia, both cocaine and heroin. Now, I know it is hard for people to believe this, but 7 years ago at the beginning of the Clinton administration there was almost zero heroin being produced in Colombia. That is heroin actually being produced with poppy growth in that country. In 1992-1993 there was almost no coca, the base for cocaine, produced in Colombia. In 7 years and through very direct policy of this administration, the production of coca and cocaine is now reaching some 70 percent of the heroin that comes into the United States and is seized, we know 70 percent comes from Colombia. We know that cocaine that is produced in Colombia now accounts for about 80 percent of all the production coming in. We know what works. We know that a successful international program, a program where we have tough enforcement, we have surveillance, and we also have crop alternatives, these peasants and others who were producing these crops need some alternative to make a living, and the reason they are doing it now is they are being paid for it. The reason they are doing it now in Colombia is they are financing narcoterrorist activity and receiving payment and protection. We have not been going after those individuals, and, again, that is the direct result of this administration and its lack of will to really conduct a full scale war on drugs. Mr. Speaker, instead of conducting a war on drugs, they have been dismantling the war on drugs. As we saw from the chart that I previously put up, the Clinton administration dramatically cut both the international and interdiction budgets. Federal spending under a Republican-controlled Congress has increased some 84 percent, again, for interdiction, and back to about the 1991-1992 levels. On international programs, we have increased the funding some 170 percent over the last Democrat-controlled Congress. That number will probably even surge more with Plan Colombia, which, again, we know where the problem is, we know where our resources need to go. During the past several years, under the Republican-controlled House and Senate, we have put together a strategic plan in Bolivia and Peru. We have cut coca production by some 63 percent in Peru, by over 55 percent in Bolivia. Part of Plan Colombia has funds for both Peru and Bolivia and also some of the neighboring countries, because we know when we apply pressure on Colombia that there will be an inclination to move some of that production to other neighboring areas. The plan does entail bringing resources into this entire region. This is where the drugs are coming from; most of it is Colombia and a little bit in the peripheral area. That is where we need to concentrate some other resources. Mr. Speaker, of course, interdiction and source country programs alone will not stop illegal narcotics. It takes a full effort. It is interesting to note that one of the next steps that the Clinton administration took in 1993 after taking office was to dismantle the drug czar's office. They talked about cuts in Federal bureaucracy, and their idea was to cut the staffing of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. It was cut 80 percent from 147 positions to 25 positions. Imagine conducting a war on drugs by dismantling the effective and very low dollar expenditure source country programs, stop drugs at their source. Imagine taking the military out of the war on narcotics, which they did. Their next step in cutting the budget for any type of antinarcotic, again, very few dollars, because we already have our military engaged in some of these activities, the next step was to gut the drug czar's office. Mr. Speaker, probably the most disastrous two things that this administration did next was to appoint Lee Brown, I believe his name is, as the drug czar. He single-handedly did more damage in dismantling our war on drugs that had been started and so successfully executed by President Reagan and President Bush and their administration. In fact, I remember as a Member of the minority in 1993 attending hearings of the predecessor of the Committee on Government Reform, it was called Government Operations, they held, I believe, one full hearing. Mr. Brown came up to testify. The hearing was a farce, and over 130 Members, bipartisan Members, asked for hearings to be conducted on our national drug policy and the dismantling basically of the war on drugs, which they very directly were dismantling during that time frame. One hearing in 2 years while they dismantled the program; it was sinful. One hearing while the drug czar, Mr. Brown, appointed by President Clinton destroyed 2 President's work, 2 administration's work and effort, which was reducing, and we heard there was a 50 percent reduction in drug use from 1985 to 1990 to a successful war on drugs shut down. During the Bush administration, the United States shared real-time intelligence with some of the drug-producing countries, including Peru, in an effort to allow them to force down and, in some cases, provided information to allow them to shoot down drug trafficking aircraft so their illegal cargos could be seized or destroyed. This was primarily done through again the interdiction program, through radar and through surveillance flights. On May 1, 1994, the Clinton administration stopped this program. And it was not until there was an absolute uproar in the House of Representatives and the other body, we really had to pass a clarification in law to convince the administration to reinstitute these drug surveillance missions and provide that information for shoot down. The Clinton administration did an incredible amount of damage in stopping that information sharing and repeatedly, as recently as 1998, the Clinton appointed ambassador to Peru wrote again, and I have a copy of it as reported to me by the General Accounting Office in a report. I had them independently conduct a study of the problem of declining DOD assets and participation. In spite of even Congress now funding additional money, the assets have been diverted by the Clinton administration from this region and from conducting a real war on drugs. Again, in 1994, they made the first error. In 1998, they made the same error in not sharing with our allies in this effort information so that they can take action against drug traffickers, drug producers in their country. I hate to drag up old problems, but we have to look at in the entire picture. And at the beginning of the Clinton administration, it is important to remind the Congress that White House staffers actually were forced with delays in obtaining security clearance process in the issuance of permanent White House passes. As we may recall, in 1995 up to 21 White House staffers were on a special random drug testing program, because of concerns about recent drug use. Hearings were conducted on this. And I believe the problem became so serious that the Secret Service instituted a requirement that there be a special random drug testing program in the White House. We might say, well, why would policy come out of the administration to destroy a war on drugs? And I submit, my colleagues, when we have 21 White House staffers on a special random drug testing program, which is instituted at the insistence of the Secret Service, because these individuals could not even pass a basic test and background check because of their recent illicit narcotics involvement, I think we see a little bit of the problem that we have been facing in this whole effort to really conduct a real antinarcotic effort. In testimony before Congress, the Secret Service and FBI agents testified that the White House employees may have used illicit drugs at the Presidential inaugural in January of 1993. One Secret Service Agent testified that he had reviewed more than 30 background investigations for White House employees that contained references to recent drug uses. In fact, we had testimony that said, and let me repeat it, I have seen cocaine usage. I have seen hallucinistic uses, crack uses. This is not something I said. This is from their direct testimony. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note, also, that in a sworn statement, one FBI agent said aides' drug use went well beyond the experimental use of marijuana in college, including cocaine, designer drugs and hallucinistic mushrooms. We might all recall, some of the problems of a famous White House aide, we still do not know who hired him, that is a great mystery, we may never know. I believe the independent counsel has dropped the case, but the infamous who hired Craig Livingston. I remember so well sitting in those hearings as he took the 5th amendment. He and others who suddenly lost their memory or ability to testify before our investigative panel. Craig Livingston, as my colleagues will recall, was the chief of White House Personnel Security and reigned over his offices improper acquisition of FBI files. Those files were primarily of Reagan and Bush administration officials and staffers, even some of our congressional staffers. He acknowledged in his own history illicit drug use and other problems which caused him to be fired from several jobs before he joined the White House staff in 1993. Now, Craig Livingston was the head of the personnel security office for the White House. Again, we have to look at the whole picture of who we have been involved with in trying to conduct and put together a coherent national drug policy and a strategy that is effective. Mr. Speaker, we have known from the very beginning that as we put pressure on Peru and Bolivia to stop production of coca and cocaine that we would have to deal at some point with Colombia. Everyone on our side of the aisle and many on the Democrat side of the aisle have urged that we get resources to Colombia. Again, this is not rocket science. We know that most of the narcotics coming into the United States are produced in that area, in Colombia. We have known that it is very difficult to get to the crop, to destroy the crop, and also to the narcoterrorists who are involved in the narcotics trafficking. It takes helicopters. In this instance, we know it takes Blackhawk helicopters that are capable of high altitude flights and going after drug traffickers. Mr. Speaker, time and time and time again, this administration has blocked resources to Colombia. Time and time again, this administration has blocked helicopters coming into Colombia. According to the Defense Department, it took the Clinton administration 45 days to move 24 helicopters to Albania for an undeclared war in Kosovo. According to the Defense Department also, it has taken the Clinton administration approximately 4 years to get 6 Blackhawk helicopters to Colombia in a so-called declared war on drugs. Now, imagine fighting a war on the drugs, we do not go after the source of the production of the destructive device, which are the narcotics; we do not go after that. We do not try to get the narcotics or the destructive devices that leaves the source and uses our military, we take the military out of the battle. And here, where we need resources to go in and get that death and destruction, which is reigning in our cities and counties, and the Congress funds and appropriates and passes resolutions urging action, in fact, it took 4 years to get 6 helicopters to Colombia. Now, if that was not bad enough, and this is not something I am making up, it is the absolute truth, when we finally got several of the helicopters delivered at the beginning of the year 2000, they were delivered without armor, adequate armor, to be used in conflict, without adequate ammunition. Now again, I swear I am not making this up, but we needed to get ammunition if we are going to conduct a war on drugs. The Congress has appropriated funds year after year, at least since we took control of the Congress, to get these resources to Colombia. The administration, the President, the vice president, divert funds to other international deployments. The resources never got to Colombia. Only the year before last we appropriated $300 million and, again, as of the end of last year almost nothing had gotten to Colombia, and the little bit that did get there of the $300 million most of it was in the helicopters that we had ordered some time ago which were delivered in an inoperable, noncombat condition; almost unbelievable. Again I am not making this up, but there is more to this story. The ammunition that we needed to give the Colombians to fight the narcotraffickers ended up being delivered to the loading dock of the State Department in Washington instead of Colombia. Then I swear I am not making this up, but again the gang that could not shoot straight, the helicopters that cannot fly or are not armored, the story gets worse. The ammunition that is sent to the loading dock of the State Department, I swear this is the truth, they sent them 1952 ammunition, some of which they recommend is not usable in the other equipment that has been sent. So it really boggles the imagination. Now we have provided very significant resources, $1.3 billion. That is not all for Colombia. It is in a larger package. Actually, the amount to be spent for equipment is a small portion of that, a small fraction of that. To appease the liberals and some of the others who are concerned about human rights violations, we have put in probably as much money for building institutions, nation building, we are going through another exercise of that in Colombia and other funds. There is some money in there that is for crop alternative, and I think that will be very wise to expend. We have known through our efforts in other countries that you have to have a successful crop alternative or alternative development program, but you also have to have tough enforcement. But there is a lot more to the story than meets the eye. These Black Hawk helicopters, in fact, were promised to the Colombian national police back in 1996. Repeatedly you can get headlines. Here is one from February of 1998, Delay of Copters hobbles Colombia in Stopping Drugs. This little note says check the date. It is the end of 1997, 1998. So year after year, the administration has blocked this. It is only after the administration, I am told, conducted a poll, and I cannot confirm this but they found that there was some criticism for their approach and that they needed to get their act together. Now, it took the President 4 or 5 years to come forward and change his policy, this administration, and declare an emergency. Only when the whole region is disrupted, only when we almost lost Colombia, only when part of the oil supply from that region, I think accounts for 20 percent of U.S. imports is endangered, only after 30,000 people have been killed in one of the bloodiest conflicts of the hemisphere and again only after the situation has reached disastrous proportions, has the administration come forward with a plan. The end of last year they said that this was getting out of control; they had to do something. I am also told that they polled and saw that even the public was being concerned, and they usually act when they see a poll. That forced the President to propose Plan Colombia and recommend to the Congress that we move forward with an emergency appropriation. Unfortunately, that emergency appropriation request did not get to the Congress until February of this year. So it took the President 5 years to get a plan and action where we know narcotics are being produced, where he allowed narcotics to be produced and become the center of narcotics activity, and I am pleased that the Congress has acted within 5 months. It started out as an emergency supplemental and was signed by the President, I believe, last week. Now I keep my fingers crossed that we have given the gang that cannot shoot straight this responsibility now to get these resources to where we know the illegal narcotics are coming from. If I may, I am going to try to conclude in a reasonable amount of time here tonight so staff can get home a little bit early, but this is another chart that I think the Congress, Mr. Speaker, and the American people should pay particular attention to. I always hear the war on drugs is a failure, and the other side always says we just have to spend money on treatment; treatment is the answer. I compare it a little bit to just treating the wounded in battle. Imagine conducting a fight, not going after the enemy, not stopping the weapons of mass destruction where they are produced, not stopping the missiles and other things that are being lobbed at us, the illegal narcotics, and just treating the wounded in a battle. How long do you think you could last if we had just treated the wounded in battle in World War II or any of the major conflicts? And certainly a conflict that takes 15,900-plus lives in one year as a direct result of the conflict, the problem, or 50,000 a year, is a major threat to our Nation and our national security. This chart shows that consistently, well we will go back to the beginning of the Clinton administration, we have increased funding for treatment. In fact, it is almost double for treatment. So we cut, under the Clinton administration, the war on drugs, the interdiction, the source country programs, the military, the Coast Guard, other budgets. They cut them by some 50 percent. We are now restoring them, as you can see in these lines getting back to our equivalent of 1991/1992 dollars, but treatment has always been on the increase. It is just like here, but other than that we have basically doubled the amount of money that we have spent on treatment; and treatment alone does not work. I think the prime example of that is Baltimore, and I bring this chart up again. Again, people just have to understand that a policy of toleration, of liberalization of the narcotics law, of nonenforcement of our laws relating to narcotics, attracts death and destruction. This was provided to me in 1996 by our drug enforcement office. It shows the deaths in Baltimore: 1997, 312; 1998, 312; 1999, 308, and I believe 2000 is probably heading close to record. It shows the population decreasing. It shows about 39,000 drug addicts in 1996, and the estimates are now 60,000 to 80,000 drug addicts. These are people in need of treatment. This is a liberal policy, a policy of nonenforcement. The police chief here in Baltimore, former police chief, fortunately he was fired, said in testimony before our subcommittee on a Monday several months ago that he had not participated in a high intensity drug trafficking program. The Feds had made dollars and cooperative efforts available. He had said he was only going to go after a limited number of open drug markets in Baltimore. Fortunately, the mayor heard him and on Thursday he was fired, and they are bringing in a zero tolerance law enforcement officer; but this shows the death and destruction. This is just about half the number of New York City. New York City had about 350 murders in New York City last year. It went from 2,000 murders, a 58 percent reduction, down to about 650, a dramatic decrease, a zero tolerance policy with New York City versus a nonenforcement policy of Baltimore; incredible growth in addict population. If the entire country went to this policy, we saw this many deaths, this much destruction, we could never keep up with what we would face. The New York statistics compared to Baltimore are startling. In red, Baltimore, 1993, you see the murder rate staying constant in red and Baltimore dropping dramatically from 2,000 down to the mid-650s. It is very dramatic. Remember New York City has a population probably of 10 million and you are looking at probably 500,000, 600,000, continuing declining population in Baltimore. In fact, I picked up the Baltimore Sun and it says as population drops city must look to D.C. This is a July 15 article I read the other day. This is what the policy will do for your community if you are thinking of adopting a nonenforcement policy. With 4,890 residential properties appearing this week on the multiple listings and dozens of additional houses being advertised directly by the owners, the city has a glut of unsold homes. Anyone doubting this should drive around various row house neighborhoods and count signs, and that is before the estimated 40,000 vacant houses are considered. In other words, the city is still losing population. Hopefully it is not too late. Hopefully the new mayor O'Malley and the new police chief can bring this situation under control. I will say what has not worked is the policy they have had in place, and I will say what has worked is New York's zero tolerance policy. This is, again, a dramatic representation of the way crime has been reduced in New York City from 1993 to 1998, and it continues. If you see the tough enforcement of drug-related offenses, and the arrests as they go up the crime goes down in New York City. I also show that chart, and people would have you believe that this is not a success, but it is a success. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter declined some 67 percent from 1993 to 1998. The total of all major felony crimes fell from 51 percent in 1993 to 1998, a 51 percent decrease in those categories. As a result of Mayor Giuliani's tough enforcement policies, based on what the murder rate was before he took office, more than 3,500 people are alive in New York City; again, just dramatic results. Now, the other side would probably say that this zero tolerance is a brutal regime. Let me say that we had Mayor Giuliani and we have had his police commissioner testify and provide our subcommittee the facts. For example, one thing is that the fatal shootings by police officers in 1999 was 11. It was the lowest of any year since 1973, the first year for which records were kept. That is far less than the 41 police shootings that took place in 1990. Now, where was Reverend Sharpton or whatever his name is in 1990 screaming when there were 41 shootings that took place. Moreover, the number of rounds intentionally fired by police in New York declined by 50.6 percent since 1993, and the number of intentional shooting incidents by police dropped by 66.5 percent, while the number of actual police officers that were employed in New York City increased by 37.9 percent. Now, do not deal with the facts, and these happen to be the facts. They will tell us that this tough enforcement does not work. It does work. Look at the crimes. Look at the people's lives who have not been ravaged. Look at the thousands who are living as a result of this policy, and there are less incidents of shootings, with a 37.9 percent increase in police officers. Mr. Speaker, there were 62 percent more shootings by police officers per capita in the last year of David Dinkins' administration last year than under Mayor Giuliani. The press will not tell us that. Specifically, in 1993, there were 212 incidents involving police officers in intentional shootings. In 1994, there were 167. In 1998, under Mayor Giuliani, there were 111. Mr. Speaker, 111 compared to 212, a dramatic decrease under Mayor Giuliani. In 1993, under David Dinkins' last year in office, there were 7.4 shooting incidents per officer. That ratio is now down to 2.8 shooting incidents per 1,000 officers. By contrast, the misguided approach of others will tell us that this does not work. They will tell us that the war on drugs is a failure, when we can show tonight that there was, in fact, a 50 percent plus reduction under Presidents Reagan and Bush, from 1985 to 1992, and since there has been a dramatic increase. So the war on drugs is not a failure. The tough enforcement policy is not a failure. It does not brutalize anyone. In fact, these projects and programs of tough enforcement do work. Finally, during the mid 1990s, I will cite as another example, Richmond, the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, had one of the worst per capita murder rates in history, peaking in 1997 with 140 murders. What they did in Richmond, the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, was institute a tough gun enforcement law entitled Project Exile, tough prosecution. Homicides in 1998 were approximately 33 percent below 1997, the lowest number since 1987, since the program was instituted. Tough enforcement works in Richmond, it works in New York City. The policies where we turn our back and let drug dealers rule the streets in our neighborhoods, those programs do not work. Just drive through Baltimore, move your business to Baltimore, or move to Baltimore and you will see. It is my hope we can turn Baltimore around. Baltimore is a great American city with a great history, a beautiful area and with wonderful people who have endured the wrong policy. The American people have also endured the wrong policy as it relates to not having a real war on drugs, and we can change that. Mr. Speaker, I hope we will learn by these costly lessons of the past. I hope that we will give a serious effort to conducting a real war on drugs, and that the funds that this Congress has appropriated from the American people, hard-working American taxpayers' monies they are sending here are appropriately expended to bring this situation under control so that we have a balanced program of interdiction, of source-country programs, of treatment, of education, of prevention; a well-balanced program that we know from the Reagan-Bush era did work, that reduced drug usage in this country by some 50 percent. So that is my hope, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and in the other body in an effort to again to find sensible, cost-effective and real solutions to the real problem we are facing. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the staff for staying late again any hearing my Tuesday night presentation. I am tired too; I would like to have turned in early, but I think this is most important, that we keep repeating this message, and that people understand the problem and challenge that we are faced with, with illegal narcotics.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, usually on Tuesday I come as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources to talk about the subject of illegal narcotics and our national drug policy. Tonight is Thursday night. Most of the Members are heading back to their districts; but I have an opportunity to continue sort of, as Paul Harvey says, tell the rest of the story that I left off on on Tuesday, this past Tuesday night and also to kind of update the Congress, my colleagues, and the American people on some of the threats that we face as a Nation from illegal narcotics. Tonight, I have a little bit different focus, but I am going to try to highlight some of the failures of this presidency and this administration. I have done that before. I do not mean to be critical other than deal with the facts of the situation and deal with the legacy of this administration as it relates to illegal narcotics and the problem with our society. In just a few minutes, Americans across the country will turn on their nightly news and see, I am sure, clips, Mr. Speaker, of today's talk by the President before the NAACP in Baltimore. Tonight, the American people will hear his speech. I have got a copy of his speech. What is incredible about his speech is what is left out. Once again, the President, who has only talked about a war on drugs, and I think I have the exact figures, eight times mentioned the war on drugs in 7 years, according to the Nexus research that we conducted on the number of times the President had talked about a war on drugs. But if one takes the President's speech from today before the NAACP, he does not talk about the war on drugs. The President paints a rosy picture and, again, a copy of the speech that was given to me says ``Today we are releasing an annual report on the status of our children. According to the study, the teen birth rate for 15- to 17- year-olds has dropped to the lowest. The birth rate for African- American adolescents has also dropped.'' The President talks about everything but one of the most impacting problems that has faced our minority community. What the President is not going to tell the NAACP or recite to the American people are the statistics that have been given to our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. The President will not tell us that according to the national household survey on drug abuse, drug use increased some 41 percent from the beginning of his administration in 1993 to 1998 among young African Americans, an astounding increase. According to that household survey on drugs, also, another minority population that has been dramatically impacted is the Hispanic minority population with young Hispanics experiencing an increase from 1993 to 1998 of 38 percent. These are facts that should startle every minority parent in this country and were left out of the President's address today in Baltimore. It is incredible that the NAACP would meet in Baltimore and that the President would speak to them in Baltimore, because I always use Baltimore as the prime example of a failed policy relating to illegal narcotics. That failed policy is the direct result of the mayor that was elected there. I took from a 1996 book by Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, that he is very critical on the war on drugs, and he is very laudatory towards those that promote legalization. In 1998, Kurt Schmoke was the candidate and was elected despite his liberalization policy. This is from that book written in 1996. It says, ``Kurt Schmoke, however, dodged the bullet.'' In other words, he got elected. ``Written off politically in 1988 for suggesting the legalization of drugs, Mayor Schmoke approached his first election campaign in 1991 with trepidation. But every time one of his opponents, either in the primary or general election, tried to blast him as the legalizer, the shot went wild, and it never became an issue having won office in 1987 with 51 percent of the vote,'' and he calls him this, ``Legalizer Schmoke won reelection with 58 percent.'' This is touting electing a mayor who has a liberalization policy, a nonenforcement policy of illegal narcotics. The President met in Baltimore today and spoke before the NAACP. These are not my words, a Republican majority Member of the Congress. This is a report from Time Magazine, and I will read it verbatim, from September 6, 1999. The legacy of the mayor that adopted this policy favorable towards narcotics. Let me read. ``Maryland's largest city seems to have more razor wire and abandoned buildings than Kosovo. Meanwhile, the prevalence of open air drug dealing has made no loitering signs as common as stop signs. Baltimore, which has a population of 630,000 has sunk under the depressing triple crown of urban degradation. Middle-income residents are fleeing at a rate of 1,000 a month. The murder rate has been more than three times as high as New York City's, and 1 in 10 citizens is a drug addict.'' ``Government officials dispute the last claim.'' I am reading from this article in Time. ``It is more like one in eight, says veteran City Councilwoman Rikki Spector. And we have probably lost count.'' This is the legacy of a failed policy. The President did not talk about that in Baltimore today. What is sad is that nearly two-thirds of the population of Baltimore is minority and African American, the victims of what has taken place. Let me also read a little bit about what this article says. I do not want to again give my opinion at this point, but let me state what was in the Time Magazine. ``How did Baltimore get here? Smokestack economy that was the lifeblood of the city for decades has died and drained its money and its soul. In 1940, half of Baltimore's population lived and more importantly worked in Baltimore. Today only 15 percent live there.'' My colleagues just heard the statistics of the flight. ``Meanwhile, increasing incompetent political factions have elbowed each other for State handouts. The reign of current Mayor Kurt Schmoke, an Ivy League educated African American, was supposed to restore the power of the mayor's job and the health of the city. And Schmoke has spent his 12 years ineffectively lording over an increasing mess.'' This is where the President and the NAACP met today. This is what the policy, again a liberalized policy, of legalization, nonenforcement, has led to. Repeatedly, deaths, over 300. When one stops and thinks of this, this is Baltimore, a population, and we see the population went from nearly a million to 675,000. What is absolutely incredible is the number of addicts, and this is 1996. The addicts were 39,000, a part again of this policy. They have gone from 39,000. If we take the figures one in every eight, according to the City Councilperson, we are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 heroin and drug addicts in Baltimore. The President of the United States, when he spoke in Baltimore, did not tell us about the legacy of this community. What is interesting is the policy of Mayor Schmoke is the policy that the Clinton administration has attempted to adopt on a national scale. That is why we see a prevalence of illegal narcotics coming into the country. Non or lack of enforcement. Do not stop the drugs at their source. Do not go after the dealers. My colleagues think that possibly I am making some partisan statement. This is the record of the Clinton administration on individual defendants prosecuted in Federal courts. Drug prosecutions, 1992 to 1996, they went from 29,000 to 26,000. Instead of tougher enforcement, the President and the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under their leadership went to fewer prosecutions. So we have hounded the administration since 1996 to increase prosecutions, and they are starting to edge up. Now, my colleagues possibly could not believe this, but they have managed to also divert the intent of Congress, and they have managed to bring sentencing down. So first they tried this nonprosecution. Now they are trying to blame us by not being tough on sentencing. So first they were making a joke out of prosecution for these offenses; now the sentences are down. Convictions also are a concern, the convictions. We also see the same trend down. Now, my colleagues might say, well, the tough zero tolerance policy does not work. There could be nothing further than the truth. The President cited figures today in Baltimore before the NAACP. But he did not tell us that those figures are impacted by jurisdictions with tough prosecutions. The murder rate in New York City was averaging 2,000 murders in New York a year when Rudy Guliani took office and instituted a zero tolerance policy in that city. He got tough on narcotics arrests. This chart so dramatically shows that, as one increased the arrests for narcotics, one decreased the crimes. The murder rate dropped 58 percent in New York City. Again, this is Baltimore. Baltimore, the deaths continue over 300. In New York City, we had in the mid-600 range number of murders in the last 2 years down from 2,000, a 58 percent decrease. This is the liberal policy again that the President did not talk about, but the policy of tolerance, a policy of not going after criminals who are dealing in death and destruction. We see what they have done, not by my words, but by the words of the media to a great and historic city. This is interesting also. We conducted a hearing in Baltimore about a month ago, after Mayor Schmoke, thank God, left office and a new mayor, Mayor O'Malley, was elected. We went into the community and the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources conducted a hearing there; I believe it was on a Monday. The mayor came and testified, and I thanked him for that. He heard the police chief testify that he was going to make a lame effort at going after open-air drug markets. There was also testimony at that hearing that the police chief and others in the administration had made a decision not to participate with the high intensity drug traffic effort in cooperation with the Feds and other agencies. Thank goodness when the Mayor heard this, he dismissed that police chief, and he has appointed a new chief who has adopted a zero tolerance in that city. That is the bright spot. But, again, the President did not talk today about the death and destruction. These deaths and this destruction, the 312 in 1997, 312 in 1998, and 308 in 1999, they all have faces on them. These are wonderful human beings that God created and this only shows the tragedy of death. Imagine what it is like to have a population of a city like Baltimore with one in eight, according to the city council person, not me, or even one in 10 if we want to use that statistic, are drug addicted. A young person drug addicted, a father or a mother, a wage earner. Imagine the toll. Imagine transposing this policy on the United States of America. Fortunately, it is limited to a jurisdiction like Baltimore. Others jurisdictions, like Rudy Giuliani in New York and others who have adopted a zero tolerance policy are in fact making great progress. And the progress that the President spoke about today is due to some of those efforts. In fact, it is so dramatic, these statistics for New York and some of the other zero tolerance and tough enforcement policies are so dramatic, the effect of them, that they are affecting our national statistics. The Baltimore Police Department estimates that 95 percent of the street gangs in Baltimore are dealing in drug trafficking, specifically heroin and cocaine. Former Mayor Schmoke's nonenforcement policy led to, in 1996, Baltimore's leading the Nation in drug-related emergency emissions, which grew to 785 per 100,000 population. Of 20 cities analyzed by NIDA, which is our National Institute of Drug Administration, the city of Baltimore ranked second in heroin emergency admissions, and Baltimore accounted for 63 percent of all of Maryland's drug overdoses. This is again the legacy that the President of the United States did not want to talk about, but the NAACP heard other statistics today, even touting the progress that we have made, and much of it under, again, zero tolerance efforts around the country. Even with decreasing crime since 1960, total crimes have increased by more than 300 percent. Since 1960, violent crimes have increased by more than 550 percent. Ninety-nine percent of Americans will be the victims of a theft at least once in their lives. What is interesting, when we talk to the law enforcement people, whether they are in Baltimore, Orlando, or in New York, they tell us that 70 or 80 percent of the crimes committed are drug related; people who are stealing and maiming and killing because they are on illegal narcotics or trying to gain resources to obtain illegal drugs. The violent crime rate in the United States is worse than any other industrialized country, and we can again trace it back to drug abuse. Never in the President's speech today did he talk about the effect of illegal narcotics before the NAACP and the minority population of our country, which, unfortunately, is the most victimized, victimized in death, victimized in social destruction, victimized in every way imaginable, in the criminal justice system unfairly victimized. And we will hear people say, well, we just need to treat folks and we need to spend more money on treatment, and I will talk about that in just a few minutes; but treating only the wounded in battle is never the answer if you are in battle and really waging an aggressive fight. Teenagers are more than twice as likely to be the victims of violent crimes as all adults combined. And fewer than 10 percent of all criminals commit about two-thirds of the crime. Again, I show the statistics of this administration and their record for prosecution as it dropped. And then we got them to go after prosecution from 1996 on, when we took the majority and put pressure on them. Now they are dropping sentencing, the amount of time that these hardened criminals are facing behind bars. I submit, my colleagues, that the wrong Americans are behind bars. It is the parents and the citizens of Baltimore. It is the wonderful citizens of Washington, D.C. Our Nation's capital is another example of a horrible situation ignored for 40 years under the control of the other party, where I would come to Washington week after week, and every week read of death and destruction, and almost all of it drug related. Fortunately, this Republican administration in the Congress brought some balance to the District of Columbia. We literally had to seize the District and put a control board in charge of the District. But when we inherited the District of Columbia, stop and think of what this majority inherited. It is just like what they did to the country as a whole. This District of Columbia was running three- quarters of a billion dollars a year in deficit, and we have just about balanced that. Of course, we did have to put in a board of control and, unfortunately, had to deny some temporary constraints on home rule. But we inherited a horrible situation. Again, the President of the United States did not talk about what 40 years of Democrat administration did to the people of Baltimore or Washington, D.C., our Nation's capital. I always save some of these articles about again what took place, and I do not want to divert too much from the narcotics issue, but I cannot resist mentioning for the benefit of my colleagues the policy that really almost destroyed our Nation's capital and national treasure. Here are a few of these articles. The trauma care center, when we took over the Congress in D.C., in grave danger. It was basically nonfunctional. The housing authority was bankrupt when the Republican majority took over. The job training program in 1 year spent $20 million and did not train one person in our Nation's capital. This is what the new majority inherited. I will never forget the articles in the paper about the morgue and the air conditioning having broken down and bodies were stacked up because the District, under the Democrat control, had allowed the District to operate in an unmanageable fashion. What happened was they could not even pay to have the indigents buried in the city, and they were stacked like cord wood in the morgue, and the morgue had no air- conditioning. The City's water system was failing. We had to give it over. Basically 40 years of administration and misadministration led to this. And the stories go on and on. They are unbelievable; and I know people, unless I brought the actual articles, people would think I would be making them up. The foster care system wears out employees. This is a lady who said as she was quitting because this is worse than Guam, she worked in Guam, what they did in the District of Columbia. Again, primarily a majority of African Americans. But the President did not talk about this in his chat before the NAACP, what they did. But he did take credit for, I think, some of the changes that we have made. And how sad for the neediest of the needy. Even in public housing an article from the Washington Post. Let me read it. It says the Department of Public and Assisted Housing, which has had 10 directors in the last decade, suggested that it was rife with corruption, mismanagement and waste. And this is, again, what we inherited but what the President did not talk about in Baltimore today. And affecting who? The minority population. And the weakest link in the minority population, those without housing; those subjected to social services. And the list, again, goes on and on. I think in the last 4 years, as good stewards, the new majority has turned some of that around. But the President would not talk about that, just took credit for statistics and used them to his advantage. Unfortunately, the legacy of this administration goes beyond Baltimore; it goes beyond Washington, our Nation's capital. Again, I have said this before, it is not rocket science. We know where these drugs are coming from. We have done everything; I have done everything I can do since I came to Congress, since I was involved in the effort back in the Reagan administration, back in the early 1980s when I helped to develop the drug certification law and worked on some of the Andean strategies and other things to stop drugs cost effectively at the source. But we have watched this administration dismantle those cost effective programs. Again, we know exactly where the illegal drugs are coming from. Right now we know that 70 to 80 percent of the cocaine and heroin is coming out of Colombia. Now, how in heaven's name could we get that percentage of cocaine coming out of Colombia? And I want to say it was not easy. This is not a guessing game, either. The DEA has what is called the DEA Signature program. The DEA provided our subcommittee with these pie charts. This is the most recent, 1998. This shows us exactly where heroin is coming from. This shows us that heroin is coming, 65 percent of it, from South America; 17 percent from Mexico. Actually, up some 20 percent in 1 year from Mexico. They know this because when they seize the heroin, it is tested; and it is almost a DNA process where they can tell almost from what fields it came from. This is all Colombian. The red here is all Colombian. In 1992-1993 there was almost zero heroin coming from Colombia. But this administration, through an incredible series of direct policies and failures, has managed to make Colombia the center of 70 to 80 percent of cocaine coming into the United States, and another 65 to 70 percent, depending on which year, and we do not have 1999, of heroin coming into the United States. We know that. There was almost no cocaine, coca, produced in Colombia in 1992 at the beginning of this administration, but they have managed to make it a producer. Now, how could they make it a producer? This chart shows, and again these are statistics provided even by the administration, but they show Federal drug spending on the international, that would be stopping drugs at their source, this shows in the end of the Bush administration, and then we had a Democrat- controlled White House and Senate, that they immediately gutted the international programs. That meant that the source country programs were cut dramatically. We see here the international programs since the Republicans took control in 1996, and it takes about an extra year because the budget we do is in advance, but we can see that we are getting back to the 1991- 1992 levels right now in 1999-2000. But they gutted the programs. When the Republicans took control, that is as far as source is concerned, and then the next thing that is cost effective in getting drugs, once they get to the streets, it is a que pasa activity for our law enforcement. It is very tough. But it is tough and it is costly and you have to have incredible expenditures for police force. So the second most cost effective thing is to stop drugs as they are coming from where they are being produced, cocaine and heroin, for example, and here we look at interdiction. Interdiction. And there is no real extra cost for the military. There may be some extra flight hours and things of that sort but you already have the hardware, you have the planes, you have the military engaged and you have the military conducting exercises. The military does not do any enforcement, they just provide surveillance information and then the information is given to the country where the drugs are produced. This administration did not think that was a good idea, so they stopped information sharing, they stopped information sharing, they stopped resources getting to Colombia. Those actions have very direct results. I remember in hearings in 1993, 1994 and before the House of Representatives, saying to not stop the information sharing to the countries. In fact, many of the countries involved would shoot down the drug traffickers and go after them. But again this administration said, ``We can't do that.'' Heaven forbid we should go after a drug trafficker or provide any information. In fact they even got an attorney who had been in the Department of Justice and transferred I believe over to DOD to give that opinion and the entire Congress had to act to overturn that opinion that we could not share information. They are at the same game again. U.S. Officials Cite Trend in Colombia. Lack of Air Support Hindering Drug War. The same thing is happening again and this is in fact confirmed by the administration's ambassador from Peru. The administration's ambassador from Peru chided the administration and I received the report, it says Drug Control, DOD Contributes to Reducing the Illegal Drug Supply. Their assets have declined. I requested this report independently conducted by GAO provided to me the end of last year, the beginning of this year. GAO found that according to the U.S. ambassador appointed by this administration, warned in an October letter to the Department of State that the reduction in air support could have a serious impact on the price of coca. The President did not tell you today that he is directly responsible for the policy that cut interdiction, that cut source countries and that cut off Colombia from receiving assistance and turned Colombia into a disaster, into an international basket case. This is exactly what happened. Having been involved when the new majority took over the House and the other body, we began 4 years ago trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, the strategy that worked so well in the 1980s and they will tell you the drug war is a failure and I will disprove that in just a moment. But we went down. Mr. Hastert, the former chair with responsibility of this subcommittee for drug policy, went down with Mr. Zeliff who was also involved, and I was on the subcommittee as a junior member. We talked to the officials in Peru and Bolivia. We got their cooperation and we gave them a tiny bit of financial assistance from the Congress. Look what happened to Andean cocaine production, down 60 percent in Peru, 55 percent in Bolivia. Look what happened with the administration's policy towards Colombia. Stop helicopters, stop information sharing, stop resources, stop any assistance. Dramatic increase. I told you about heroin. This is cocaine. There was no heroin produced at the beginning of this administration. You can see almost no cocaine. This is a policy of failure and destruction. I can trace the cocaine on the streets of Washington, D.C. and New York back to Colombia. I can trace the heroin back to Colombia. And I can trace it back to this policy, this policy, and even when the Congress, even when we as a new majority funded assistance to increase again interdiction of drugs, which is our national responsibility. I mean, we are not police men and women and we do not provide that service. That is done mostly by local and State. We do have some Federal agencies. But we cannot do that. What we can do is stop the illegal narcotics before they come into our borders. In fact, this report provided to me also says the number of flight hours dedicated to detecting and monitoring illicit drug shipments declined from approximately 46,000 to 15,000. It declined 68 percent from 1992 to 1999. So even when we were ramping up, attempting to ramp up to get funds to go after the drug dealers, this report also shows that the administration diverted assets. We had AWACS that actually gave information on the growth in traffickers, AWACS planes. The Vice President when he spoke to the NAACP did not tell you that he diverted those planes to Kosovo. I am sorry, actually he was personally, I understand, responsible for diverting the planes to Alaska to look at oil spills while the children of Baltimore are dying by the dozens, while the children in our Nation's capital were getting slaughtered. And the diversion of assets went on and on. Money that we had asked to go down to Colombia and South America, tens of millions ended up in Haiti in failed nation- building attempts which now have turned into an even bigger disaster with one corrupt government succeeding another, and now Haiti, the latest reports we have, is a major transit area for illegal narcotics. Most of the administration's efforts in nation-building went into building the legislative and judicial and enforcement structure and it has turned, with the millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, billions, into the biggest transit zone. The situation only gets worse. This is something the President did not talk about today in his report. He did not tell you that he diverted two AWACs airborne control systems aircraft that were on the counternarcotics mission that were stopping the death and destruction, 15,973, remember that, our latest figures on deaths as a direct result of illegal narcotics, drugs in this country in 1998. But he committed two of the AWACS to reassign them in January of 1999 to support the Iraq no-fly zone. Then in April 1999 for the Kosovo crisis. If you wonder why our cities, our communities, our young people are being deluged with illegal narcotics, you can just look at the administration's record. This report also shows in addition to air flights down dramatically, some 68 percent, that also maritime efforts, U.S. maritime efforts to go after suspected maritime illegal drug shipments declined 62 percent under this administration. So if you wonder why our children are getting drugs cheaper, more available, addicted to them and dying in unprecedented numbers across the land, it is no wonder. Again, it is not just Baltimore or it is not just the Nation's capital that is affected by this. Here is a report just a few days ago by ABC News, July 10. It says less than 2 percent of young people age 12 to 17 have ever tried heroin. Incidentally, I think it is a 92 percent increase during this administration in use of heroin among that youth class, another legacy of this administration. This report says, but the drug now is cheaper, more accessible and more potent. How did it get more available? When you close down a war on drugs and you only concentrate on treating the wounded, you can see where that incredible supply is coming into the country. It says it is more accessible and more potent and is fast surpassing cocaine as the drug of choice in many communities. It says Portland and Seattle, heroin has reached unprecedented levels in some cities like Portland, Oregon and Seattle where the number of fatal overdoses has continued to climb year after year in the last decade. This is a startling figure. In 1999, Portland experienced the highest number of heroin-related deaths, overdose deaths, 114. I come from Central Florida. We have exceeded our past year which was a disaster of heroin-induced deaths. The cocaine legacy strikes every family. Everyone in the whole country I know was grieving with Dr. J, actually his son, Dr. J is a resident of my district and we watched as the family looked for his son and his son unfortunately had been victimized by cocaine and in today's paper we have a report that test finds cocaine in the teen's body. We do not know if that is a direct result yet of his tragic death but we know the horror that that family experienced. We know the grief that that family experienced. We know the torment that that young man went through and how a national hero, a legend and his family have been so affected and our heart goes out to them. But unfortunately every family in America today is affected by illegal narcotics. We see the statistics over and over. This administration adopted a policy to keep helicopters, to keep surveillance information, to keep any kind of assistance going to Colombia until just last year. And suddenly they woke up and found, and I think it is reported they also did a survey and found people were absolutely appalled at what was going on, but last year the drug czar declared this an emergency. This Republican Congress acted immediately. The White House and the President did not submit a Colombia aid package until the 7th of February, 2000. He waited and waited and dillied and dallied. On March 30, this House of Representatives passed a supplemental and just a few days ago both the House and Senate acted and passed a supplemental containing the aid to put the rest of this picture back together. It will work. We know it works. It has worked. It has other elements in it other than interdiction and source country, a good package. Instead of talking about this today or taking that bill and signing it before the NAACP and saying, ``I'm going to stop the killing of your children,'' the President as far as I know today has not signed the bill. It is awaiting his signature and it is my hope that that will be signed if it has not been signed, again to correct the situation. It is unfortunate we have to spend over $1 billion now to deal with the disaster that has been created. Let me talk about the emphasis of this administration. You hear it on the floor repeatedly. During the Colombia debate, they just said we have to have treatment on demand. We have many people who need treatment. I support treatment. I would vote for any amount of treatment for anyone addicted to narcotics. But when you get to the point of addiction, it is very difficult to save anyone. This is not like cigarettes, it is not like alcohol. When you are addicted to some of these hard drugs, you completely become victimized by it, and we do not have any cure. Sixty or 70 percent of those who go into public treatment programs are failures, and repeated failures, over and over again. You hear that we have been putting money in the war on drugs or the war on drugs is a failure, fighting drugs, and they should be legalized. This is in fact the record. We have more than doubled the amount from 1992, when this administration changed the policy, closed down the source country, stopping drugs at their source, the interdiction, we have more than doubled the amount going in. I have records of treatment and research, drug prevention, all of the different categories, demand reduction. Almost all of them doubled. So while they were cutting the source programs and the interdiction and other programs, they in fact, and we were, even the Republicans since 1995 have increased treatment some 26 percent. So it is a fallacy to say that we have not put money in treatment. The problem we have, and I chair the subcommittee, is we do not know what will work. We have programs. The programs actually that are most successful are the non-government. They run 50, 60 percent success rates. Most of them are faith-based, and we are trying to see if we can support them in some way, given the restrictions that we have, mixing public money with religious funds. So it is a fallacy to say we are not putting money in treatment. Again, I know this makes the other side of the aisle cringe, and this is not a chart that the President brought to Baltimore to show the NAACP, this is not the chart that those will tell you that the war on drugs is a failure. Now, this is a failure, that you have a decline in drug use during the Reagan and Bush administration? This is the chart that shows the long-term trend and lifetime prevalence of cocaine use. We have it for drug use. Let us get this overall. That is just cocaine. This is overall. They will tell you again this is a failure, that it was declining here. That is a failure. If you have fewer young people using drugs, that is a failure. Get that now, it is a failure. But this is a success, the Clinton Administration policy. I wish I had an overlay to show where they closed down the source country, they closed down the interdiction, they cut the Coast Guard, they cut the military involvement, they cut the Drug Czar's staffing in this period. This is the direct result, an increase. It is almost ironic that you see this little bleep here, and that is where we took control and started our efforts. There is some slight leveling off, but that is, unfortunately, not totally successful, because, again, one of the major conduits of illegal narcotics, hard narcotics, heroin, high purity cocaine, is Colombia, which has now become the major producer. This is also the heroin record under the Clinton and Bush and Reagan administrations. The statistics during that administration are quite interesting. Based on national household survey data, illicit drug use, and that is the same survey that I cited with current statistics and it is nice to compare, to use comparative studies, the same studies over comparative times, based on national household survey data, elicit drug use declined 50 percent from 1985 to 1992. Now, that is a failure, you see? This is a failure, because it declined. You had a President who, under President Reagan, he had a tough Andean strategy, a source zone strategy, an interdiction strategy. You had a President, President Bush, the reason they went after Noriega is because he was involved in drugs and illegal profits from drugs and he sent our troops in. The opposite is the case with the retreat of the Clinton Administration, and you see the direct results. Again, if we could do an overlay, we would show as they cut these programs out, in 1992 you see again a trend, an increase in drug use, and this is for all. This is lifetime, annual and 30 day measurements. Again you see a leveling off, where we began our efforts, where we passed an extensive drug education and prevention program, one of the most extensive in history. We differed with the administration. We thought that broadcasters should increase and donate their time. The administration wanted to spend taxpayer money. We felt it was so important that we did reach a compromise, so we have a $1 billion program over 5 years matched by $1 billion in donations. But, again, if you did an overlay, you would see as this administration instituted its policy of failure. You in fact see an increase in drug use among our youth. One of the other things that is disturbing is the entire effort of the United States to curtail illegal narcotics. We know that heroin and cocaine and even methamphetamine and even the heroin that is produced in Mexico now is in increasing volume. We had in Panama up until May of last year the headquarters for our forward operating location. Unfortunately, the administration bungled the negotiations. Of course, we were sort of destined to lose Panama and the $10 billion in facilities, and we have lost two ports to some Chinese interests through illegal tenders. Put all that aside, but we still should have been able to negotiate the lease or use of these in anti-narcotics efforts, and the State Department failed miserably. Now we are scurrying around at great cost, and I think in the supplemental package it is over $120 million to put in new installations in Ecuador, in Aruba and Curacao, those two agreements have finally been signed, 10 year agreements, but we are going to have to spend that money upgrading bases and airfields to do our surveillance operation. In the meantime, we have exposed ourselves to incredible volume. You will see it in the streets, the schools, with our young people, of these illegal drugs. What is interesting, and we predicted it, and I have a recent article here that shows even Europe is now becoming victimized by cocaine which is coming in. They are producing so much, there is an oversupply. The price is so low in the United States and it is so available that this week's paper, one of these articles, shows that now it is coming into Europe in incredible volume. So we have basically closed down our surveillance operation. Taxpayer money is going to have to be spent to put that back in place. It will be 2002, according to the latest reports that we have. What concerns me, and Republicans make mistakes just like Democrats, and I guess I cannot refer to the member of the other body who is proposing this, but they are now trying to penalize, and it is someone of my own party, Peru. Peru has President Fujimoro, and you heard his record of success, cutting 63 percent of the cocaine production. Instead of rewarding him, we are going to penalize him because, again, some of those are not happy with the election. He is in his, I believe, third term. But he has done a remarkable job, and because his opponent wanted to call off the election, imagine, okay, Bush is ahead, we are going to call off the election, or Gore is ahead, we are going to call off the election. This candidate could not even decide on a date certain when an election should be held. But we have Members of Congress who now want to penalize Peru, who has done a great job, and I am sad to hear that. We should be assisting them and applauding them for cutting off the supply of deadly narcotics coming into the United States, instead of cutting assistance to them. Mr. Speaker, as we wrap up tonight, I tried to talk about some of the things that the President of the United States did not talk about before the NAACP in Baltimore. It is really sad what has not been said. It is sad that a great and historic city like Baltimore has fallen victim, to where one in eight of its population, some 80,000, are drug and heroine addicts. It is sad that in the last 10 years, hundreds and thousands of African American young people were slaughtered on the streets of this city, our Nation's Capital, when they let this community really be neglected. It is sad, too, that sometimes my side of the aisle offers tough love, and it is not as warm and fuzzy and cozy as cuddling and go-have- another-enjoyable-do-it-yourself-time, no consequences. We do not say that. We say you have to be responsible. The government has to be responsible. We cannot let the Nation's Capital fall into disrepair, nor can we let the Nation's finances fall into disrepair. Some of that has been tough love. It is a lot easier to vote for things here, and it is a lot easier to say we are going to be lax and we are going to let everybody do their thing. But we have to be responsible. The President of the United States, unfortunately, I think has left a legacy that is going to haunt us for many years. I can tell you, I have never faced a greater challenge than working with my colleagues, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the Speaker of the House, others in the other body, in trying to put this coherent national drug policy back together. So much damage has been done that it will take years and years to get us back to where we were, even in 1991. I told you the record of success, which they call failure, 50 percent reduction. We have 90 percent and 100 percent increases in some drug use, illegal narcotics abuse, and use in some substances in a short time in this administration. But I look forward to working with my colleagues. It is a tough battle. It is not a partisan battle. Republicans make mistakes, Democrats make mistakes, but we must learn by the mistakes of this administration and never let them happen, and seize back our community, seize back our children, and not let another family or child or parent or loved one in this country be victimized by illegal narcotics. Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the staff and you for being tolerant for my second one hour presentation this week, but I feel very deeply about this, and I am committed to do whatever I can as one Member of Congress to help us do a better job.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House tonight as it concludes its business to address the House on a subject I normally do on Tuesday nights and one that I take a personal interest in as chairman in the House of Representatives of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. And specifically always on Tuesday evenings, I try to address my colleagues and the American people on the topic of illegal narcotics and our national drug policy and our efforts in our subcommittee to attempt to develop a coherent policy to deal with probably the greatest social problem and challenge I think our Nation has ever faced in its history, a problem that has devastated and I think we have gotten to the point where almost every family in America is somehow touched by illegal narcotics. Certainly the impact in crime, the social costs, the costs that this Congress incurs in funding antinarcotics efforts, criminal justice, the system that is fueled by those who are committing crimes and offenses against society under the influence of illegal narcotics, the whole gamut of problems that have arisen as a result of illegal narcotics is really astounding. I often cite when I speak before the House the most recent statistics of deaths. Direct deaths from illegal narcotics in the most recent year provided to our subcommittee, 1998, amounted to 15,973 Americans died as the direct result of illegal narcotics. The drug czar, our national director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Barry McCaffrey, again today used the figure in a hearing before our subcommittee of 52,000 Americans dying in a year as a result of direct and indirect illegal narcotics. So the toll is mounting. The statistics continue to be alarming and should concern every American because, most of all, we find that this problem is affecting not those people who you would traditionally think have been victimized by illegal narcotics, the inner-city, the metropolitan, the high density areas, but every single corner of our Nation is now victimized by the effects of illegal drugs. In fact, I cite a recent article, and it this headline says ``Drug use explodes in rural America.'' It shows that in fact in rural America that cocaine, that crack, that heroin and methamphetamines in all of the rural areas of the country are now experiencing an explosion. One of the things that I try to do as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources is not only conduct hearings, such as we did today with the national Drug Czar on our national media campaign that we instituted several years ago, a $1 billion-plus program, $1 billion from Federal money over 5 years and an equally significant amount in contributions to the campaign required by the law that we established, but in addition to conducting the hearings and evaluations and oversight of our national drug policy and the programs that we have instituted, we attempt to conduct hearings throughout the United States. Most of the hearings that have been conducted by our subcommittee are at the request of either my subcommittee members or Members of the House who are experiencing a similar problem. I can tell you without a doubt that in fact the entire Nation, from the Pacific coast to the East Coast, from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, is being devastated by illegal narcotics. During the recent weeks we have conducted hearings and field hearings. One was in the heartland of America, in Sioux City, Iowa, at the confluence of three states, Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa. This was a hearing at the request of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham). We heard absolutely startling testimony about the explosion of illegal narcotics, the explosion of methamphetamine, narcotics that have infiltrated that region of our Nation, and the devastation on the community, the cost in law enforcement, the cost in social services, the tremendous cost to that entire area that is being borne in destroyed lives. So we have focused not only on hearings in Washington, but throughout the land, and we confirmed the headline which I cited here of the explosion of illegal narcotics and methamphetamine in particular in rural areas of our country. It is also significant that we have presentations before our subcommittee that bring us up-to-date on what is happening, because we are a criminal justice, national drug policy oversight subcommittee. Some of the recent information we have had from the Center for Disease Control and other monitoring agencies indicate that over half the crime in this country is committed by individuals under the influence of illegal narcotics. The National Institute of Justice drug testing program, found that more than 60 percent of the adult male arrestees across the Nation tested positive for drugs. In most cities, over half the young male arrestees are under the influence in fact of marijuana, and, importantly, the majority of the crimes that result from the effects of the drug do not result from the fact that the drugs are illegal. According to a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which is also referred to as CASA, at Columbia University, 80 percent of the men and women behind bars, about 1.4 million inmates in our country, are seriously involved with drug abuse, substance abuse, and sometimes that is illegal narcotics, sometimes it is alcohol. So, again, the problem of substance abuse is horrendous. What is of particular concern to our subcommittee and the Congress is that the trends of illegal narcotics use, while we hear some figures being touted by some in the administration, we find that, unfortunately, under the Clinton Administration, from 1992 to 1998, in one area for example, in heroin we have had a 92 percent increase since 1992 in heroin use among our 8th graders, an incredible statistic that has recently come forward. That is in one of the most deadly drugs that one can have any young person be involved with. In my area in Central Florida, in fact we are having an epidemic of heroin overdoses. Many of the overdoses are the result of a very high purity heroin. In the 1980s we had the purity of heroin at the level of single digits, sometimes 4 or 5 percent. Today we are finding on the streets of Orlando and the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and even small communities across the Nation, purity levels of 60 and 70 percent, deadly, highly toxic heroin, and we see a dramatic increase, 92 percent increase in use in heroin among 8th graders, an absolutely shocking statistic. The other information that I wanted to relay about the problem tonight is some information our subcommittee received from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and they came and briefed us before the recess. I have cited some of these statistics in the hearing that we held and previously on the floor, but the survey by the Center for Disease Control indicated that 14.7 percent of the students surveyed said that they were currently using marijuana in 1991. In 1999, that figure almost doubled to 26.7 percent. Unfortunately marijuana happens to be a gateway drug, and we find that the statistics bear out that with a gateway drug, an entry drug like marijuana, the next step is cocaine, then methamphetamine, heroin and hard narcotics. We also find testimony that was presented to the subcommittee by Dr. Leshner, the head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, NIDA, that in fact the most addictive drug in the United States today in fact is marijuana. Also it is not the marijuana of the sixties and seventies, or even the eighties. This is a marijuana with a much higher purity, with a much more toxic content, and a much more addictive result. But the Center for Disease Control reported that lifetime marijuana increased from 31.3 percent in 1991 to 47.2 percent in 1999. What has happened in our Nation, because we have sent a mixed message to our youth, because we have not had the leadership provided by the White House with a consistent strong message against illegal narcotics, and in particular marijuana, we find that almost half the population of our young people today has used marijuana at some point, according to this survey. Again, like it or not, it is a gateway drug. Those are some of the statistics that we wanted to update the Congress on today. Unfortunately, we find that even in our enforcement area, that young people are becoming more and more involved as a result of their use and abuse of illegal narcotics. A recent article that was provided to me indicated that the end of last year, the United States Customs Service estimated that 400 teenagers had been arrested by the end of 1999 for smuggling drugs into the country, an increase of 30 percent over the previous year. In Texas, only 17 juveniles had been sent to prison in the past 2\1/2\ years, 98 received probation and 63 had their cases dropped or dismissed. Unfortunately, light punishment is a selling point for the drug cartels when they approach teenagers, according to the U.S. Customs Service, which is now finding younger and younger traffickers, and, unfortunately, the arrests are up in the under 18 age category. This report also said that there is a 58 percent increase nationwide in arrests of drug traffickers. This is now under the age of 18. Again, younger and younger people involved. According to customs also, children as young as nine are used to traffic drugs across the southwest border. According to the article, most of the teen smugglers that are arrested and convicted are given probation, not jail time, which, unfortunately, does lead other youth to participate in the same type of activity, and we are seeing more and more of that across the country. The number of heroin users in the United States, according to another recent survey, indicates that it has jumped from 1996, half a million Americans, to nearly 1 million, 980,000 Americans in 1999. So we have had, again, just about a doubling from 1996 to 1999 in heroin users in the United States. The rate of first use by children age 12 to 17 increased from less than 1 in 1,000 in the 1980s to almost 3 in 1,000 in 1996. I think I just cited for the benefit of the House the incredible increase we have seen in 8th graders. First time heroin users are getting younger, from an average age of 26 years of age in 1991 to an average age, now, get this, of 17 years of age by 1997. Also, according to the most recent statistics provided to our criminal justice and drug policy subcommittee, 8th graders in rural America are 83 percent more likely than 8th graders in urban centers to use crack cocaine, 50 percent more likely than 8th graders in urban centers to use cocaine, and 34 percent more likely than 8th graders in urban centers to smoke marijuana. Unfortunately, an incredibly high statistic is that they are 104 percent more likely than 8th graders in urban centers to use amphetamines, including methamphetamines. Again, startling statistics about what is happening across this country. One of the things that was brought up at the hearing today and that we also have found in the pattern of illegal narcotics use is the impact, not only on the population in general and also of our youth, which is of great concern, but also the impact on minorities. No segment of our society is more impacted by illegal narcotics use than our minorities, particularly our African American and our Hispanic population. This is some of the latest information our subcommittee has received. According to the 1998 National House of Polls Survey on Drug Abuse, drug use increased from 5.8 percent in 1993 at the beginning of the Clinton administration to 8.2 percent in 1998 among young African Americans, more severely impacted than the population at large. According to the same survey on drug abuse, drug use increased from 4.4 percent in 1993 among the Hispanic population, Hispanic youth in particular, to 6.1 percent. So 2 minority populations that are most vulnerable in our society, our African American and Hispanic youth population, have also become incredible victims of illegal narcotics and, in particular, we have seen, as I said, the explosion of heroin, methamphetamines, and now we are seeing a rampage of what are called designer drugs across the Nation. Now, how did we get ourselves into this situation? I have brought this one particular chart out many times, and I will bring it out again tonight. We hear repeatedly, I hear repeatedly over and over that the war on drugs has been a failure. I submit again to the Congress and to the House tonight that if we look at the war on drugs under the Reagan and Bush administration, and this chart relates the long-term trend in lifetime prevalence of drug use; this is really the major monitor for drug use and abuse in this country, and it is not something that I made up; it was prepared by the University of Michigan, and this is something that they have been monitoring for some time. But this shows the pattern of success and this shows the prevalence of drug use going down in the Reagan administration starting in 1980 all the way down. Now, this is what the liberals will tell us is a failure, and that is the decrease in drug use. In fact, there was a 50 percent decrease in this period of drug use in this country. This is what they will try to tell us, the editorialists, the promoters of legalization, those who say that the war on drugs has been a failure. So when we had a war on drugs, and that was with national leadership from the Office of the President through the entire administration, putting together an Andean strategy to stop drugs at their source. This is not rocket science; we know where the cocaine is produced. It is produced in Bolivia, it is produced in Peru, it is produced in Colombia. When we have a policy that stops the assistance going to a country who is willing to participate with the United States to stop the production of cocaine such as we have had with this administration for the past 5, 6 years in stopping and blocking aid to Colombia, we have a growth of cocaine and coca production in that area. The Reagan administration and Bush administration developed specific programs, the Andean strategy, and the Andean strategy went in and went after drugs at their source, stopped the drugs at their source. We know where cocaine is from. Can we stop it? Well, yes, we can. When I came in with the Republican majority in 1995 and we took over, we went to those countries, Mr. Zeliff did, the former chairman who had this subcommittee responsibility, and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) who is now the Speaker of the House, we went to Bolivia, we talked to President Banzer and to other leaders there. We went to Peru and we talked to President Fujimori. We gave them a tiny bit of assistance and they completed their mission and have been completing their mission to eradicate cocaine and coca production, some 50 to 60 percent reduction in 2 or 3 years at very little cost to the taxpayer in stopping the production. One of the problems we have had is that the administration for year after year after year has blocked assistance to Colombia until the whole Colombian region exploded and it became a regional disaster, and we had to pass a $1 billion-plus aid package to bail the administration out from their failed policy. That policy will work. The policy also has assistance to neighboring countries so if we stop production there, it does not spill over into other areas. It worked in the 1980s, it will work now. There is no question about it. We can stop drugs at their source. Now, the second most effective way to stop drugs is to stop them as they come from the source. This administration has done everything they can to destroy the war on drugs. Now, if one is going to run a war on drugs, against drugs, how would one run that? Would one stop the programs or cut back the programs where they produce drugs at their source? That would be a farce, but that is exactly what this administration did. This administration cut Federal spending for international programs 50 percent during the Democrat-controlled Congress from 1992 to 1994. They cut it some 50 percent, from $660 million to $329 million. In fact, we are barely getting back to the level of funding for international programs and the spike that we did provide with the Colombian aid package will bring us up to where we should be in going after drugs most cost-effectively at the source. Now, again, the second area and most effective way to stop illegal narcotics, and a Federal responsibility, our responsibility as Congress is to stop the illegal narcotics before they come to our borders. President Reagan set up the Andean strategy. We set up a drug certification. If we allow drugs to come from their country into the United States, we stop foreign aid, we stop financial assistance, we stop trade and other benefits that we give as a country to that country that is sending poison into the United States. I helped draft the certification law. This administration has made a farce of the certification law from the very beginning, misapplying it, not applying it properly as it was intended, as it was applied during the Reagan and Bush administration. This they will tell us is a failure. I mean this is a decrease in drug use by everyone in this country, and they will tell us that that was a failure. I say that, in fact, this was a success. This is the failure. We only see right here where the Republican- controlled Congress took effect where we restarted the programs on stopping drugs at their source, where we began to restart the programs to interdict drugs before they reach our borders. Again, each of these programs were dramatically cut and slashed, and today, we are paying the consequences and struggling to get these programs developed back in this successful war on drugs, in effect. Mr. Speaker, it was one error compounded by another error. First, the administration withheld information and data to these other countries, information that was used to shoot down drug traffickers as the drugs left the source country and headed towards the United States. They said, we cannot do that. We could possibly hurt the hair on the back of some drug trafficker. Oh, we cannot send aid to Colombia, we might hurt some leftist guerilla or some rightist guerilla. I do not think there was concern about the right wing as there was about hurting the hair on the left wing. In any event, nothing got sent there. They blocked it time and time again, the assistance. It would almost be ludicrous, but unfortunately, I must go back, and I cannot help but to cite some of the mistakes by this administration that we are paying for today. It would be ludicrous to think that they would, in fact, act in such a fashion. This headline is from the Washington Post, August 4, 1994: U.S. Refusal to Share Intelligence in Drug Fight Called Absurd. One of the Democrats from the other side is the one who called it absurd, what the administration had done. We had stopped sharing information, stopped the ability of our allies in this war on drugs to go after drug traffickers, the beginning of the disaster that we inherited. Hearings also documented what the administration was doing in closing down a real war on drugs. My colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) we were elected together in 1993, and we served on the Committee on Government Operations and I attended the hearing, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) asked on August 2, 1994, ``As you recall, as of May 1, 1994, the Department of Defense decided unilaterally to stop sharing real-time intelligence regarding aerial trafficking of drugs with Colombia and Peru. Now, as I understand it, that decision, which has not been completely resolved, has thrown diplomatic relations with the host countries into chaos.'' August 2, 1994. Mr. Speaker, that was a prediction of the beginning of the disaster of Colombia. We all saw it coming. We all knew that when we close down the source countries, when we stop interdicting drugs cost-effectively before they come into the United States and had our allies do it rather than us even do it, just by providing a little information to our friends. Then, what did we need to go after the narcotics? There was almost zero heroin produced in Colombia in 1993, the beginning of this administration. Almost zero. But this Congress, Democrat-controlled Congress and White House managed to stop first information assistance, and then what do we need to stop the growth? We need something to go after the growth. That would be some helicopters. That would be helicopters that could fly at high altitudes, that would be helicopters that could go after drug traffickers and surveillance information. Time and time again, hearing and hearing again, we begged this administration, and we even passed the financing of sending the assistance to Colombia. The President and others in this administration blocked that assistance. So we have seen an incredible explosion of cocaine production, of heroin production in Colombia. This is a February of 1997 story, and it says, ``Delay of Copters Hobbles Colombia in Stopping Drugs.'' Guess what? When we do not have the equipment to go after where they are producing or trafficking, and 70 to 80 percent of the drugs coming into the United States are now produced, heroin and cocaine in that country, in fact, we do not stop the drugs. That is what caused us to do an emergency funding of $1 billion-plus for Colombia. In each of these areas, the new Republican majority has tried to act in a responsible fashion to restore the source country programs. We will find in the Colombian aid package, in fact, a good balance between alternative crop development, because we know the peasants there must have some source of income, and we can help them be productive; we can also help them turn away from production of the death and destruction of cocaine, coca and poppies and heroin that are now swamping the United States. We can easily put these programs together for very few dollars. Unfortunately, now it is taking more dollars than it would have if we had done the preventive steps that we asked for some years ago. Unfortunately, the administration has made this an even more difficult task by bungling the negotiations in Panama, by not allowing us to keep our forward-drug surveillance operating locations in Panama. Even if we gave back the base, all we needed was an operations center which we had had up until May of last year. The administration not only lost the military use, but bungled the negotiations to keep our forward operating locations. Part of the $1 billion package that we passed is now to fund $100-some million to replace the forward operating locations that we lost through the failed negotiations with Panama. All of our drug-forward surveillance operations were out of Howard Air Force base and now we have to pay to put them in Ecuador, and now we have to pay to put them in Aruba, and now we have to pay to put them at great expense into El Salvador. Two of those negotiations are semi- complete, but it will be 2002 before we get back to the capability we had last May to detect flights coming in with illegal narcotics and shipments from the source zone. General Wilhelm, our general in charge of the Southern Command of this whole effort in surveillance, and the military does not get engaged in arresting people or going after illegal narcotics traffickers. They are even banned from that. What they do is provide surveillance and intelligence information from the surveillance which is passed on either to the country or to enforcement people. According to General Wilhelm in a report that was provided to me as chairman of the subcommittee by the Government Accounting Office, General Wilhelm said that the Southern Command now, and again, in charge of looking at drugs coming in, can only detect and monitor 15 percent of the key routes in the overall drug trafficking area about 15 percent of the time. Again, what is reported to our subcommittee in charge of drug policy is that this will not be corrected until 2002. That is an absolute disaster created by ineptness in the administration and direct policy- thwarting efforts. I have talked about this many times. Again, they term this with decreasing drug use among our population as a failure. This is a success going up here. This is the Clinton success pattern. We have higher drug use, so that is an effective war on drugs. We dismantle the war on drugs piece by piece by piece and this is what we get, a flood of illegal narcotics, difficult to stem. I want to say that we have instituted as a Republican majority the most extensive education campaign in the history of this Nation funded with $1 billion over 5 years. Today we held our second oversight hearing on it. I had a different plan than the administration. I thought that those who get the airwaves, which are a public trust, should donate more time. The administration wanted to pay for time out of the taxpayers' pockets. As a compromise, and the way this place always works is a compromise, we have half the time being donated as a requirement and $1 billion of taxpayer money going into the campaign. But we must do something to educate the public. We must do something to educate particularly the young people. I must do something as chairman of the subcommittee to make sure that the money that we spend in this most extensive campaign is appropriate and that it is working. That was the reason for the hearing I held last October at the end of the first year of the campaign and today that we conducted to see if that is successful. I am not here as a Republican or a majority member saying that we can only criticize the other side. We have to tell what we have done. In fact, we have put in place the most extensive campaign in the history of our Nation. Now we have to make sure it works. Will it work? I do not know yet, but we are going to do everything we can. We have put back into place the funding for the international programs, and finally, the missing piece to the puzzle. This is not a great puzzle. The drugs, 70 percent of the cocaine, 75 percent of the heroin coming into the United States is coming from Colombia. We have stopped it in 2 or 3 years under the Republican majority working with Peru and Bolivia, and we have some assistance in this package for them. It is coming from here. A lot of it transits through Mexico. That is another problem I could spend a whole night on, again the United States and this administration making a farce out of certification, cooperation on the drug effort, giving Mexico benefits left and right, financing their indebtedness, helping them open their borders, giving them the best trade benefits, and then letting Mexico thumb their nose at the United States. It made a farce of the laws that the Reagan and Bush administration enforced, and also made Colombia the center of drug production for the hemisphere. The latest reports we have in the media today is a double of cocaine is reaching our European allies. I have met with our European allies soliciting their help in this region. We warned them that the cocaine and next the heroin is coming because of the tremendous production. In fact, the latest statistics revealed just in the last few days show that Europe is getting swamped with cocaine, and I guarantee them that the heroin will follow, because they pay even more in Europe than they do in the United States. We have this flood of supply coming in. Since our base in Panama is closed down, we have no forward operating location, and it may be over 2 years before the administration even has a clue to get it back in order. This is the mess that we have inherited. It does have consequences. I have shown these before, these quite revealing charts. I have not doctored these or produced them myself, they were produced by the Sentencing Commission to our subcommittee in recent testimony. By 1992, almost no crack in 1992. We do not even see methamphetamine on the chart at the beginning of this. Again, this is a failure in the war on drugs. In 1993, the beginning of the administration, we see the beginning, the very beginning of crack. In 1994, in 1995, it is exploding. In 1996, 1997, almost up the entire map, out of control. What has gone down in crack is being supplemented by methamphetamine, designer drugs, and also we do not have heroin on the chart, which has absolutely skyrocketed off the charts. This, again, is the result of I think a policy that can only be termed a failure. It is incredible how many times I hear that, again, the war on drugs is a failure; that some of the things that we have done, the tough enforcement will not work, that we have to liberalize our drug laws. Recently the New York Times, a New York Times editorial, called for doing away with the Rockefeller laws. The Rockefeller laws were instituted in the 1970s under Governor Rockefeller, tough laws, and they established tough sentencing guidelines. We often hear that the people behind bars are there because they have, say, used a small amount of illegal substances, marijuana. Small- time users are locked up in jail. That is what this New York Times editorial says, that our criminal justice system is clogged, and particularly they cite New York. In fact, on New York, we conducted a hearing in Washington on the subject of New York. We brought in an individual, Catherine Lapp, who is the New York State director of criminal justice. She testified before our subcommittee. We asked specific questions about how many people were behind bars, and were in fact New York prisons clogged with people who were small-time users. Let me cite her testimony before our subcommittee tonight before the House. This is Catherine Lapp: ``Over the last several years, there has been much debate in New York about the efficacy of our drug laws, oftentimes referred to as the Rockefeller drug laws, which were enacted in 1973 in response to the onslaught of drugs and drug-driven crime. ``Drug law reform advocates have argued that the drug laws have done little to remove drugs from our communities and only serve to imprison low level drug addicts in our State's prison system for lengthy periods of time. ``Advocates also argue that the law should be repealed in whole or in part and replaced with a system to provide treatment for all drug- addicted criminals. My response to this position is twofold. First, the facts do not bear out the position that there are thousands of low level drug-addicted offenders sentenced each year to State prison for lengthy periods of imprisonment on charges of possession of small amounts of drugs.'' That is the first premise she makes here. She says, ``Secondly, New York State has developed a rather sophisticated and progressive system for providing drug treatment options and alternatives to incarceration opportunities for dealing with drug-addicted non-violent offenders. The success of that system, however, is premised on large part on the fact that the offenders are motivated to take advantage of the options in order to avoid mandatory prison terms.'' Some of the statistics that she cited in her testimony to me, and this is nothing I have made up, the New York Times editorial will tell us they are draconian laws, and that 22,000 inmates are currently confined in their State prison; that inmates are nonviolent users and small-time sellers. Again, she did the most extensive survey ever done in New York, and this is some of what she found. First of all, she says, ``We also took a random review of the case files for the first-time felony offenders sentenced to State prison in what I believe is a very persuasive way. This documented the various reasons why they were sent to prison. ``In simple terms, the offenders gave judges little choice, as the offenders consistently and routinely thumb their noses at the system, showing little remorse for their actions or interest in seeking treatment. Finally, those sentenced to the State prison received, on average,'' on average, and this is what they call ``locked up forever for small-time use penalties,'' ``On average, 13 months in prison, hardly the lengthy sentences which the drug law reform advocates suggest.'' As for repeat drug offenders, our report also documented that only 30 percent of persons with prior felony arrest histories who were arrested for a drug felony actually received a sentenced State imprisonment, only 30 percent. There are roughly 22,000 individuals, that is the only thing that matches with the New York Times editorial, currently serving time in New York State prison for drug offenses. Eighty-seven percent of them are actually serving time for selling drugs, not mere possession, and over 70 percent have more than one felony conviction on their records. ``Of the persons serving time for drug possession charges, 76 percent were actually arrested for sale or intent to sell and eventually pled down to possession.'' Again, that is testimony that is absolutely in conflict with the New York Times' liberal editorial that would tell us that the State prisons in New York, because of the tough Rockefeller laws, are full of small- time users and offenders. This article goes on or this testimony goes on to talk about some of the things that have also been done in New York. I would like to go ahead and cite them. ``I would like to submit that those who advocate a wholesale repeal of the New York State drug laws in favor of treatment for substance- abusing offenders actually miss the point and fail to appreciate or choose to ignore the realities of the system. ``Perhaps the most compelling argument in favor of maintaining tough drug laws as a way to motivate substance-abusing offenders is found in reports of the King's County Detab, a drug program our subcommittee has looked at that is very successful in King'S County, close to New York City. ``On average, over 30 percent of the defendants screened and deemed eligible for this program actually declined to participate in the 18- month residential treatment program, opting instead to go to State prison.'' This is despite the fact that if they were to successfully complete the program, the charges would be dropped and wiped off their record. What would we do with this category of offenders in the absence of mandatory minimums? Return them to the communities? In recent years, changes have been made to the New York State drug laws. Now, the next thing I will tell my colleagues is the drug laws in New York, because of the Rockefeller laws, are inflexible. Ms. Lapp testified, in recent years, changes have been made to the New York State drug laws to permit certain nonviolent offenders to be diverted from prison and to treatment programs or to be released from prison early following successful completion of treatment. This is the bologna, the tripe put out by the New York Times, the liberal press. This is the fact, the testimony of Catherine Lapp, New York State Director of Criminal Justice before our subcommittee. This is the most extensive survey done on who is behind bars. Again, it is unbelievable that the media would not print the facts on what is happening in New York or in other jurisdictions and would have us believe that tough sentencing mandatory minimum sentencing should be withdrawn. We had testimony before our subcommittee from the Federal Sentencing Commission, and we have also asked the question of law enforcement officials in almost every one of our hearings and field hearings across the country and before us in Washington, should we reduce minimum mandatory? Without exception, the answer has been no. Most people do not realize that we have instituted, in fact, a safety valve and flexibility in the Federal law that does give discretion, that does allow for alternative programs, and does give small time offenders an opportunity. But, again, what is portrayed by the media is that one would have small-time users and abusers or even sellers behind prison bars, and it does not jibe at all with the facts that have been presented before our subcommittee. Mr. Speaker, I want to again address some of the myths about policies, tough policies versus liberal policies. New York City has to be the best example of the successful implementation of a zero tolerance as far as drug enforcement, as far as tough enforcement. When Rudy Guliani, the mayor, took office in the mid or early 1990s here, they are averaging 2,000 deaths in New York. That is down to the mid-600 range, a dramatic decrease. We called Rudy Guliani in before our subcommittee, and we have also examined the record in that community with a zero tolerance program. The latest statistics reveal that crime is down some 57.6 percent for seven major crimes. Murder is down 58 percent, rape down 31 percent, robbery down 62 percent, felony assaults down 35 percent, burglary down almost 62 percent, grand larceny down 42 percent, and grand larceny auto down almost 69 percent. Here again the liberals attack the zero tolerance policy. Either one has an activity where one has the liberals calling for more enforcement, or they are ganging up on the mayor in New York City because of tough enforcement. It is either not enough or too much. But it is interesting. We went back to examine when the mayor was criticized during the fatal shooting that took place by a police officer that, in fact, the number of fatal shootings by police officers in 1999, 11, was the lowest for any year since 1973, the first year for which records are available, and far less than the number of 41 police shootings that took place in 1990. Moreover, the number of rounds intentionally fired by police declined some 50 percent since 1993, and the number of intentional shooting incidents by police dropped by some 66.5 percent, while the number of police officers that Mr. Guliani actually put in place actually increased by 37.9 percent. The statistics, again, people do not want to deal with the hard facts. The liberal media will tell us that this policy does not work. The policy does work. The murder and nonnegligent manslaughter down dramatically to the mid 600s. The seven major felony categories down dramatically under this tough enforcement policy. Now, I want to know where the liberals were when David Dinkins' administration was in office. There were 62 percent more shootings by police officers per capita in the last year of David Dinkins' administrations, the last year, than under Mayor Guliani. Where was Mr. Sharpton? Where were the liberals when these incidents were taking place? I will tell my colleagues where the liberals were. One of them was in Baltimore, and he was the mayor, Mayor Schmoke. He adopted a nonenforcement, let them do it, we will treat them, do not worry about it, let it all hang out, that is good. Fortunately, Baltimore got rid of the mayor. The mayor is gone. But the deaths in Baltimore during 1998, 1999, 1997 all ranged over 300. This is a liberal policy. This is a nonenforcement policy. This is the opposite of zero tolerance. They have created a hell hole in one of our Nation's most beautiful and historic cities, Baltimore, where the population of addiction is somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals. This is the statistic, this chart was given to us in 1996 where they only had 39,000 addicts in Baltimore. That is through the leadership of a liberal policy. They now have one in eight, according to a city council member, of the population of Baltimore through this liberal policy an addict. Can my colleagues imagine extending this throughout the entire Nation, one in eight in our population? The worst thing about this is they cannot even get 50 percent of those who are addicted to show up for a treatment program or to participate in a program. Imagine demands on the social services. Fortunately, they have a new mayor. Fortunately, we held a hearing, our subcommittee, in Baltimore. We held a hearing at the beginning of the week. Fortunately, by the end of the week, the mayor who sat there and heard the testimony of the previous police chief fired him and put in a zero tolerance person. That is what we intend to support. The subcommittee, in fact, met this morning before our hearing with Mr. General McCaffrey and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) who represents this devastated area. We will bring these statistics down, and we can do it through a zero tolerance policy. Other cities have done it. Richmond, Virginia has done it. Others have had tough enforcement. We will do our best to provide treatment. But one cannot just treat the wounded in a battle. Imagine fighting a war and not going after the enemy, not going after the source of the weapon of destruction coming after one. That is what they have been trying to do, and it has not worked. It will not work. It will not work. So the liberal media that is out there telling us that we must legalize, that zero tolerance does not work, that the war on drugs is a failure, in fact they are the failure that we have because they repeat this message. It is my hope again that we can continue to work in a bipartisan fashion. I have done my best to work with folks on putting the package together, the Colombian aid package. It was delayed for 5 years, and we got it done in 5 months. It is my hope that we can work on other programs and successfully combat this terrible plague upon our Nation.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 298, rule for H.J. Res. 90, I was detained due to the malfunctioning of my office electronic voting signal equipment. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Madam Speaker, tonight is Tuesday night and it is the night that I reserve to come before the House on the issue of illegal narcotics and how the problem of drug abuse and illegal narcotics affects our Nation and the impact that illegal narcotics has upon our society, this Congress, and the American people. Tonight I want to provide a brief update of some of the information that we have obtained. Our subcommittee, which I am privileged to chair, the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, has as one of its primary charters and responsibilities to help develop a coherent policy, at least from the perspective of the House of Representatives, and working with the other body, the United States Senate and also the White House, the administration, to come up with a coherent strategy to deal with the problem of drug abuse and illegal narcotics. I have often cited on the floor the impact which really knows no boundaries today in the United States. Almost every family is affected in some way by drug abuse, illegal narcotics, or the ravages of drug- related overdose and death. I have cited a most recent statistic, which is 15,973 Americans died in 1998, the last figures we have total for drug-related deaths. And according to our drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, who testified before our subcommittee, over 52,000 Americans died in the last recorded year of drug-related deaths either directly or indirectly. We do not know the exact figure because sometimes a child who is beaten to death by a parent who is on illegal narcotics is not counted as a victim. Sometimes a spouse who is abused to the point of death is not counted as a victim. Sometimes a bus driver who is on an illegal narcotic that has had a fatal vehicle crash, the number of victims there are not counted in the tally. But we do know the total is dramatic. This past week our subcommittee had the opportunity to hear from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and officials came in and briefed our subcommittee, some of the Members in the House, about some of the most recent findings. And the findings are quite alarming, particularly among our young people. They confirm what most Americans know and what many parents fear, that illegal narcotics are more prevalent on our society. The study that they reviewed for the members of the subcommittee revealed, in fact, that there have been some dramatic increases in drug use and abuse among our young people. I brought tonight some charts from that study and also from a study on national youth risk behavior. This shows the percentage of high school students who have used methamphetamines, some figures that show in 9th grade we were up to 6.3 percent, in 10th grade 9.3 percent, 11th grade 10 percent, and 12th grade 11\1/2\ percent. These are pretty dramatic figures when we stop and think that we are talking about young people and having as high a percentage as we have reported here have used methamphetamine. And methamphetamine, if my colleagues are not familiar with methamphetamine, can be more damaging and create more bizarre behavior than the crack epidemic that we had in the 1980s. To have these percentages of our young people having experimented or used methamphetamine is quite disturbing. The other thing many people do not realize about methamphetamine is methamphetamine does an incredible job of destroying the brain and it is not a drug which allows you to have some replenishing of damaged brain cells. It is not a narcotic that leaves temporary damage. Methamphetamine induces an almost Parkinson's-like damage to the brain and does incredible damage and results in bizarre behavior. Now, we have conducted hearings throughout the United States, some in California, some in Louisiana. Next Monday we will be in Sioux City, Iowa, the heartland of America, which is also experiencing an incredible methamphetamine epidemic. That area has been hit by Mexican methamphetamines and we have reports again of incredible numbers people throughout the Midwest, the far West, now in the South and East, who are falling victim to methamphetamine. This chart should be a shocker to every parent out in America, to every Member of Congress who sees this. These are some pretty dramatic figures. When we stop and consider that these figures really were not even registering some 6 or 7 years ago, there was almost no meth available, shows that we have got to do a better job of first of all controlling the substance, law enforcement going after those who traffic in this deadly substance. Also, it is absolutely incumbent that we do a better job in educating our young people and preventing people from getting hooked on this drug. Now, getting hooked on drugs is bad enough. But this drug does incredible damage, as I said. We have had Dr. Leschner, who heads up the National Institute of Drug Abuse, testify before our subcommittee about the permanent damage that is done to the brain with this drug. This is not a question of addiction or use a little and come out of it. This is a question of becoming a victim of this. And the question of addiction is really too late for those who get on methamphetamine. There is no recovery. There is no turning back. Because they have induced some incredible damage to their brain and to their ability to function as a normal human being. Addiction and treatment might sound good and well-intended, but in fact methamphetamine is the end of the road for many people. Again this is absolutely a disturbing chart and figure to show us that 11.5 percent of our 12th graders are now reported having ever used methamphetamine, a shocking figure. Another figure that we have from 1991-1992 during the beginning of this administration, we had about 2 percent of our high school students being reported as using cocaine. That figure in 1999 is now up to 4 percent, a 100 percent increase in cocaine use among our young people. This again is another dramatic increase in a hard and a very destructive narcotic. These figures are reported to us again last week by CDC and indicate a disturbing trend. This is in spite of the Congress, Republican and Democrat efforts to put together a massive educational campaign, $1 billion in public funding over a 3-year period supplemented by $1 billion in donated service and time toward that effort, so a multi-billion-dollar education campaign. I know some of my colleagues have seen those ads on television but quite frankly with the results that we are experiencing with our young people, we are missing the target. We see a dramatic increase in cocaine use, particularly among our young people, a skyrocketing figure for methamphetamine, both shocking for parents and again Members of Congress who have attempted, I think, to stem some of this illegal narcotics abuse. This is the percentage of high school students who ever used cocaine from 1993. From the beginning of this administration to the current time we see a doubling in use, another dramatic figure. Somehow the message must have gotten lost in this period here, the beginning of this administration, that illegal narcotics were something that could be tolerated and possibly used and that is unfortunate that any message that condoned or gave any message other than ``Just Say No.'' Actually we have had incredible results from that lack of a direct specific message. A doubling again of the percentage of high school students who have ever used cocaine, disturbing, I am sure, to parents in the latest statistic we have from the Centers for Disease Control. I think this next chart and again this information is provided to us by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to our subcommittee last week is another startling figure. Go back to 1991-1992. Thirty-one percent of the students had used marijuana in that period. Now we have almost half of the students reported last week, 1997-1999 have used marijuana. Many people refer to marijuana as a soft drug and maybe some of the boomers who used marijuana in college or in school in the 1960s and 1970s were not much affected by use of marijuana. Unfortunately, the marijuana that is on the streets today has very high levels of purity. We have some testimony in our subcommittee about the damage that the current high purity marijuana does to young people. I was shocked to learn, also, from NIDA, our National Institute of Drug abuse, that marijuana is now the most addictive narcotic. Even though it is again commonly referred to as a soft drug, it is the most addictive drug and it is also referred to as a gateway drug. So young people who think it is fashionable to use marijuana are on the increase. It is unfortunate that this administration gave sort of a ``Just Say Maybe'' policy with the appointment of a liberal and I think mixed message chief health officer of the United States and that officer was Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and she said just say maybe. I do not think that the President of the United States really showed the leadership and provided the direction to get the message out to our young people about the problem of illegal narcotics use. That actually I think has been substantiated by a little research we did. I mentioned last week, and we only had 15 minutes of special order last week, that a lady had come up to me during one of our recent visits home and she said, ``I have never heard President Clinton talk about the war on drugs.'' Out of curiosity, I had our staff run a tally of all of the public recorded accounts. I think most people have a computer or access to Nexus research which has most of the public statements recorded there can plug in ``President Clinton'' and then ``the war on drugs.'' What was absolutely startling is the President has referred to the war on drugs eight times, you can count it on just eight fingers, since he took office in public recorded statements, he has referred to the war on drugs. Basically what happened in 1992-1993 is we closed down the war on drugs. If we take another chart and look at the drug use and abuse and prevalence particularly among our young people, we see a decline in the Bush and the Reagan administration, and then we see an incline during this administration, the administration tolerating this use, and it is recorded again in the drug figures that we see, some of them nearly doubling in drug use and abuse. If methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine are not bad enough, we see some dramatic increases in suburban teen heroin use. These statistics were just provided last month, in May. It shows that we have risen in suburban teen use from 500,000 in 1996 to nearly 1 million in 1999, a startling figure for one of the drugs again that is about as deadly as you can find on the streets across this land. The purity levels of the heroin that we are finding are not the purity levels again of the 1970s and 1980s. These drugs, this heroin is a deadly substance, sometimes 70 plus percent purity level. That is why we have incredible overdose deaths from heroin that is on the street today, another dramatic figure and another dramatic increase in a particularly deadly illegal narcotic. One of the myths that we often hear and we had a debate on the House floor about whether we should restart the war on drugs. Again, I must point out to my colleagues that in fact the war on drugs was closed down by the Clinton administration in 1993. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House from 1993 to 1995 did inestimable damage to what had formerly been a formal and organized war on drugs. They cut the source country program stopping drugs in a cost-effective manner at their source, certainly a Federal responsibility. They took the military out of the interdiction, and that was mainly a surveillance role in finding drugs and spotting drugs as they came from the source countries, certainly a role that local and State law enforcement cannot do, a responsibility of the Federal Government to protect us from a danger coming towards our border. They closed down and cut these programs by 50 percent, took the military out or deployed the military and other deployments around the globe, and what happened really was an emphasis to move toward treatment. They started putting all of the eggs in the treatment basket. I often think of what they did as a little bit like fighting World War II or any armed conflict that we have been in. Can you imagine not going after the enemy; not going after the source of the destruction, the enemy's reigning on us? That is basically the strategy that was adopted, a strange strategy that actually said let us just treat the wounded in battle. Of course, the policy and the legislation adopted by this Congress under the control of the democratic majority from 1992 to 1995 put the money into treatment, and we can see the trend. We often hear this debate, oh, we need to just treat people. We can treat our way out of this problem. This is a chart that I had staff graph for us, and it shows Federal drug treatment has dramatically increased. We go up here to the period of 1992-1993, right in here, a steady amount of money going up, a little bit of leveling off during the takeover of the Republican control. Even under the Republican control, I am told in the last several years, we, the majority side, have increased treatment spending some 26 percent just in this period of time. We have had a dramatic increase in treatment. The problem is we have an incredible addiction population, so we are getting more wounded in the battle, but not fighting the battle on all the fronts that are particularly a Federal obligation and cannot be fought by local or state officials. This, again, I think debunks some of the myths that are out there that we do not spend enough money on treatment. We have doubled, in some cases tripled, the amount of money on treatment, and we have an incredibly larger and larger addicted population. Unfortunately, I do not think people pay much attention to what it means to be addicted. Once you get addicted, your chances of being cured are, at very best, with hard narcotics, about 50 percent. Unfortunately, we have a 60 percent to 70 percent failure rate in our treatment programs that are public. The faith based and some of the other private treatment programs are much more successful. I will talk about Baltimore, which has one of the biggest addicted populations in the country, partly a direct result of a liberal drug policy, a policy where they have needle exchange, a policy where the former police chief had said, well, we are not going to enforce, not going after all the drug markets. We are not going to enforce the law. We are not going to take advantage of Federal law enforcement assistance to go after drug dealers and pushers and traffickers. That policy has had a very dramatic effect in Baltimore. Baltimore, in fact, has had a steady number of murders which have exceeded 300 for each of the past recent years, while other areas like New York, with a zero tolerance policy, like Richmond, with the Project Exile going after tough enforcement, have cut the murders by some 50 percent in those cities and even more dramatically. The zero tolerance policies, and we will show them, and the facts support this, it is not something I am making up, have worked and cut drug abuse and crime at every level across the board. The tolerant liberal, the nonenforcement attitude of Baltimore has resulted in a disaster for that city by any measure, by deaths. The number of addicts in Baltimore have jumped, according to one city council person who has said publicly, 1 in 8 in the population, that is some 60,000 to 80,000 heroin and drug addicts in Baltimore as a result of a liberal policy, as a result of lack of enforcement, as a result of only going to a policy of treatment. It has not worked. It does not work. And this is the path that we have been headed on, as far as Federal policy. This is an interesting chart that we had the staff make up, and we wanted to put altogether in one chart what we are doing with treatment. People say we are not spending enough money again in treatment. This line here, this blue line shows treatment. It shows that on a steady increase we see what has happened in interdiction, dramatic decreases. They start in the period of the Clinton administration, where a Democrat-controlled House and Senate, the White House making a policy to cut interdiction. These are international programs, that would be stopping drugs at their source; that is also cut. If we look at where we are heading, we are trying to get back to the 1992-1993 levels in terms of those dollars of that time in spending in international programs, again, stopping drugs at their source and also in the interdiction, getting the intelligence information. If we have intelligence on people who are trafficking in narcotics, and it is real information, it is accurate information, we can go after those who are dealing in that death and destruction. When we cut that out, we have an incredible volume of illegal narcotics coming into the United States, and that is exactly what has happened now. To compound the problem, what has happened is our major operations center for our illegal narcotics advance work for surveillance, going after drug traffickers was basically closed down last May 1 when the administration failed to negotiate with Panama for not keeping our military base open, but keeping our forward drug surveillance operations operating in Panama. General Wilhelm who is in charge of our Southern Command. The Southern Command overlooks the drug production and trafficking zone. General Wilhelm provided our subcommittee a letter last week and said we are down to about a third of our former capability prior to the time that we had Panama open and the main center of operations for forward- operating locations. This chart does again debunk that we are not concentrating on treatment. Certainly, we have put a ton of money in treatment. It is doubled as we saw from the other one. Where we have lost the momentum is going after these huge supplies of illegal narcotics, both at their source and on the way to our shores. Now, one of the things that we know is where these narcotics are coming from. This is not rocket science, it does not require a Ph.D. or a lot of study. We knew that in 1993, when this administration took over, that we had 90 percent of the cocaine coming from Bolivia, Peru, a tiny bit from Colombia. This chart shows Colombia and Andean cocaine production. This shows Colombia here, and you see very little produced, 1991-1992. These figures have not been doctored in any way. This is just graphing cocaine production in that era. Almost none in Colombia, most of it was coming from Peru, up here, and from Bolivia, about 90 percent of it. The former chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the House, and Mr. Zeliff, who came in immediately before him and had assumed the responsibility for helping develop a drug strategy under the new majority, said we know where these narcotics are coming from. Let us take a few dollars and put it in going after the drugs at their source. That is what was done in 1995 by the new majority. We targeted three areas, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. That is because those are the only places where they produce cocaine. We were able to establish programs in Peru and Bolivia with the cooperation of President Fujimori, which this administration has trashed recently and who won a legitimate reelection, and still this administration trashed. I can tell you, having gone to Lima, Peru, and visited Peru before President Fujimori took over, there was absolute chaos in the country. The production of narcotics was running rampant, terrorists were killing and maiming in the villages, the City of Lima was understood under siege, and President Fujimori went after the drug traffickers, shot down those that deal with death and destruction and drugs, and brought that country to the order and the prosperity it is now seeing. He, in fact, with a little tiny bit of our aid, just several millions of dollars, took Peru from a major producer down by some 50 percent reduction, in fact a 65 percent reduction is our latest figure, in cocaine production in Peru. Bolivia, with the help of President Banzer, who took over, and we went down and discussed these programs, a little bit of assistance, some crop alternatives so the peasants would be growing something other than coca, and those programs work. There has been more than a 50 percent reduction in Bolivia of cocaine. We pleaded with this administration to get aid and assistance to Colombia, the other producing area, and on every occasion the President blocked aid to Colombia; on every occasion the State Department thwarted our efforts to get even a few helicopters up into the Andean region to go after the coca that was being produced, and, if you want to get into heroin, there was no heroin produced to speak of in 1992- 1993, the beginning of this administration. So the direct policy of this administration and the liberals in the Congress helped make Colombia the producer of 80 to 90 percent of the cocaine in 6 years, and probably 75 percent of the heroin in 6 years. Until early this spring, the President and this administration never brought before the Congress any type of cooperative plan to deal with the situation in Colombia. Unfortunately, now it has caught up in the legislative process. I call on my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, to bring this forth. This plan works. This is not, again, rocket science. We can stop hard drugs from coming into our borders. We are not going to stop all of them, but this shows exactly what has taken place, and I think one of the most graphic portrayals that has been produced from our subcommittee. Again, this should be the ``chart of shame'' for this administration and the policies of the other side. This shows in 1993 the production of cocaine and heroine produced in Colombia. 1993, almost nothing for cocaine. For heroin, in 1993, almost none produced in Colombia. Now it produces 75 percent. Congratulations to the Clinton Administration. This is a great legacy, that you have managed to concentrate the drug production of two of the most deadly drugs in nearly 7 years here in one country in which you have blocked any assistance. It is an incredible legacy, and, unfortunately, it has resulted in a rash of epidemics of the use of these, particularly, as I just cited, according to the CDC report we got last week, among our young people, an incredible volume being produced in those countries. Again, this is not rocket science. We know where it is coming from. We know heroin is coming out of Colombia, 75 percent being used in the United States. We know that by any seizure that is done around the United States. Madam Speaker, to wind this up, we do need a bipartisan and cooperative effort. We must learn by the mistakes that have been made. We must learn by putting together a plan that does work and move forward with it. Next week, hopefully, we will have an hour to tell the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey says.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.