John Mica

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Madam Speaker, I come before the House again tonight to talk primarily about one of the major issues I am involved in in the United States Congress and as a Member of the House of Representatives. I have the privilege and opportunity to serve as the Chair during the 106th Congress of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, and in that capacity it is my responsibility to help formulate a rational drug policy both for the House of Representatives, for the United States Congress and, hopefully, for the American people, to deal with a problem that is epidemic and devastating across our land. We do not fail to pick up a newspaper across the United States today or in my local community in central Florida and not read about some tragedy, particularly among our young people, some faceless, some unknown, some celebrities, some stars; one last week, I believe Mark Tuinei of the Dallas Cowboys. A 39-year-old healthy successful athlete died tragically from the results of a heroin overdose. I understand it was one of the first times he had ever used heroin. I understand it was also possibly in conjunction with another drug, possibly ecstacy. I am sure all this is to be investigated, but nonetheless he did die a tragic death, and we lost another young athletic star. But, Madam Speaker, it is my concern that we cannot get attention to this problem. This past couple of weeks the Nation has been focused and riveted on the tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado, and certainly this horrific act in Colorado and Littleton did cause all of us pause and concern about the state of violence in our school system and education and with our young people. But, Madam Speaker, there are three Columbine High Schools or the equivalent of the death and destruction among our population every single day in America. There are three Columbine High School tragedy equivalents across our land on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and every one of the 365 days. Last year over 14,000 Americans lost their lives to drug-related deaths. The statistics are mind-boggling when you stop and think that in the last 6 years of this administration over 100,000 Americans, the equivalent of cities of significant population have been entirely wiped out by drug- related deaths, and what is more disturbing is some of the policies of this administration which were instituted in the first 2 years when they controlled the United States House of Representatives, the other body, the United States Senate, and the White House, that in fact we are still reeling from the devastating effects of those policies on our country and particularly in the area of illegal narcotics deaths. We have seen a dramatic increase in both the use and abuse of very hard drugs including heroin. A heroin epidemic exists and rages across this land, in my own community. Our young people, our teenage population in the last 5 years, has experienced an 875 percent increase in heroin use. Now I am talking about our teen population, our youngest victims in again this epidemic of heroin. What has also caused the record number of deaths and I am sure will be attributed to the deaths we have read about just in the past few days in my local community and the death I cited of a Dallas Cowboys athlete is the high purity of heroin that is entering the United States. People today have no idea of the deadly effects of high purity heroin, and particularly when they are used with any other substance the results are devastating. In my local community, and I represent central Florida from Orlando to Daytona Beach, a very prosperous area, an area that has a high education level, a high income level, again relatively high prosperity across the district, we have a situation of heroin deaths now exceeding homicides in that, again, tranquil part of central Florida, and this is no longer a problem of one urban addiction population, a hard-core use in, again, center cities problem; this is a problem that now extends to every income level and, again, particularly is violent and prevalent among our young people and our teenage population. The cost of this epidemic is staggering. We have filled our prisons across this great land with almost 2 million Americans incarcerated. Estimates are now that 60 to 70 percent of those behind bars in our jails, in our prisons, in our Federal penitentiaries are there because of some drug-related offense. And many of these individuals are there because they committed a very serious crime, not small usage of illegal narcotics, but very serious felonies, and sometimes because they were on drugs or sometimes they were dealing in illegal narcotics, but the results are 60 to 70 percent of our prison population across this land is now again involved and has been involved with illegal narcotics. If my colleagues want to take an example of a human tragedy, take the area we are in, Madam Speaker, the Nation's Capital, an area that is visited by thousands and thousands of tourists daily. It should be the pride of every American, and unfortunately, my colleagues, Washington, because of illegal narcotics, has become a sad commentary on the abuse and misuse of illegal narcotics. Three hundred fifty to 400 young men in most instances, and mostly black males, in our nation's capital have died annually the past 6 or 7 years, tragic deaths, and most of them related to illegal narcotics. The situation is even worse when you look at the effect again on the minority population, the young black males who have so much potential in our society. In the District of Columbia nearly 50 percent of the male population is part of the judicial system on probation or behind bars, again an incredible human tragedy and much of it linked to the abuse and misuse and trafficking in illegal narcotics. The cost in dollars, not to mention the human tragedy that I just mentioned, is phenomenal. As chair of the subcommittee, we are now trying to work with others in the Congress to formulate a package to address in dollars the direct cost of illegal narcotics, and we do not have all of the costs combined in this figure but we will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 billion that Congress is about to pass a supplemental appropriations, of which $6.9 billion can be attributed to the war in Kosovo and we are looking at double to triple of that direct cost in our budget to the war on drugs, which again is an expensive proposition. Madam Speaker, these are only the direct costs that I am referring to, this $18 billion we will consider for the next fiscal year. There are a quarter of a trillion dollars in additional costs, in lost wages, in incarceration, in costs to the judicial system, in welfare and support systems and social systems and the loss, the tremendous loss, of people involved and victims of illegal narcotic trafficking. So the loss in lives and direct human lives is incredible. The loss in dollars and cents to the taxpayers and the costs that the Congress must cover in expenses for, again, this situation and illegal narcotics is phenomenal. Again, some of the problems that we are facing today emanated from a change in policy. It may have been well intended. During the Reagan administration, and I had the opportunity to serve with Senator Paula Hawkins who initiated many of the anti-narcotics legislative and administrative efforts working with the Reagan administration in the early eighties, Florida was inundated with cocaine and other illegal narcotics trafficking, but a strategy to stop drugs at their source, a strategy to interdict illegal narcotics as they came from their source, a strategy to employ the military, the Coast Guard and other United States assets before the illegal narcotics ever got to our shores, all of these programs were put in place. Additionally, we had a First Lady who developed a program working with legislative leaders and the President and others. It was a simple program. She developed a program that said, just say no, to our young people. The results were pretty dramatic. If we look in the early eighties, we had high drug usage. We had increasing narcotics trafficking, and those statistics and figures went down steadily through the Reagan administration of the 1980s into the early 1990s when President Bush continued those policies. It was not until 1993, with this administration, that they began dismantling, first of all, the drug czar's office. We cannot fight a national or international effort without the proper resources, without the proper direction, and certainly with so many Federal agencies involved and responsible for various elements of combatting illegal narcotics, whether it is the Department of Education, HHS, the Department of Justice, the DEA, our Drug Enforcement Administration, the Coast Guard, which is under transportation and other agencies, unless there was a good coordinating operation which was established again under the Reagan administration, and with the position of drug czar, can you have an effective anti-narcotics, illegal narcotics, operation or administration at the Federal level. So the first mistake that was made was dismantling that office and cutting dramatically their resources. Next, the Clinton administration, and this is now history, cut the source country operations. If we look at how to stop illegal narcotics in huge quantities from entering the United States, we merely look at the sources. Now, if we had cocaine growing in every backyard or if we had cocaine coming from every nation on earth, it might be impossible to stop cocaine and coca production in every one of these sources, but, in fact, we have known that the three countries involved in the production of coca were Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. Ninety percent of the cocaine and coca was actually produced in Bolivia and Peru. However, again, changes from this administration have now made Colombia the major producer of coca and cocaine in the entire world, now exceeding what Peru and Bolivia had captured as the major source of production. So we had, again, a dramatic decrease, a cut of the source country programs that cost effectively stopped the production of illegal narcotics. We knew cocaine was coming from there. We knew heroin and other things, tough narcotics, were trafficking through Mexico, and we stopped programs to, again, stop drugs at their production source and then stop drugs at the second most cost effective stage, which is interdicting them before they ever get to the country, as they are leaving the source country. Dramatic cuts were made in these interdiction programs. Most of the military activities were sharply cut back, and additionally we cut the Coast Guard budget. When I say ``we,'' the Congress that was controlled, again, by the other side of the aisle, the Democrats, in 1993 to 1995. Again, they controlled both the legislative and executive branches of government when they made these cuts in the military, in the Coast Guard, in the eradication and interdiction programs. Now, they did dramatically increase the treatment programs, but if we fought a battle and we only fought the battle by treating the wounded, it is not much of a battle. If we did that in any of our conflicts, we would be decimated. We have been, in fact, decimated in the war on drugs, because basically this administration, through the direction of President Clinton, dismantled what we had in place as a war on drugs. That is how we got to the situation where we have seen an incredible increase in narcotics, particularly heroin and cocaine and methamphetamine, coming into the United States. Our subcommittee has looked at some of the problems relating to stopping drug trafficking, and I am pleased to inherit the responsibility I have for helping to develop this national drug strategy from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Speaker Hastert, in his capacity as chair of the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations and the Subcommitee on Criminal Justice Drug Policy and Human Resources, on which I served in the last Congress, led the fight and the effort to put our real war on drugs back together; to restore the interdiction programs; to restore the eradication, again, at the source country programs; to bring the military and the Coast Guard back in to this battle so that, again, we have a real war and effort to stop the incredible supply and quantity of hard narcotics coming into the United States. If that is not a responsibility of the Federal Government to deal with the international problem, the supply coming into the country, I do not know what is a national responsibility for any Federal Government. I do want to give credit to Speaker Hastert, who in his capacity as chair of the subcommittee on which I served with him in the last Congress helped put together again these programs that were decimated by the Clinton administration and by the policy of the democrat controlled Congress from 1993 to 1995. He did an admirable job. Not only did Speaker Hastert restore some of the areas that are so important, eradication at the source, interdiction, use of the military, the Coast Guard and getting those resources to enforcement, he also shepherded through dramatic increases in education, because if we do not have a solid education program and make young people in particular, and all Americans, aware of the potential danger of these hard narcotics, then we cannot be successful in stopping drug abuse and the stream of illegal narcotics coming into the country. Nearly a billion dollars in increase in funding was appropriated, a very dramatic increase, to bring us up to the levels not even of 1992 when they started dismantling some of these programs, but starting back to restore again and have an effective war on drugs. I hear some of the critics saying the war on drugs has failed. Well, Madam Speaker, there has been no war on drugs since 1993, with this administration. It is only in the last 2 years that we have again put the adequate resources to cost effectively stop these huge quantities of deadly narcotics from entering this country. So we have begun that effort and we need to pick that effort up. Another incredible mistake made by this administration was a decision to cut aid to Colombia. The Congress has provided aid to Colombia. Now, why should the United States provide aid, and what interest do the taxpayers and others have in providing aid to Colombia? As I said, there are two sources of cocaine where 90 percent of the cocaine came from in all the world; it was from Peru and Bolivia. This administration stopped resources, aid, assistance, ammunition, helicopters, spare parts, despite numerous protests from Congress, from going to Colombia. They stopped the shipment and supply. In that period of time in the last few years, 3, 4 years, now we have to understand there was almost no coca produced in Colombia some 5 years ago, with the policy of this administration and stopping again that assistance from getting there, Colombia is now the major producer in the world of coca, the raw material, and the major producer of cocaine. Not only is it a producer of the raw material, and the major processor in the entire world, again through a very direct policy of this administration, which was to cut off assistance, again, despite countless protests, despite letters, despite communications, despite pleas from Members of Congress, and I know this because I participated in this with Speaker Hastert, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), who chairs the Committee on International Relations, and numerous other Members of Congress who joined us in saying do not make this mistake, do not cut off this assistance to Colombia, so now we have, again, made Colombia, through an incorrect policy, the number one producer of cocaine. In the same period of time, since President Clinton took office, Colombia produced almost no heroin. There was almost zero heroin, zero poppies and opiates produced from the country of Colombia. What has happened, Madam Speaker, is absolutely incredible in this 5, 6 year period of this administration. The largest source of heroin, and not the heroin of the 1960s or 1970s or even the 1980s, but high quality, high purity heroin, the largest source, 75 percent of all the heroin entering the United States, devastating children and people of all ages in Florida and across this Nation, 75 percent is now coming from Colombia. Again, Colombia was not a producer of heroin of any quantity 6 years ago, and this policy of this administration has now made actually heroin so readily available its purity exceeds that of any other available drug, hard drug. The price has dropped. The supply is so great. It is available as now a drug that can be marketed to our young people, probably lower than the price of cocaine on our streets. So we have seen a deadly brand of heroin being grown from that country. It would be nice if people on my side of the aisle stood up and said what they have done and are doing about this situation, and it is incumbent on me not to just criticize the Clinton administration or my colleagues on the other side for their failed policies, but I think it is important that we state for the record what we have done. In fact, I cited that Speaker Hastert, who shared the responsibility for developing and putting back together our drug strategy, began that process, putting resources into, again, source country eradication programs, interdiction, getting funds and resources to the military and to the Coast Guard and others to fight this tremendous battle. Additionally, we put in over a billion dollars in education funding, $191 million last year, to begin public information education and a media campaign, which will be matched by private sector donations. So we should have close to half a billion dollars before we are through this effort to educate folks. On the front of Colombia, which has become our major source of production, it has been my pleasure to meet with President Pastrana, both in the United States here, soon after he took office, the end of last year, and visiting with him also in Colombia with other Members of Congress, to seek his cooperation, to seek Colombia's cooperation, and we are doing just that. He faces a very difficult challenge now that the Marxist guerillas, the FARC and ELN and others, have taken control of a large portion of the land area of Colombia, have dug their heels in and have now created an incredible war. If we think the problem in Kosovo is a tragedy, thousands and thousands of Colombians have died in this civil conflict, and certainly if we look at the national interest, if we looked at Kosovo and we looked at Colombia, our national interest with this being the source of the death of 14,000 Americans, the majority of 14,000 Americans who died, I am sure we could trace the narcotics right to Colombia. In Colombia, dozens and dozens of elected officials, 11 members of their Supreme Court, have been murdered, killed; over 3,000 of the national police have died in a conflict giving their lives trying to combat the narcoterrorists, which are again related to a Marxist effort and narcoterrorist effort to take over Colombia, but we stopped, again, any resources going down there, ammunition, helicopters, equipment, spare parts, and we now see again this leftist-initiated civil war that has killed tens of thousands of Colombians, thousands of officials, created terror and allowed narcoterrorism to flourish in that country. I might say that, again, we have begun to put this whole program and effort back together to deal with that situation. Several weeks ago I was so pleased to join with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), who is chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, the full committee of which we are a subcommittee. I also had the pleasure of joining with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), who is the Chair of our Committee on International Affairs, two individuals who have fought for years to get resources to Colombia so we would not be in the situation we are in. I participated with them by going to a factory in Connecticut, near New Haven, Connecticut, for delivery of Black Hawk helicopters, 6 Black Hawk helicopters, which will be supplied in the war and effort against illegal narcotics, both the production and also going after traffickers. These 6 helicopters are long overdue. There should be 16, as I said in my remarks there at the ceremony in which they were turned over. Unfortunately, it will take some months before the pilots are fully trained and before they are in the air. We are doing our part, as a majority. Speaker Hastert again in his capacity began this initiative to make certain that now that those helicopters and those parts and that ammunition are delivered that we have a war on drugs, so that we have a cost effective operation at the source. Madam Speaker, if we know where the majority of cocaine and coca is produced and processed, and that is Colombia, and if we know where 75 percent of the heroin coming in to the United States, and we know that without question because we have signature programs like DNA programs that can almost trace the heroin to the poppy fields where they are grown, if we know that 75 percent of this deadly heroin is coming from Colombia, why in heaven's name would we not be sending the adequate resources there? I am here to say tonight that we are sending some of those resources on their way, and I hope that this time that this administration will not block those resources from getting to where they can do the most cost effective job in stopping deadly heroin, deadly cocaine, from coming into the United States. There is no cheaper way of stopping the supply than stopping it at its source; again, hopefully to help in the resolution of a civil war that has taken thousands of lives, and which we know is directly financed by the proceeds of this narcoterrorism. So, again, I congratulate the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the chairman of the Committee on International Relations, for his assistance and leadership, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), our chair of the full Committee on Government Reform, for their efforts and persistence in getting the resources to where they can be most cost effective. Madam Speaker, again, we try to address the issues dealing with drugs as they come into the United States and before they come into the United States in a cost effective manner. In that regard, last week my subcommittee held a hearing on the question of Panama, and the effects of the United States losing its flight operations and basically being kicked out of the Panama Canal Zone as far as any forward surveillance operations dealing with narcotics. On May 1, the United States was prohibited from launching any flights, any narcotics surveillance missions, from the Republic of Panama. This is an incredible blow to our capability to find drugs as they come from, again, their source country. Again, we have to think of the most cost effective way to stop drugs and we have to think of where these illegal narcotics are produced, where they are processed and where the beginning of the trafficking comes from. Our ability to deal with that has been as through an operation that has been found for a number of years in Panama, particularly at Howard Air Force base where we have had various surveillance aircraft, including AWACS and others tracking and monitoring illegal narcotics flights, trafficking, doing surveillance work in cooperation with countries. Most Americans are not aware of it, but again, we were kicked out May 1. The reason we were kicked out deals back to the Carter administration and the truth agreements that the United States must vacate. However, our subcommittee in Congress was led to believe that this administration was moving forward with negotiations with Panama so that we could, at a minimum, keep our narcotics surveillance operations from that base, which is just ideally located, again for the purpose of interdicting close to the source, illegal narcotics. Unfortunately, there is no other way to put it, but the State Department bungled the negotiations and this went on until the very last minute. We were in Panama in January hoping that there could be some resolution. Unfortunately, the negotiations failed. The United States lost all access. In fact, the United States stopped all flights from Panama on May 1. We had 15,000 flights, and we covered 100 percent of the area that needed to be covered to conduct surveillance of illegal narcotics trafficking and production. In the hearing that we conducted last week, unfortunately we could not be told as to how many operations have been relocated. Now, it would not be bad enough that we got kicked out and the negotiations were bungled, but part of the $18 billion that the administration has come to Congress to ask for to deal in the drug war, part of that, a large part of it, is $73 million to relocate what we had been not paying for in Panama, but to relocate operations to Aruba or Curacao with the Netherlands, and also to Ecuador. So what has been patched together, we learned through this hearing, are interim agreements, and we have no long-term agreements, not a single long-term agreement to replace our base operations in Panama, but at a cost of $73 million, which was originally proposed to us to move these operations, which now we cannot even tell how many flights are taking off from that area, but we know that they are less than 50 percent of the coverage we had on May 1, or prior to May 1. We know it is costing us money, and we also know that a request came to our subcommittee in Congress for an additional $40-some million, I believe it was $45 million, on top of the $73 million that we are being asked to foot the bill for for dealing with, again, a failed negotiation. And we now have, again, less than 50 percent coverage, and it may be several years before we have any hope of having the coverage that we had from our Panama location. All this will be paid for by the taxpayers, and unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. We are also told that it may cost as much as $200 million to upgrade some facilities and some airstrips in some of these countries. Unfortunately, again, we only have interim agreements, no long-term agreements. We also have a very short-term interim agreement with Ecuador, which is of concern because Ecuador has had very difficult political problems, economic instability. If we are to house a forward operating location there and expend money, we want some assurance that taxpayers' money would be properly expended. But we have really witnessed a small disaster, which has not been properly recorded by the press in the loss of our operations. The cost is phenomenal. It will probably be a half a billion dollars to replace these operations before we are through. We have lost over 5,600 buildings, not to mention Howard Air Force Base and its use for these surveillance operations. We lost $10 billion in assets that the American taxpayers paid for in the Canal Zone, all quietly closed down and again leaving an incredible gap in the area that needs protection and surveillance and overflight information. So we find ourselves in a very difficult situation trying to put this South American strategy and interdiction strategy back together. But, again, we are trying to do our best and do it in a cost-effective manner as we consider the appropriations in this budget. So we put some of the helicopters into place in Colombia. We have got equipment going back to Colombia as an initiative of the majority, the Republican side, and efforts again by those who fought these cuts, which have had such serious implications for us. We now are trying to piece together a forward-operating location for surveillance and interdiction of drugs at their source and do that again in a cost-effective manner, picking up the shred of disastrous negotiations by this administration as we quietly make our way from the Panama Canal Zone and pay for access to other countries. So those are a couple of the agenda items that our subcommittee has been involved in in trying to restore our war on drugs and our efforts to curtail this major national illegal narcotics problem. One of the other concerns that I have had, as a Member of Congress and also dealing with this drug issue, is try to come up with some solution to address what I will term the Mexican problem. Now, in addition to Colombia, and we have now cooperation equipment going there, we look at a strategy that deals from a national perspective, an international perspective, again stopping drugs at their source. I have already cited Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and their role in providing both the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics. The next biggest offender and really the biggest problem that we have facing us is the problem with Mexico. Unfortunately, this administration certified Mexico some weeks ago as fully cooperating in our efforts and with their efforts to stop the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics. Nothing could probably be further than the truth. Nothing could encourage a country to just kick sand in the face of the United States and ignore the will of the United States Congress and the American people than an action to certify Mexico as fully cooperating. Our subcommittee held a hearing on Mexican certification and decertification, and today we held another one on the question of extradition and particularly what Mexico has been doing to extradite major drug traffickers. Let me say, if I may, for way of explanation to Members of Congress, for the Speaker's edification, that the certification law which was passed in the 1980s is a simple law. It says that no country that is not fully cooperating with the United States will be eligible to receive foreign aid or foreign assistance if they do not take steps again to fully cooperate in an effort to curtail illegal narcotics production and trafficking. Simple law, simple concept. No assistance in stopping illegal narcotics and the trafficking and production, no foreign assistance. Again, this administration, for the past several years, has certified Mexico as fully cooperating. Why would anyone certify a country as fully cooperating who performed as follows: Mexico, first of all, in the last calendar year had a decrease in the number of seizures of heroin. Mexico had a decrease in the number of seizures of cocaine. Mexico also had a decrease in the number of vessels that were seized in narcotics trafficking. Mexico has ignored every request of the United States Congress and Members of Congress to deal with the hard narcotics. And 50 percent of the narcotics coming into the United States can be traced either as produced or trafficked through Mexico. That is 50 percent of the death and destruction, the 14,000 Americans last year, the 100,000 Americans in the last 6 years who have lost their lives to the effects of illegal narcotics. We can trace them, again, to inaction by Mexico. Not only do we have inaction and lack of cooperation, lack of effort on their part, we have had actually difficulty in trying to conduct any operations to stop money laundering and illegal narcotics with Mexico. I bring to the floor and to the attention of my colleagues and the Speaker the situation with Operation Casa Blanca. We asked for cooperation in Operation Casa Blanca, which was a multimillion dollars, in fact one of the largest money laundering operations ever uncovered in the Western Hemisphere, and it involved Mexican bankers. What did the Mexican officials do? Even though we know that they were alerted and aware of this operation, they threatened to arrest United States Customs officials who were involved in that operation. This is not fully cooperating by any standards. This is a close ally to which the United States, the Congress, and many Members on both sides of the aisle extended incredible trade benefits through NAFTA, extended incredible finance underwriting when their currency was failing. When their economy was faltering several years ago, we helped bolster and we do bolster through our international cooperation and finance, financing and the structure of support for international finance for Mexico. We give incredible benefits to that country, which, again, has not in any sense and in any term fully cooperated in meeting requests. I have tonight from the hearing that we conducted several little posters, wanted posters. We have Ramon Eduardo Arellano-Felix, who has pending U.S. criminal charges dealing with conspiracy to import cocaine and marijuana. He is a fugitive, a United States fugitive. He has not been arrested by Mexico. I used him as one example in the hearing we held just a few hours ago on extradition. We found again the request of Congress and repeated requests of the House of Representatives in particular has been for Mexico to cooperate in extraditing even one major narcotics trafficker. Through the hearing that we held this afternoon, we learned that in fact Mexico has been requested to extradite over 270 Mexican nationals. There are over 40 major drug traffickers that we are trying to extradite. To date not one single individual major drug trafficker, not one drug kingpin has been extradited from Mexico. We heard a tale today from the Department of Justice, Department of State how these drug lords with their oodles of death money are now subverting even the Mexican process and hiring legal experts and doing everything possible to avoid extradition. But this individual is only one of numerous requests that we have made of Mexico year after year for extradition. This Congress and this House of Representatives passed, 2 years ago March, several simple requests of Mexico. First was extradition of major drug traffickers, even one. Again, to date, nothing has transpired. Additionally, this House of Representatives 2 years ago asked Mexico to enter into a maritime agreement. That is so important because many of the drug traffickers use the sea lanes and water to transport and also as escape routes. It is so important that we have a maritime agreement. Still to date no maritime agreement with Mexico, another request of this House of Representatives. Additionally, we had asked for radar to be placed in the south of Mexico, because we knew that from Colombia and from South America illegal narcotics were coming in through Mexico. To date, no progress and radar to the south of Mexico. Another request completely ignored. We asked additionally that our DEA agents, our drug enforcement agents that are located in Mexico, be given the ability to protect themselves, in some cases arm themselves, because they are at incredible personal risk in this war there and exposed on every front in Mexico. To date, those requests have still been ignored. Then we asked that some of the laws that Mexico had passed to deal with illegal narcotics, trafficking and money laundering, we asked that those laws be enforced. Rather than enforcement, what the Mexicans have done, as I just cited, was kick dirt in our face in Operation Casa Blanca, threaten to arrest our United States Customs agents who uncovered multimillion dollar illegal narcotics trafficking. So by any measure, all of the requests that we have made as a House of Representatives, as individual Members, as members of the subcommittee have been ignored. Again we have this wanted poster. We had dozens of these at the committee hearing this afternoon of major drug lords, traffickers who have not been extradited, requests that have been pending year after year; and Mexico has ignored time and again the extradition of any of these Mexican nationals to the United States where they know and our DEA agents and our head of DEA has said that there is nothing that these traffickers fear more than coming to the United States where they will face justice, where they will face a jail term, and they will face punishment. In these countries, many of those who we have asked for extradition after we have indicted them have fled. Many of them are free and in Mexico. What is unfortunate, Madam Speaker, what is incredible as I conclude this evening is that this situation with Mexico again has rained tremendous damage on the United States of America who has tried to be a good friend, a good ally, and a good trading partner. When a country which is a close ally and neighbor, and we have millions of great Mexican Americans in the United States who bring great diversity and tremendous contributions to our society, when we have this ally of Mexico not cooperating, it is a tragedy. What concerns me is that we are on the verge now of seeing Mexico become a narcoterrorist state. It is unfortunate, but the reports that we have is that the entire Baja Peninsula, all the Mexican territory of the Baja Peninsula below California, is now under narcoterrorist control. They control the police, they control the local government, they control the military. Basically, the entire Baja region has become a narcoterrorist state. Over 300 Mexicans were killed last year. Some 20 of them my colleagues may have read about were machine-gunned down, women and children, in violence we had only seen when the drug lords were in power in Cali and Medellin. So Mexico is about to lose the Baja Peninsula, or has lost the Baja Peninsula. Additionally, Mexico has lost the Yucatan Peninsula. When we met with Mexican officials and the Attorney General, who told us they were doing everything to bring the situation under control, we cited the corruption of the governor of Quintana Roo, the Yucatan Peninsula, that state where President Clinton went down and met with President Zedillo just a few months ago. They met in another narcoterrorist state, controlled by a governor who was corrupt, who we knew was corrupt and the Mexicans knew was corrupt. In fact, the Mexicans told us the only reason they had not arrested him is because in Mexico public officials have a certain immunity while they are in office, and they were waiting for him to leave office and then he would be arrested. And what took place there just a few days before the governor of Quintana Roo, the Yucatan Peninsula, was to leave office, he fled and is now a fugitive. So we did not even get one of the major traffickers in the Yucatan Peninsula. So another major land area in Mexico is now lost to narcoterrorism. Additionally, we have reports of mountain regions and other states and locales in Mexico being completely overtaken by narcoterrorism, and it is a different kind of activity than we have seen before with just corruption. Now we see real terrorism, where they are killing local officials and others who cross them in this incredible war that has been fueled by illegal narcotics trafficking. So tonight, as I close, I am disappointed with the Clinton administration and the problems they have created through their policies of 1993 to 1995, but I am pleased that we have taken a new direction and, with some help from folks on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, we now have more resources going into cost- effective source country programs, to interdiction, as again we know where these drugs are coming from; for law enforcement, which is a tough way to go, but we must enforce the laws of our land and try to bring illegal narcotics trafficking under control; and also for education, so our young people know about the dangers and about the deadly heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine that is on our streets.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Madam Speaker, my colleagues, I am pleased to come to the floor again tonight and will be coming to the floor each and every week I get the opportunity to talk about a situation that I think is our number one national social problem, and that is the problem of illegal narcotics and substance abuse in our Nation. In this Congress, as many of my colleagues know, I was assigned a responsibility to chair the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform. With that responsibility, I inherited a position that was really held by the former chair of the national security subcommittee on which I served, and the chair of that subcommittee was the honorable gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now Speaker of the House. I may say at this time that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) helped put back together our national effort to begin to address the problem of drug abuse, illegal narcotics trafficking, and address in a very serious fashion for the first time since this administration took office the problem of illegal narcotics that face our Nation and our community. So I am pleased to inherit that responsibility. I am also troubled by that responsibility because the problem is so enormous. The scope of this problem, my colleagues, goes beyond anything we see on the nightly news. I know the attention of the Nation and the Congress and all Americans has been focused on the tragedy in Colorado; and certainly that was a tremendous human tragedy, with a loss of some 15 precious lives. I know also, my colleagues, that the attention of the Nation and the Congress is focused today and tonight and will be this week on the situation in Kosovo, in harm's way. But my colleagues, a very, very serious situation faces this Congress, and that is what to do about the rising use of illegal narcotics, particularly among our young people and among our population across this Nation. And it is not just a question of use. If there was not any damage, if there was not any result, people may very well turn their heads the other way and ignore the problem. But, my colleagues, the problem is absolutely enormous. Over 14,000 and possibly up to 20,000 Americans, depending on whose statistics we use, last year lost their lives in our Nation as a result of drug-related causes. This is an astronomical figure. And I have said on the House floor since this President took office, approximately 100,000 Americans, the population of some of our larger cities in this country, have died at the hands and through the use and abuse of illegal narcotics and the tragedy that it has brought to their lives and to their families. So tonight I am back again, with that responsibility, seeking answers; and tonight I plan to focus a bit again on the history of how we got into this situation and review that. Because I think it is important that we learn from the mistakes of the past, we learn from the mistakes of the Congress, we learn from the mistakes of this administration, we learn from the mistakes of this President and we try to improve on what we are doing both in policy and legislative action. It is important, I think, also that we focus beyond the past at what we are doing as a Congress now, what programs have been instituted. I will talk about those briefly. And then I want to talk about another subject that fits into the question of interdiction and stopping illegal narcotics in a cost- effective manner before they ever reach our shores so that we limit the shear quantity and supply of illegal hard narcotics coming into the United States of America. And that subject will deal tonight with the question of Panama and this administration's failed negotiations, this administration's failed planning and this administration's complete lack of response to a situation that confronts us in the next few days. In fact, May 1 we must stop all flights from Panama and we are giving up all of our assets in the Panama Canal. I want to talk about how that affects our ability to conduct and advance surveillance, how it is going to cost the American taxpayers a huge sum of money to deal with the failed negotiations again of this administration. Incidentally, I will be holding a hearing next week on the Panama Canal situation as it relates to the narcotics trafficking issue. But later in this month I will be holding a hearing on the question of drug legalization. Since I have taken over as chair of this subcommittee, I have received many requests to look at decriminalization, legalization, and other alternatives to incarceration. And I think that that subject deserves a review by the Congress, a serious study, and an examination as to how we can better address this growing problem of the people who are affected through the problems of trafficking or use of illegal narcotics. So those are some of the topics I plan to discuss tonight. I would like to go back to the situation for a minute. I hate to repeat this. But I have to review how we got in this situation. I think history records it first, so the American people pay attention to it second. And thirdly, that we do not repeat these mistakes. The first thing that was done was by this administration and this President was to in fact, basically, throw out the window all of the programs that had been instituted back in the 1980s, first by President Reagan and then by President Bush, to address a problem that we had with the cocaine epidemic and some hard drugs coming into the country at the beginning of the 1980s. Many programs were put into place and cost-effective programs: interdiction, eradication of illegal narcotics at their source in the country, interdiction as the drugs left that source country, use of the military, use of other United States assets to try to stop illegal narcotics coming across into our borders and increasing the supply of hard drugs available. Each of these programs in 1993, when the President controlled, of course, the White House as chief executive, had complete control and wide margins of majorities in both the other body and the House of Representatives. What took place, again, was an error we should not repeat. The first thing he did was to cut the drug czar's office and budget dramatically. The next thing, and I think one of the most damaging things and something we are really feeling the ravages of across our Nation today, is our young people. Our young people are smart, and when our young people hear a leader of the United States or someone who wants to be leader of the United States to say it just does not matter, they can do these things, something is wrong. This President appointed a surgeon general, the highest health officer in the United States of America, to an important position of responsibility, Joycelyn Elders, who came up with this policy of just say maybe. So we fail to have leadership from the President. We fail to have leadership from our chief executive medical officer of the Nation. And I think we are still suffering from that lack of direction, lack of message. The message during the Reagan administration was very clear, ``just say no.'' It was very simple but it was very direct, and even our young people understood it. But this just say maybe and then cutting the programs that were instituted, again under President Reagan and President Bush, to cost-effectively stem the tide, the shear tide, of illegal hard drugs coming into the Nation, these things were cast aside. The military was taken out of the war on drugs. The Coast Guard's budget was cut dramatically, which protects our borders. I know in Florida we saw the Coast Guard budget dramatically cut around Puerto Rico. And that directly affected Florida, the citizens of Florida, because drug dealers started using Puerto Rico, without that protection, as an entry point for illegal narcotics. Our State has been flooded, particularly with heroin, and we have experienced in central Florida and throughout Florida record deaths weekly through the use of heroin which is coming through that route. Moreover, we saw something happen that should shake up every Member of Congress and every citizen of this country. The use of heroin by our teen population from 1993 to 1997 jumped 875 percent, use by teens of a very hard and deadly drug. What was different about some of the narcotics that came into 1980, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine, was that in those days and that decade we had a very low purity level. The heroin that we have been seeing come into the United States both from Mexico, from Colombia and transited through other areas is of incredible purity, sometimes 80, 90 percent pure. Cocaine has also increased. And marijuana's potency has also increased. So, particularly with heroin, we have seen young people mixing it with alcohol or some other substance or first-time users getting a dose of these high proportions of purity and not recovering, dying the most horrible deaths imaginable from their use and sometimes experimentation and addiction to heroin. Madam Speaker, the cost of all this is absolutely astronomical. We are putting together right now a bill that will be close to $18 billion. I might say that this new majority, the Republicans, again under the direction of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), put together all the programs that were dismantled, again the cost- effective programs of interdiction, close to the source, and first of all eradication at the source, very cost effectively. A few millions of dollars do an incredible amount of good there. I use as an example what has taken place in Peru and Bolivia in the last couple of years. This new majority has worked with the leaders there, President Fujimori and President Hugo Banzer of Bolivia. We have, in fact, dramatically decreased the production of cocaine from those countries. Unfortunately, this administration has had a policy of trying to stop any aid, assistance, resources, helicopter, ammunition, anything to fight in the war on drugs, to Colombia; and Colombia has now become the major producer of heroin entering the United States. And also it was not in 1993 on the charts as any type of a producer of coca and is now the largest coca and cocaine producer in the world. So the policy of this administration, in fact, has caused us to fail in a very important area, that is, Colombia, as a direct result of policies of this administration. The second area where we are seeing actually the majority of hard drugs transiting into the United States is Mexico. I have spoken many times about the problems with Mexico, in absolute frustration. We have given Mexico trade assistance. We have backed them from a financial standpoint in all of the international financial agencies. We have been a good ally. We have opened up our border from a commercial standpoint. What we have gotten in return is a flood of drugs. Again a policy of this administration has been to certify repeatedly Mexico and its officials as fully cooperating in our effort to eradicate the production of illegal narcotics and the trafficking of illegal narcotics. By any measure, Mexico has failed to assist and fully cooperate as required under Federal law. But again this administration repeatedly certifies them, fails to hold their feet to the fire. This Congress requested Mexico, time and time again, to aid in some simple request to curtail the drug trafficking. First we asked for extradition of major drug officials. Two years ago this month, this Congress passed a resolution by a rather wide margin, and we find that to date not really one major drug trafficker who is a Mexican national has been extradited from that country. We have asked Mexico to sign a maritime agreement so we could stop some of the drugs that are transiting through the seas off the coast of Mexico and dealing with Mexican nationals, and still they have not signed a maritime agreement. We have asked Mexican officials again to allow our DEA agents to protect themselves, actually to increase the presence of our DEA. We have a very limited force down there working with Mexican officials. Again these requests have been denied. Radar to the south to keep drugs coming from Colombia and Panama, transiting through the isthmus and up through Central America, again almost no action. And then we have asked for enforcement of laws that the Mexicans have passed and actions against illegal narcotics traffickers in Mexico. What have we gotten in return? Our customs officials uncovered one of the most incredible banking scandals in the Western Hemisphere. It involved Mexican officials. This sting operation was conducted with full knowledge of the highest Mexican officials. Unfortunately, sometimes we cannot give them the entire story because corruption goes from the bottom to the top in that country, but they were aware of what was going on. Did they fully cooperate as required by our law to receive trade, aid, financial benefits? No, in fact they threatened to indict our United States customs officials who were involved in that operation. Then if we look at the hard facts about Mexico and what it has done in the last year to deserve, again, extended United States trade and aid benefits and financial support, all the things we give them, what have they done? It is almost pitiful. The seizures of cocaine are dramatically down, over 30 percent in Mexico last year. And hard heroin and opium, also dramatic decreases in seizures by Mexican officials. The number of vessels that are seized has also decreased. We have seen the takeover of the entire Baja Peninsula which is now raging with narcoterrorists, 315 killed last year, some horrendous murders where they line up women and children and gun them down in these drug wars; and the Yucatan Peninsula where our President went to meet with President Zedillo of Mexico. Totally corrupt. The Governor, we were promised, of the Yucatan Peninsula would be arrested, would be confined the minute he left office. We were told that they were not going to arrest him before he left office because Mexican law gives him immunity and it is difficult to prosecute. So they were going to go after this guy after, in fact, he left office. But our latest report is that he fled, the Governor of the Yucatan Peninsula, in Quintana Roo, left several days before he left office. Some reports have him on an island off of Cuba at this time. So that is the kind of cooperation that we get really dirt kicked in our face. And some people turned a blind eye to it because of the trade relationship. Some people do not want to upset the Mexican Government. What was astounding was we recently held a hearing on this subject and we will also be holding a hearing, I believe the week of the 11th of May for the information of my colleagues, on the situation in Mexico. But the last hearing we held, we had testimony of another Customs agent who testified that 1 out of 4 major Mexican generals, one Mexican general was trying to launder $1.1 billion. Where does a Mexican general get $1.1 billion, I ask? So this is what we get in return. This is the policy of this administration. Unfortunately it has created a disaster. The disaster, as I said, will cost us over $18 billion, direct costs that we will be funding in the next few months. The cost to the American society is estimated at a quarter of a trillion dollars. Drug and substance abuse costs the taxpayers, the citizens, all Americans, a quarter of a trillion dollars, $250 billion in social costs when we add in all the lost wages, when we add in the welfare, the social payments, the cost of the criminal justice system, the incarceration, not to mention the heartache and the deaths that have been incurred by so many by this tragedy. So I wanted to review and I will continue to review the past errors of this administration. I do want to also say that I think it is important that we as a new majority be responsive to the errors that were made and correct them. I think we have done that. Last year we have added over $1 billion, and I think in very cost- effective areas, to increase education almost $200 million, and that program is now underway. That program requires public service announcements which you may or may not be seeing on your television or in your media. Both newspapers and other forms of media should have that proposal. I was concerned that our education effort was somewhat diminished in the past era of this administration. I was concerned that during, again, their control of the Congress and also the White House, that they did not pay proper attention to what should be done. I did propose, almost 4 years ago, legislation that would require an increase in public service announcements paid for really by those that hold Federal communications licenses. Each year if we look at it since 1990, those folks have lessened their public commitment, their public trust responsibility in my opinion, and should be doing more rather than less. The White House proposed as an alternative to spend a rather large amount of money. We ended up with a compromise. For every one of the $190 million that the Congress has appropriated, we must have donated the equivalent time or resources towards these public service announcements and this education effort. That is a small part of everything we have done. We have restored the cuts in the Coast Guard, we have restored the military's involvement in the interdiction effort. And most importantly and most cost- effectively, we are going back and making certain that the source countries, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mr. Speaker, 99 percent of the cocaine comes from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia that is entering the United States. It is a no-brainer to use a few dollars to stop these drugs at their source from getting into the United States and penetrating our borders. So we can do that very cost-effectively, those things. Again, the new majority has restored those programs and getting the assets to Colombia so that the new President, in working with General Serrano, the head of their national police force and others, that we can make a difference where those drugs are being produced and at their source, again so cost-effectively. I believe that it is important, as I said tonight, that we also focus on the situation of those drugs that are coming in in huge quantities into the United States, and what is happening to our efforts to curtail those narcotics, again, source country I think is so important, and interdiction before they get to our borders. Something that has been brought to my attention and I think should be on the radar screen of every Member of Congress and every citizen this week is the date of May 1. I say May 1 is an important date, because May 1 will be the day that the United States of America will no longer be able to have any flight operations in the Republic of Panama or the Panama Canal or at any of our bases there. This really is the result of an incredibly failed negotiation by this administration that most people have not paid much attention to. But the United States is about to turn over the keys and lower our flags on our bases and facilities in Panama as part of the Panama Canal transfer. By the end of this year, the United States military will have returned property consisting of about 70,000 acres, not to mention the improvements thereupon, including one very expensive canal, plus 5,600 buildings. These assets are estimated with a value of $10 billion. So what President Carter started, President Clinton is finishing with a bang, that we have in negotiations totally lost any rights, any ability to have any presence in Panama. Now, that might not be a big problem, Mr. Speaker, but, in fact, all of our forward-operating operations for the war on drugs, for our international surveillance over these areas I just described of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia where these drugs are coming from, from sources, not to mention where they are being transited from, every bit of our forward observation locations, every one of those and our ability to launch reconnaissance flights from there are ending this week, May 1. Again, it is incredible that the negotiations which the administration and State Department and others said were coming along, were coming along, fell on their face. It was not until we took a congressional delegation down there several months ago to ask the status that we found out there were not even interim agreements. In the past few weeks the administration has scurried and has managed to put together several interim agreements. Let me show you what we are facing with this situation. All of our operations have been located, again, in surveillance on illegal narcotics production and trafficking from Panama. To deal with this situation we had hoped that the administration would negotiate some agreements with Panama to continue launching these flights there, and we have conducted annually some 15,000 flights there. We had 10,000 troops; we are down to 4,000 troops, and they will soon be out of that area and unable to conduct these flights or these operations. Now, in addition to losing the $10 billion in assets, the buildings, the canal and a little bit of pride, what is absolutely incredible is the taxpayers are going to foot the bill to relocate these operations to a very big tune, and that is going to be $80 to $100 million dollars on an interim basis. Madam Speaker, this is so disorganized that they really do not know where they are going to house the folks who serve this country who are responsible for these flights. But scary is if we look at this chart, this chart shows the ability of our operations, our forward operations, to cover the areas. If we took 100 percent as what we are covering right now for surveillance and observation, come the end of this week we may have just an incredibly reduced capability even with the interim agreements that are being signed with Aruba, and Curacao and Ecuador; we may at best some time in May get up to 70 percent, and even after we spend the $100 million, we will be lucky if we get to 80 percent. So, we have gotten ourselves kicked out of the Panama Canal, lost our assets that our taxpayers have helped contribute, again, buildings and resources there, and we have also gotten our advance international narcotics Western Hemisphere forward surveillance operations and all flight operations canceled. Most folks did not pay attention, but several weeks ago we turned over the keys to our naval operations, and that brings to mind something that I want to bring before the Congress, the House, tonight, and that is my concern about what has taken place, and I learned that in a meeting with our officials and also with others who have been involved in observing what is going on in Panama. The situation in my estimation has the potential for a future disaster. This administration allowed our naval bases, former naval ports, of course to disappear, and the two ports in the Panama Republic have now really been turned over to others, and to describe what has taken place I want to read from an article that Robert Morton, and I do not want to say this, I want someone else to say this; but let me tell my colleagues what has taken place and quote from Robert Morton in an op-ed he did March 4, 1999: ``The Clintonesque government of Panama in effect sold Chinese rights to two prime, American-built port facilities that flank the Canal Zone both to the east and the west. The 50-year contract awarded Balboa, on the Pacific side, and Cristobal, on the Atlantic side, to a giant Hong Kong shipping firm, Hutchison Whampoa, Ltd. By any analysis this company, headed by Li Kashing, is an interesting operation.'' And he goes on to report ``Hutchison has worked closely with the China Ocean Shipping Co.,'' and that is COSCO, which we have heard about before, and let me go on, on shipping deals in Asia even before Hong Kong reverted to Beijing's control in 1997. COSCO, you may remember, is the PLA, and the PLA,'' is the Chinese Army, ``PLA- controlled company that almost succeeded in gaining control of the abandoned naval station in Long Beach, California,'' and there was quite an uproar about that. ``Li Kashing has served on the board of directors of China International Trust and Investment Corp., a PLA,'' again, Chinese Army, ``affiliated giant run by Wang Jun whose name may ring a bell. Yes, the very same Wang Jun enjoyed coffee at the White House in exchange for a modest donation to the Clinton-Gore 1996 slush fund,'' and let me continue here. ``As retired U.S. Navy Admiral Thomas H. Moorer testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 16, 1998, `My specific concern is that this company is controlled by the communist Chinese. And they have virtually accomplished, without a single shot being fired, a stronghold on the Panama Canal, something which took our country so many years to accomplish.' '' That is one quote that I thought that the Congress should have on the record. Another observation that I found that I thought was interesting about what is taking place in Panama was really expressed by a Panamanian last year who was running for president, and there is an election in Panama coming up. But this presidential candidate, and I will quote his comments and his concerns, and this is approximately a year ago: A Panamanian presidential candidate has asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate China's activities around the canal and the possibility of a quid pro quo between the Clinton administration and the Asian Communist power. ``Concerned about possible executive branch complicity and China's gatekeeper status at the Panama Canal, Panamanian presidential candidate William Bright Marine,'' and Marine is a dual U.S.-Panamanian citizen who was born and raised in the Canal Zone, I might add, but according to him, he wrote to the Justice Department on May 4 last year and said, ``I have yet to speak with one single American who is not outraged at the fact that the Clinton administration has allowed Communist China to obtain control of U.S. ports, U.S. basis, and functions of the Panama Canal. They today, effectively control access to the Panama Canal.'' This agreement could not have happened without the consent of the Clinton administration. The executive branch has been copied by my correspondence regarding communist China dating back to 1996. They cannot claim ignorance. And just one more word on this from a retired Lieutenant General, Gordon Sumner, who also observed recently, and let me quote his quote: ``The deal grants a 2-year waiver of labor laws and veto rights over the use of abutting properties, in clear violation of the Panama Canal Treaty.'' A Hutchison lawyer by the name of Hugo Torrijos was also the head of the port authority that awarded the contract. So these contracts have been let, these ports are already lost, and I am told confidentially and I am also told publicly that these tenders for control of these two ports were very corrupt tenders and, in fact, also greased with Red Chinese influence. In fact, Red Chinese influence in Panama is growing in many ways. Recently the Bank of China extended a 15-year, $120 million loan to Panama at 3 percent interest to finance the government's investment program. So we have a situation where the Panama Canal, an important strategic asset to the United States, 13 percent of all the shipping, the international shipping and commerce, flows through the canal, and it has an incredible amount of trade that relies on the use of the canal, and this again this Saturday will be second turning over of the canal and its properties to Panama and a prohibition against any further flights by the United States in our war on drugs. This, in fact, is going to strain our Department of Defense's ability to keep a watchful eye on drug shipments and transit routes and will really hurt our efforts in eradicating drugs at their source, which again is, I believe, so cost effective. Either more assets will be needed to provide the same relative level of coverage, or we are trying to do the same job with again a limited number of coverage areas, which I showed on the chart, and we will greatly diminish our ability to cover those areas that were previously cost effective. They were covered by our bases out of the Panama Canal and Panama Canal Zone, and again the taxpayers are going to pick up the bill for this $100 million to relocate these operations which will not be by any measures as effective, at least at the beginning on the short term will be somewhat disorganized, because this administration again has not completed any long term agreements, only short term. And I am told that the next round of expenses that we can expect, in addition to this $100 million expense, will be a tab for up to $200 million for repairs and for improvements in the Ecuador situation. Even the Ecuador agreement, which is an interim agreement, is only a short- term agreement, and we will face a serious problem because that government right now of Ecuador and that country is undergoing some very difficult political and domestic turmoil. It is sort of sad to think about it and reflect on it. President Bush about a decade ago sent our troops into Panama, and why did he do that? To stop drug trafficking, to stop the chief executive of that country, General Noriega, in his tracks as he was charged with illegal narcotics trafficking, money laundering and other offenses dealing again with the illicit drugs. Our troops went in there, our troops fought, wounded, and others lost in that effort, but we made an effort. We took that country back. Now that was the approach of the previous administration to deal with a corrupt chief of state and others who were responsible for, again, illegal narcotics trafficking. General Noriega still sits in jail in the United States for those offenses. This is the policy of this administration: to fail in a negotiation to maintain any of the assets, to maintain any of our locations or capability to launch a drug effort. What concerns me tonight, my colleagues, is we are looking at some potential dramatic costs and disaster for the future. One of the things that the United States did when they went into Panama was to really help dissolve the military organization which was corrupt, which was the tool of General Noriega, and also involved in some of this illegal and corrupt activity. We have in fact dismantled most of the military in Panama, leaving them with a weak national police force. What concerns me is that Panama has had on its border and within its border the FARC organization and a Marxist rebel group which are conducting operations, both from Panama now and also in Colombia. As they see the opportunity for corruption to take hold, as we lose control of any assets, any military presence in the Canal Zone, I think we are creating a vacuum, and I think some of these rebels from the south, again, will move further into Panama and create a very unstable situation. So we may be back in Panama at great cost, at great sacrifice, in the future, but it is in fact the failed negotiations, again, that have gotten us into this situation, into this cost and into this potential for future activity by these Marxist guerrillas who are already located in Panama and, I think, again will take advantage of this. Panama has always been a major narcotics route and it always will be because of its location as an isthmus and as a route linking South America and Central America and North America. Again, I believe that we are going to pay a very high price in the future by the decline of our ability to conduct advanced surveillance operations from the location we have had. Panama historically has had a notoriously corrupt political class, and, again, we are faced with only a small police force to deal with this impending situation with the departure of the United States forces. Both the country and the canal, in my estimation, are in danger, and we are about to turn over this entire operation at great cost and great loss to the taxpayer. We will hear more about this in the hearing that we will be conducting next week as that action takes place on May 1. I also want to just talk briefly tonight about the national debate that is raging on the question of use of illegal narcotics in this country. I said earlier, as chairman I have pledged to hold a hearing and will do that, I hope, later this month on the question of legalization and also decriminalization of illegal narcotics. I myself do not favor that action by our government, by our Congress. In fact, what I think from what I have learned since taking over this responsibility and my past work on this issue is that sometimes tough enforcement, tough eradication, tough interdiction, does in fact work. I welcome the opportunity to have this debate before our subcommittee, but I must say that, again, all the evidence I see points to the contrary. Let me just, as I may in closing, comment on what I have learned about the question of tough enforcement versus legalization. I have here a chart, and I will put it up here for a few minutes, and it is narcotics arrest index crime comparison for New York City. This chart dramatically shows as the numbers of arrests for narcotics offenses increased, that in fact the incidence of crime dramatically was reduced. This is pretty dramatic, and it covers the period from 1993 to 1998 under the regime of Mayor Giuliani. So when drug arrests are enforced and executed, in fact crime goes down. The proof is in this chart and in these statistics, and I think is not refutable. I would like to compare that. I got this chart from Tom Constantine, who is the United States Drug Enforcement Administrator. He looked at New York and saw a dramatic decrease in crime in that city. Then, by comparison, he looked for a city which had a more liberalized philosophy and tolerance of drug use and programs to provide alternative substances to drug users. A great example, of course, is Baltimore. Baltimore in 1950 had a population of 949,000, and it had an addict population of 300. In 1996 it had a population which was reduced down to 675,000. It had 38,985 heroin addicts. Absolutely startling statistics. Again, a policy of liberalization, not the tough enforcement. New York's statistics are absolutely dramatic, not only the crime index that I showed you, but the loss of lives. Let me, if I may, put up as a final exhibit this chart that shows the numbers of murders in New York City in 1993; nearly 2,000, 1,927. In 1998, I believe it is a 70 percent reduction, 629. Therefore, I think that the question of legalization will be interesting. The question of decriminalization will be interesting. I think we do need to look at some other ways rather than incarceration for so many individuals who have ended up in our jails and prisons, nearly 2 million Americans at this point. But the facts are, my colleagues, that tough enforcement does work. Madam Speaker, tonight I have had the opportunity to again raise before the Congress and the House what I think is our biggest social problem facing this Nation, 14,000 to 20,000 drug-related deaths last year across our land, hundreds of them across the district that I represent, with heroin, just tragic deaths, cocaine and other hard drugs that have taken their toll, particularly among our young people and across this Nation at great loss, not only in dollars and cents that the Congress must expend and public policy that demands, but also the incredible human tragedies. I cannot describe how difficult it is to face a parent who has lost a son or a daughter in a drug overdose. I cannot describe the agony that they as a family must experience, to lose a loved one to this tragedy. So as we focus on all the other problems, we cannot forget, again, what I consider is the major problem facing the Congress and this Nation, the social problem. I do feel confident about learning from the past, as I said, not making the mistakes of the past, putting our money on programs that work, that are cost effective, looking at some alternatives. And I welcome those suggestions from my colleagues and others that are interested in this subject so that we can do a better job for all Americans, and particularly for young Americans who are the biggest victims today of this epidemic facing our land. Madam Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to address the House tonight to talk about the subject of illegal narcotics and drug abuse.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Again, my prayers are with the gentleman from Colorado and with the families who have experienced this great tragedy in their community. Again, it is something that will be reflected in the news reports for the coming days just as Kosovo and other tragic events of our Nation. Tonight I came to the House to really address another social tragedy that is facing our Nation. As I said, I chair the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources and trying to formulate some legislative efforts, some actions by this Congress to deal with a situation that has taken last year the lives of 14,000 Americans. We have an illegal narcotics and drug abuse problem in this country that is reaching unparalleled proportions, particularly among our young people. I want to review again, and I did this last week, and I have done this a couple of times before, the situation that led I believe to the current problem we see with epidemic narcotics use by our young people across the Nation and the drug situation that faces almost every community across our land. In 1993, when I came to Congress and I was in the minority, the majority party at that time, the Democrats that controlled both the House, the other body, and the White House, I think that they made some very tragic mistakes at that point in, first of all, cutting the resources of the drug czar's office, almost eliminating all of the staff in the drug czar's office. The next step that was taken was to appoint a Surgeon General that in fact did not take the drug situation seriously, that helped advocate a policy of ``just say maybe'' to our young people, and this of course eventually has had consequences as we see in the drug statistics which I will cite. Unfortunately, the administration also, and the majorities of 1993 to 1995, with the concurrence of the administration, they held majorities again in this body, the other body, they cut the source country programs where drugs are produced, slashed some of the funds to countries. I for one believe it is most cost effective if we stop illegal narcotics at their base of production, in the country of origin, in the fields where they are produced. I think that the cuts that were made back then had some tragic results, and we will talk about them. The next thing that the administration did, and the Democrat- controlled Congress, was to take the military out of the drug war, to a large extent cut the Coast Guard resources. The Coast Guard is important in protecting our shores. Even the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was protected up until that time by our Coast Guard. Again, this theme of ``just say maybe'' and tolerance to illegal narcotics has eventually found its way into the minds of our young people, and we are now suffering with tremendous problems, particularly in the abuse of heroin. Let me cite some statistics, if I may, tonight. The number of Americans who used heroin in the past month increased since 1992. The number of Americans who used heroin in the past month increased from 68,000 in 1993 to 325,000 in 1997. This is from a national household survey on drug abuse. Now, I come from Florida. I come from central Florida. Florida has been particularly hard-hit by this epidemic of illegal narcotics, and in particular heroin. Heroin deaths in Florida increased by 51 percent from 1997. I reported this last week to the House and my colleagues, and I thought that these statistics were quite remarkable and should get everyone's attention. There were in Florida 206 heroin deaths in 1997. I also thought that that was a very startling figure, and I have some additional information tonight I would like to reveal. Orlando's 36 deaths yielded the highest death rate. So although we had, maybe, a lower number of heroin deaths in central Florida than larger populations, south Florida areas, we ended up with 3.6 deaths per 100,000 population, the highest death rate in Florida. Heroin deaths again have just blossomed and mushroomed out of proportion. We have a new drug czar who was the deputy director of the Office of National Drug Policy, Jim McDonough. Jim McDonough stated in the Miami Herald that the drug problem in Florida, and his quote is, ``is totally out of control.'' That is from the Miami Herald comment and quote from him, April 7, 1999, recently. What is interesting is that change in the pattern of drug trafficking in central Florida. A recent article in the Orlando Sentinel pointed out that $20 hits, $20 doses of heroin were being sold in central Florida last year that were considered as much as 90 percent pure narcotic. That means the purity level was 90 percent. Ten, 15 years ago, the heroin that we saw on the streets in the United States was 10, 12 percent pure. The heroin that we are seeing today is particularly deadly. Ninety percent pure is what they are seeing. Formerly on the street, this article says that the product of heroin that was found there had a much less deadly content; and that is one of the reasons we are seeing so many tragic deaths in central Florida. According to Tim Moore, the director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, at these purity levels heroin is killing many of our first-time users. I quoted again how dramatically the number of deaths have increased in the State of Florida and in central Florida. Unfortunately, the news in Florida is actually worse than was reported for 1998. I bring to the floor a copy of an article that appeared this week. The headline is, ``News on Heroin Gets Even Worse'', and it is from this Monday's Orlando Sentinel. This report indicates that in some counties up to 20 percent of the people who died after taking heroin did not make the statewide list that I cited last week and again tonight of 206 deaths which were released several weeks ago. This is because the State Medical Examiner's Commission tracks only what it considers to be fatal overdoses. College students who drop dead after drinking beer and taking heroin were not counted. The same was true for motorists killed in an automobile accident while stoned on heroin. This is also part of this report revealed in an Orlando Sentinel article this week. In contrast, the Florida medical examiners have a long-standing practice of reporting in Florida every cocaine-related death. State officials reported 1,128 such fatalities. That is deaths by cocaine in Florida in 1998. That is a startling figure by itself. But we see that the figures that I have been given previously on heroin deaths were not accurate. They are even higher, and the situation gets much worse. Again, in the Orlando area, which has the highest rate of heroin deaths in Florida, State guidelines prompted the Orange-Osceola medical examiners, our local county examiner's office, to disregard eight heroin deaths. The office reported 36 deaths in two counties, not the 44 that actually took place. In Daytona Beach, the Volusia County medical examiner discounted one of five heroin deaths. So, again, this practice is not common just to central Florida and Orange County and Osceola, but Volusia County. In West Palm Beach, the medical examiner's office reported 19 heroin deaths. The office spokesman said two more deaths from 1998 had been confirmed and 19 more cases were still pending. So the epidemic that we have heard about is even worse than what has been initially reported. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is now asking the State's 24 medical examiners to expand the way they track the drug deaths. Florida has also asked the medical examiners to create a separate category for users who die after taking one or more drugs, which is a problem that appears to be on the rise. In the Orlando area and somewhere else, the trend appears to be abuse of heroin and cocaine with alcohol, all of which, I might tell my colleagues and those listening, has a very deadly effect again with this high purity, high content of heroin. Even small doses of heroin can be fatal when taken with beer, wine, or whiskey. The research clearly shows this. Alcohol increases the odds of a fatal heroin overdose by a factor of 22. The three heroin deaths that were discounted in Orlando in 1998 involve victims who died after taking heroin and alcohol, according to this report. Mr. Speaker, I have talked about what has happened in central Florida, what has happened in our Nation. From 1993, when we had this change in policy, when we had this lack of direction by the administration, the lack of attention to the national drug problem, heroin use among our teens has increased in a 5- or 6-year period 875 percent. I have mentioned the deaths in central Florida. Up dramatically. Actually undercounted, as we reported from this article released this week in this investigative report by the Orlando Sentinel, a situation totally out of control with, again, our young people. I want to do something tonight to show my colleagues and to show the American public and those listening that we have a very serious situation. We have thousands of deaths in Florida. We have hundreds of deaths in central Florida. We have over 14,000 deaths across the Nation from drug overdoses or drug-related deaths. This situation is not making the front page every day across our country, even though we have a heroin epidemic, a methamphetamine epidemic across this land, and other hard drugs. But these heroin deaths and these other deaths have a face and a name on them; and tonight I want to share with my colleagues just for a few minutes a photograph that I hope will be riveted in everyone's mind forever. I want to show my colleagues that this death and destruction has a face on it and it is a face one can never forget. It is a face that was provided to me by a mother who lost a son to heroin in central Florida. It is a face that this mother and other mothers who gathered together, dozens of mothers in central Florida and parents who gathered together, some of whom I met with, related their stories of how their young people did not realize the purity of heroin, they did not realize the effects of heroin, they did not realize the impact of heroin or hard drugs on their bodies and their minds. What I am going to show my colleagues should happen to no parent and should happen to no young person in our Nation. This is a picture of a man who is 26 years old. He was loved by his parents, the Stevens family. Loved by his family. He had a life to live. He was loved by his parents, and this young man died tragically of a drug overdose of heroin. I am going to show this picture only for a few seconds because it is quite shocking. If there are young people watching, I do not want them to look if they do not want to. But this is the face of these 14,000 people who are dying of drug overdoses. This is the tragedy that we see. This is how this mother found her son and this is the sad effect of heroin on our young people across this Nation. The glory that is portrayed by drug use and abuse in Hollywood and pop songs, this is the result; and this is what happens to those young people, and this is a face, a very tragic face. This is how that young man ended up, on a sofa, and then in a morgue. The mother gave me permission to show this and has also put other pictures of her loved one from these police reports in a videotape, along with photos and evidence gathered from other scenes of tragic deaths of young people in central Florida, because they want to let the parents know what is happening. They want to let the young people know what is happening. They want the people who are considering using heroin and other hard drugs to know what is going to happen to their loved ones, to their bodies. I had described to me a scenario of what happens when a person ingests heroin into the body, and I will describe that, if I may, tonight, to give those who are listening, my colleagues, a flavor of what happens and the horror of the death that these young people, thousands and thousands of them, have experienced across our Nation. Heroin is ingested into the body. There is a period of time, usually within 30 seconds, where the drug hits the nervous system. Euphoria and a warm sensation overcomes the user. The user is beginning to feel the effects of the respiratory system breaking down and the user's breathing becomes labored. As the respiratory system breaks down, the breathing becomes very slow. A corresponding drop in the body temperature begins and the heart becomes irregular. If the user is conscious at this point, this is the stage where fear grips the user. Soon, the body is demanding more oxygen, and the user's respiratory system cannot accommodate the growing need for oxygen. The user feels cold. Fluid begins to enter the lungs. This is the beginning of the drowning stage. So first there is the choking stage and the drowning stage. Sometimes, during this phase, blood vessels and capillaries begin to rupture, as evidenced by the photograph that we saw of the young Mr. Stevens. The blood on the face of the heroin user is a result of blood vessels rupturing. It is not a very pretty sight. It is not a way for anyone to meet their Maker. Entering into the final phase, the user is now in great distress and experiencing severe pain throughout the chest and throat, much like a heart attack. The user's head is splitting with pain. The amount of fluid in the lungs has increased. The user is now in excruciating pain and begins to drown as his lungs fill with fluid. The pain is now overwhelming and the user becomes fitful, jerking wildly and thrashing at the air. This continues for a time until the user becomes unconscious and begins seizures. Death is slow and inevitable. And this is how these young people end up, unfortunately. This is how a young person in central Florida ended up paying with his life for this use and abuse of drugs. And, in particular here in central Florida, as I have said, we have this incredible epidemic of heroin use. The high purity in this heroin, mixed sometimes with alcohol, mixed sometimes with other drugs, the results are inevitably fatal. And this has been repeated over and over and over and over again, to the tune of thousands and thousands of people across our land. So I bring a message tonight that is not very pleasant, but a message, I think, that is very necessary about what is going on and about how people end up who become the victims of this surge of heroin that we see coming into our communities. My next point to my colleagues, Madam Speaker, is where is this heroin coming from? I submit, my colleagues, that we know exactly where this heroin is coming from. And let me point out tonight how we know where heroin and other hard drugs are coming from, and let us take just a moment to look at this chart. Our Drug Enforcement Administration has a very sophisticated system of tracking illegal narcotics, and in particular in this case, heroin. It is almost like a DNA tracking where they can trace a DNA back to an individual. This is so sophisticated, this heroin signature tracking program, that they can tell exactly where the heroin came from, what country, almost what field. Seventy-five percent of the heroin entering the United States in this 1997 analysis came from South America. Seventy-five percent came from South America; another 14 percent from Mexico. Add those up and we have 89, nearly 90 percent of the heroin coming into the United States, this highly deadly, very pure heroin is coming in from two places, South America and from Mexico. We know about 90 percent, 99 percent of this heroin that is now coming from South America is coming from Colombia, one country, and we know the balance is coming from Mexico. We have 6 percent from southwest Asia and 5 percent from Southeast Asia. But through the sophisticated tracking and analysis program DEA can tell us exactly where these narcotics are coming from, and this deadly heroin that I spoke of. Now, the question is, what has the administration done about stopping this? We know this heroin is coming in. I have shown very graphically what the heroin does to our young people. I have cited 14,000 deaths in the last 6, 7 years of this administration. Nearly 100,000 Americans have met their death through these sorts of drug-related incidents, and no one is paying attention to this. The Clinton administration does not pay attention to where these drugs are coming from. In fact, as I said, most of the heroin is coming from South America and, in particular, from Colombia. What is absolutely amazing, if we were to look at this chart for 1992 and 1993, we would see almost zero percent of heroin coming in from Colombia. There is very little heroin produced in Colombia, and there was a small percentage of heroin coming in from Mexico, much smaller than the 14 percent we see there. Over the history of this administration, what has this administration done to keep illegal narcotics from coming, and in particular deadly heroin and cocaine coming from Colombia? We know it is produced there, and heroin is now produced there. Actually, what they did is, they blocked all of the aid, all of the assistance to Colombia on a repeated basis. I cannot tell my colleagues, as a member of the committee with jurisdiction, working with other Members of the Congress, how many times we wrote, requested, how many times this new majority has funded equipment and ammunition resources to go to Colombia that we have been blocked repeatedly by this administration. So now, today, I am here. And instead of being a small producer of cocaine, Colombia is now the largest producer of cocaine. Previously, the cocaine came from Bolivia and from Peru. Now we have the distinction of Colombia winning this award, this deadly award, for being the biggest producer of cocaine. Because, again, this administration blocked any type of assistance to stop the production and growing of coca. Additionally, and of even greater concern, is the heroin production, again of incredible proportions, that has grown up as an industry in Colombia since 1993. Again, the administration failed to get equipment, helicopters, parts, ammunition, assistance, resources to Colombia to deal with this problem. Additionally, they cut the source country programs of eradication of coca and poppies at their source, the most cost-effective programs, to stop narcotics. So this is where heroin comes from. This is where the bulk of heroin and cocaine comes from. And the administration has not acted properly to assist the biggest producer, which is Colombia. Now, the biggest source of these narcotics coming into the United States in this past 5 or 6 years is Mexico. Mexico has become the major transit center of illegal narcotics, hard narcotics, heroin and cocaine. Not only are they the major transit center, as we can see now from the signature program on heroin, they are also getting into the big league of producing very deadly, very pure heroin in Mexico. And, again, they were a very small player just some short years ago. What has the administration done to deal with Mexico? Well, repeatedly they have certified Mexico as fully cooperating in the war on drugs. We have on the books, on our Federal legal statutes, a requirement that the President and Department of State every year certify every country that is a drug-producing or drug-transiting country, that the administration must certify that they are cooperating, taking positive steps to stop the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics. It is called drug certification. What do they get in return? If they cooperate, they are eligible for trade assistance, for foreign aid, for international financial assistance and other resources that we make available as a Congress and also as a government to our allies. We have had no greater friend or ally or closer neighbor than Mexico. There has been no ally that we have assisted more in trying to maintain their financial stability, treating them as an equal trading partner, granting them NAFTA trade status, assisting them again as a good partner and much to our advantage. We now have a big trade imbalance. They are shipping more goods, dramatically more, into the United States. And they are also the source of illegal narcotics. This Congress and I were part of that effort several years ago when the administration certified Mexico as fully cooperating. We knew they were not fully cooperating. And we passed about 2 years ago, March 13, 1997, by a vote of 251-175, a resolution that asked that the President be responsible for reviewing the progress of Mexico in helping with some specific items. First of all was to allow the United States law enforcement agents in Mexico to carry firearms and also to protect themselves in defense and also to increase the numbers in Mexico and the cooperative effort in going after illegal narcotics dealers. Basically, nothing has been done in that regard. Our agents are still at risk. Mexico still refuses to cooperate. And this is a request of the Congress from 2 years ago. We asked, secondly, that Mexico take concrete measures to find and eliminate corruption in Mexico, particularly among law enforcement and also among military, and to cooperate fully with the United States law enforcement personnel on narcotics control matters. Now, they have not complied with this second request. Mexico has not complied. In fact, when we conducted an investigation of money laundering in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Mexican officials in this operation, called Casablanca, instead of assisting the United States Customs officers who were involved in it, threatened to indict and prosecute and go after our agents. Is this fully cooperating? So, again, this request of 2 years ago of Mexico still has not been attended to by Mexico. In fact, they slapped us in the face, our enforcement officers in the face, with their actions. We have asked, thirdly, and we continue to request, we asked 2 years ago that Mexico extradite one major drug trafficker. Have they done that? Not really. We want, again, cooperation in extraditing those identified drug traffickers, major drug traffickers, to the United States for prosecution who are under indictment and under request. Have they complied with that? No, not really. They have actually, just close to the decertification time here, extradited one individual and not a major drug trafficker. They know who they are. What is even worse is, I accompanied some of my colleagues and met with Mexican officials, the attorney general and others, and we know that the Yucatan Peninsula was completely controlled by drug lords, including the corrupt governor of Quintana Roo, the Yucatan Peninsula state. We know the Baha Peninsula is completely controlled by drug and other narco-traffickers. We know that other states in Mexico are completely overrun by drug dealers and they control the political apparatus, judicial apparatus. Not only have they not cooperated on extradition, they promised when we were there that they would seek the arrest of the governor of the Yucatan Peninsula, who they knew was involved in drug trafficking, who our agents had the goods on, who internationally is renowned for drug trafficking, who turned the Yucatan Peninsula in a narco-terrorist state. Unfortunately, in Mexico they have a law that does not allow them to really go after folks in office and it makes it difficult to prosecute. So we were told that as soon as the governor of the Yucatan Peninsula leaves office, he will be arrested and he will be made responsible for his actions, which everyone knew were corrupt. And what happened 4 or 5 days just before the governor was to leave office? He fled the country, I believe on a banana boat, and is on an island off of Cuba we are told. So again the Mexicans failed to extradite, they failed to keep their commitment to go after corrupt officials. And what is also a request that has been pending for over 2 years now is that Mexico sign a maritime agreement with the United States, that it allow us to halt and hold drug traffickers and pursue them into Mexican waters. This request was made several years ago, has been made repeatedly, and still the Mexicans have not complied with the simple request of trying to bring this situation under control. Now, if this is not bad enough, if all these requests that were made by this House of Representatives and this Congress 2 years ago, a little over 2 years ago, March 13, 1997, are ignored, just toss it, forget about it, if this was not bad enough, listen to what the Mexicans have done in trying to assist us with stopping the huge quantities of illegal narcotics coming into the United States. These are the statistics we have for Mexican drug seizures, opium, heroin. From 1997, the number of metric tons that have been seized by Mexican officials, heroin, again killing our young people, a 56 percent drop in drug seizures from 1997 to 1998 of heroin by Mexican drug officials. A 56 percent drop. And this stuff is flooding into our communities in unprecedented quantities, in unprecedented levels of purity. Cocaine. What did they do to stop cocaine coming into the United States? How much cocaine did they seize in 1997 versus 1998? A 35 percent drop in the metric tons of cocaine that was seized in Mexico. Have they been fully cooperating with the United States? I say not. The vehicles seized by Mexico. These are actually vessels seized by the Mexican Government. The boats, in 1997 they seized 135. In 1998 they seized 96, a 29 drop in the number of vessels seized. My colleagues can see why we want a maritime agreement because they failed to even interdict. These are these folks who are dealing in huge quantities of deadly drugs. According to again the DEA, 14 percent now of the heroin in the United States is of Mexican origin. That was a very small figure some years ago. So what Mexico is doing rather than being a small producer, is now even a large producer in producing deadly heroin into our communities and across our open commercial borders with Mexico. So these are some of the things that the administration has done in the past several years in dealing with Colombia, a major producer of death and destruction through cocaine or coca production and poppies and heroin production. This administration failed to respond, failed to aid, failed to stop it. Mexico, they certified them even though Mexico is kicking dirt in the face of every Member of Congress in the United States of America by their lack of cooperation on the basic items that we have asked for and their lack of effort in trying to seize illegal narcotics, particularly heroin, cocaine, and now the rage is methamphetamines. I conducted a hearing yesterday on INS and illegal immigration in Atlanta, Georgia; and the district attorney in the Atlanta region told us that methamphetamines are becoming a serious problem in that community. And also in hearings we have heard across the Midwest, places like Minnesota, Iowa, and again the western part of the United States, where endemic levels of meth, which is very deadly, and designer drugs are now making their way from Mexico into these parts of our country. Now, my colleagues might say, this new majority Chair up here talking, what has he done? What has the new Republican majority done? I might say that under the leadership of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the distinguished Speaker of the House of Representatives, who had this responsibility for putting back together the last 2 years our drug policy, we have made great progress. Through his leadership and the work of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), chairman of the Committee on International Relations, and other chairs, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) who has worked on the demand side in the community programs dealing with drug abuse and community efforts in that regard, and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), who works on legislative efforts particularly as they deal with the criminal justice system and also helping to restore some of our international efforts, these individuals, part of the new majority, part of the new team, with the leadership of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), put nearly a billion dollars into various programs, additional dollars into programs, raising our expenditures on this drug issue to $17.9 billion. Now, this administration, ironically, proposed a $100 million cut in the drug budget and they portrayed that as an increase. I do not know when $100 million less can be an increase, but somehow they are trying to suggest that to the Congress. But again, we put money into education, into interdiction, money into stopping drugs at their source, starting with these source countries, getting aid to Colombia, helicopters, equipment, resources, the manpower necessary to support their effort to eradicate the poppy fields, the coca fields, the drugs at their source, which I guarantee is the most cost-effective way. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the chairman of the full Committee on International Relations, and myself have talked for many days about this situation with Mexico. The situation with Colombia is a little bit different. We do have the cooperation of the new government, President Pastrana. We are getting aid and assistance there. This Congress has provided that assistance, again, under the new majority leadership. The situation with Mexico is much more difficult, and we have discussed this with leadership and with others. We took the unprecedented steps 2 weeks ago, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and myself and other Members of the House, to extend the period of decertification consideration by the House of Representatives indefinitely until we come up with some additional concrete solutions, until we come up with cooperative efforts, until we come up with some concrete cooperative measures that we can take working with Mexico to gain their cooperation, to seek their real actions in stopping illegal narcotics at their source, stopping the tracking through their country, working on a maritime issue, allowing our agents to be armed and to protect themselves when they are working on these problems in their country, working on real extradition, and identifying these individuals that are major drug traffickers that are under indictment from the United States and extraditing them to the United States and seeing that they are prosecuted and serve time and are taken out of the streets, and also enforcing the laws that Mexico has passed. They have passed some laws, I will give them that credit, but they are not executing those laws. So we need the cooperation of Mexico. We will find a way, working with Mexican officials and with Members of this Congress, to gain their cooperation because they are an important ally, they are an important trading partner, but we cannot sell our souls and the lives of our young people for the sake of trade, for the sake of dollars, for the sake of doing business with a narcotrafficking state. And we would hate to see Mexico become a narcotrafficking state, and I am quite concerned, Madam Speaker, that we may be on the verge, after having seen Mexico lose the Yucatan Peninsula, after seeing Mexico lose the Baja Peninsula with hundreds of deaths, narcoterrorist deaths, in that state right across our border, some of them heinous, lining up women and children and machine-gunning them. Again, narcoterrorist drug trafficking that has taken over a great deal of Mexico. We must work together and find some solutions to stop these hard drugs, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, other illegal narcotics coming into the United States and restore the programs that again are cost effective, that have unfortunately been ignored by this administration, but will be passed by this Congress, were passed in the last Congress, to restore effectiveness in dealing with these problems. Again, the toll is tragic. Over 100,000 Americans have lost their lives in the years since this administration took charge, due to the problem of illegal narcotics, and the problem is growing worse particularly among our young people. Tonight I did detail one tragic death, a young person who lost his life, whose family now is bravely portraying the horrendous death that he died to set an example for others, particularly young people who may not know that there is not glory, that there is not celebrity status in using narcotics, that the narcotics out there today are very deadly when mixed with other drugs or with alcohol, or sometimes for first- time users with 90 percent purity. These individuals meet very tragic, painful, ugly deaths that are just too horrible to describe in additional detail. But we want the Members of Congress to know what is taking place across this land, we want the American people to know that there is an effort in Congress to correct this situation and that, although the tragedies, as I said at the opening, that have occurred in Colorado and have taken the lives of numerous young people, although Kosovo is a serious situation and there has been ethnic cleansing, we still have a number one social problem in this country that took 14,000 lives last year, is taking lives as I speak tonight, and will continue to take them until we get this situation under control, until we make a commitment to just say no, until we make a commitment to make certain that our young people are educated about the potential tragedy of using illegal narcotics and until we restore those source-country programs that were cut and get the military and whatever other agencies we need, including resources to law enforcement, and to cooperative countries like Colombia, Bolivia and Peru to stop drugs at their source, again in a cost-effective manner. All of us, particularly those who pay the taxes, their hard-earned tax dollars, want an effective program that deals again with the major social problems. So tonight, as I conclude, I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to correct the problems of the past. Hopefully, we will not make the same mistakes to draw the attention of the Congress to this problem, to draw the attention of the American people and particularly our young people about illegal narcotics and what it can do to their lives. We do not want anyone else to end up like this young person did on this sofa, so badly mangled, his life destroyed, his family's future destroyed in a body bag in central Florida or in any other community. So that is why we are here, that is why we will be back next week. It may get to be a somewhat repetitive message, and people may get tired of hearing me. But I guarantee for the next number of months that I continue to chair this drug policy subcommittee we will call this to the attention of the Congress. The American people seek our help and support, every Member, until we get this situation under control.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House again tonight to talk about the subject of our national drug policy, and what Congress can do to improve the situation relating to the abuse and misuse of illegal narcotics, not only by our young people but by all Americans. I come before the House as chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, which has been charged with trying to help develop a better policy, better legislation, and better action by Congress to deal with the growing social problem that we have. Tonight I am sure that the eyes of the Nation are focused on Kosovo, where we have a very difficult international situation, and probably rightfully so. We have thousands of our troops in potentially harm's way. We have our pilots and other dedicated military involved in that conflict. I believe that the focus of attention tonight also is on the tragic shootings in Colorado. I believe some young people were involved there. A large number of young people were killed in that tragic incident. Rightfully, America should be concerned about Kosovo. America should be concerned about international situations and also about a situation where we have death and mayhem of young people in our Nation. It is a very serious situation. I know that both the Colorado situation and Kosovo will capture the attention of the Nation for the next number of days. As a courtesy to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), who has expressed concern about what has happened in that State, Mr. Speaker, I yield to him at this time for his comments on that, again, tragic situation. Pray For Parents and Children, Victims In Tragic Colorado High School Shootings

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House at this hour to discuss primarily the issue of illegal narcotics and its effects on our young people and our country, but I could not help but hear some of the words of my colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), who just spoke here and talked about education. I want to say to my colleagues and to the American people that I too support education. I support anything this Congress can do, anything our Nation can do to enhance educational opportunities for each and every American. However, I do have some differences with the previous speaker. The previous speaker represents 40 years of trying to get more education power, more education decisions, more education regulation in Washington, D.C. And I think I represent a new wave of thinking that has come here in the last few years that education decisions, education of our children, and decisions about education policy are best decided at the local level with parents, with local school boards, and through local initiatives. Then I think we also heard the argument that we are spending money on military defense and others, and this money could be converted into education. I might remind my colleagues in the House that the number one reason that we came together as a Nation to allow us to live a free life in a free society is in fact the principal reason for the formation of the United States, and that is the question of national security. Without national security, without the ability to defend ourselves, without the ability to have a defense of this Nation, all other things are impossible. And under the Constitution, if we care to look at that document, that is our prime responsibility and all things flow from that level. So we cannot discard our military, particularly with an administration and folks what want to send our troops to every corner of the Earth and every conflict, at great expense, stretching our limited Federal dollars, and also spend additional funds or take away funds from education. So we cannot have both, but we try to do our best in meeting our Federal obligation. I might say, and I did not really want to get into this too much tonight, but I just had the opportunity to meet with a couple from Florida, and they were here and heard some of the debate about education in the Congress, and one of these individuals, the wife, was a teacher and she was delighted to hear the philosophy of the new majority relating to education, that the power and the ability to teach and the funds go to the classroom, to the teacher and the student, not to the education bureaucracy in Washington, Atlanta, and is forced at different layers of the education bureaucracy even within the State and in particular in my State of Florida. Our discussion was quite interesting because we did not identify the problems the way the previous speaker did; we identified the problems I think the way parents do, the way teachers do and local citizens who examine education. And we do not need a Harvard Education Ph.D. to look at American education today and see that teachers are not allowed to teach. We asked the simple question in our conversation a few minutes ago off the floor with this couple from Florida, ``How can you teach, how can you have order in a classroom when you cannot have discipline in a classroom?'' And the same well-intended liberal policies from the other side of the aisle have amassed laws and regulations, which, combined with liberal judicial decisions, have handcuffed our teachers so that it is almost impossible to have discipline in the classroom through this maze of Federal regulations, mandates, and court orders. So we have said we want the teacher to have the ability to teach in the classroom. Now, we also have a unique approach to education because we do not think that the money needs to be in Washington and again the power and the regulations all coming from Washington, but we think that those resources, that those abilities, should be at the local level with the teacher, with the parent, with the local school board, again reversing this trend where everything has come to Washington at a very heavy expense. Now, let us also for a minute, before I get into this drug discussion, talk about funding of education. My friends and my colleagues, the Federal Government only provides between 4 and 5 cents of every dollar on education, 4 and 5 cents. Now, of course we can provide more. The problem is we provide about 90 percent of the Federal regulations in education. So we provide very little money, but all of the constraints and mandates and regulations that cause teachers instead of teaching, not allowing them to teach, to be filling out papers, to be complying with Federal regulations, and to report to a maze of bureaucracy that now starts at the local level, goes to the State level, goes to the regional level, and ends up at the Federal level. I was chairman during the past 4 years of the Subcommittee on Civil Service. One thing I learned as chairman of that Subcommittee on Civil Service is where the bodies in the Federal bureaucracy are buried. The first 5,000, if my colleagues ever care to go down to the Department of Education, now imagine, there are 3,000 of 5,000 Federal education employees in the Department of Education here in Washington D.C., or in the close environs, 3,000 people. Now, we also got into the discussion of changes in education. And we have, as a new majority in the Congress, tried to shift again this responsibility from Washington, the authority, the regulation, and do away with some of the bureaucracy. We started out with some 760 to 780 Federal education programs, all well-intended, but each with its own administrative level, 760 to 780 of those. We have got it pared down to 700. Quite frankly, we have only begun the paring process. But every one of these programs has turned into lobbying organizations, into special interest activities; and they justify their existence by lobbying the Congress, by telling what a good job they have done. And what, in fact, we have again are 3,000 bureaucrats in Washington D.C., most of them making between $70,000 and $100,000 if we look at the pay schedules. Now, I am not saying that we should abolish the Department of Education, but I think we could do it with 10 to 20 percent of the personnel that we have just by consolidating the programs. In fact, there are proposals and there will be proposals before this Congress very shortly to go to a Super EdFlex, where we take the amount of money, we divide it by the student population and other criteria and we send it to the States. This Congress, under this new Republican majority, has tried to reverse the trend in that 80 to 90 percent of the Federal dollars do not get into the classroom, do not get to the teacher. Now, is that what people want with their Federal money, that 80 to 90 percent of this Federal money does not get to the classroom, to the teacher? Again, we have to allow the teacher to teach and discipline in the classroom, authority, the responsibility, the ability to teach in the classroom. We have to give that first. And secondly, we have to give the Federal money to the student and to the teacher, a unique approach, not to the 700-plus Federal programs, not to the 700-plus administrators. If we have only three administrators for each program at the Federal level, there are 2,100 that help account for the 3,000 just in Washington, D.C., in the Federal Department of Education. So we have to ask ourselves where we want our dollars to go? Into the classroom? To the teacher? This Congress, this new Republican majority, said we want those funds to go to the classroom and to the teacher. Then what are we teaching? Again, in my discussion with this couple from Florida, the wife again taught school. My wife was an elementary school teacher. I have a degree in education, although I have never taught other than my school required certification internship. But we have to ask the question, what is a teacher doing in the classroom? Does she have authority to control the classroom, first of all? Does she have the funds, Federal funds and other funds, coming to the classroom? Then the next question is, what is the teacher teaching? The answer is, today Federal money goes on everything but basic education. Now, show me a student that has basic education, is able to read, is able to write, is able to conduct basic mathematics, and I will show my colleagues a successful student. But almost all of our Federal education programs go for everything except those basic education fundamental programs. And what is interesting is that the individuals who suffer the most from this deficit in a Federal approach to education that again has been adopted and culled and now culminates in this bureaucracy from Washington and this sad approach to education as the ones who suffer the most are our most disadvantaged students. So our disadvantaged students are not learning the basic skills. Those disadvantaged students, because they do not have these opportunities to learn basic educational skills, I will tell my colleagues what has happened. They are our first problem in the classroom. Ask any teacher. They are our discipline problem. And the teacher does not have the right to discipline or have control of her classroom because of the Federal regulations and the bureaucracy that has been created to make certain that a teacher does not have control of the classroom. So here we have the most disadvantaged, not able to learn the most basic skills that are necessary. They become discipline problems. Then next they become dropout problems. After they are dropout problems, they become societal problems. They do not have a job. Sometimes they get into drugs and into other illegal activities. Just look at the statistics for unemployment among our minority youth. Look at the statistics about dropouts among our minority youth. So if we really care about education, if we really care about those disadvantaged children, if we really care about getting dollars into the classroom for our students, for our teachers, for basic education, why not adopt a different approach? And that is the EdFlex approach that we have talked about. And we may want to look at Super EdFlex. As chairman of an oversight subcommittee on education, I intend to conduct hearings in the future on this subject and see why we cannot get more Federal dollars into the classroom, to students, to teachers, to do away with the mass of bureaucracy. It is interesting now this concept of charter schools. And what does a charter school do? A charter school basically lets a teacher teach, go back to basic education without the mass of regulations, whether they are locally imposed, State imposed, or federally imposed. So I did not intend to get off on this subject of education, but when I hear those who have helped develop a system that has helped ruin public education, and I am a strong advocate of public education. Again, my wife taught in public schools; I was educated to teach in public schools. The public schools helped make this country great. The greatest minds of this country, some of them were taught in a one-room public school, and I think we can still achieve greatness in our public schools. And public education has helped make America great, and our public teachers deserve practically a little award of merit, the survivors, those who have managed to survive the mass of bureaucracy passed down from Washington, the mass of regulations that do not allow them to do what they went to an education university or college for, and that is to teach students in a disciplined atmosphere basic and fundamental education and to help develop that policy of working with parents and working with local school board members rather than edicts from some bureaucrat at some level who causes them to do everything but what their original mission was. So I take great exception when I hear those who have helped create the disaster talk about criticism about this approach to get back to the basics that made American education and public education so great in this Nation. And again, I commend our public teachers, those survivors of this mass of bureaucracy we sent them from Washington and regulations that they must try to deal with every day. My purpose tonight also is to talk about another issue, an issue that is not on the front page like Kosovo and is not an issue like Iraq. It is an issue that I feel is one of the most critical social issues facing this Congress, this Nation, our young people, and every American in every walk of life now. It is a social problem that for many years was limited to folks who were the unfortunate victims of illicit narcotics, illicit drugs, sometimes lived in urban areas and became drug junkies or drug addicts and were the cast-asides of our society. But, ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, there exists in our Nation tonight and today a drug problem that is of serious dimensions and proportions. Last year, over 14,000 Americans lost their lives because of drug-related problems, drug-related deaths; 14,000. Since President Clinton has taken office in 1993, 100,000 Americans have lost their lives. In many instances young people, some of those in the prime of their life, have become victims to illegal narcotics. Now, this problem is so serious that I want to try to bring it into some understanding to those individuals who represent various locales here in the Congress. But if we took Hattiesburg, Mississippi and we wiped it off the map and its population of approximately 100,000, that would be equal to the number of individuals who have died because of drug-related deaths. If we destroyed Gadsden, Alabama, again close to 100,000 people would vanish from the face of the planet. Iowa City, Iowa would be wiped out, 100,000 died. If we had everyone die now in Iowa City, everyone would be alarmed. In Elmira, New York, again a population approaching 100,000, 95,000 Americans have died, more than 95,000, because of illegal narcotics in this country during this administration. Bangor, Maine would be wiped out. Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the population of that city would be wiped from the face of this country. Cheyenne, Wyoming. I could give a long list of others that are equal in population to those individuals who have lost their lives in this social problem of illegal narcotics, in this criminal enterprise now that is affecting every corner of America. The cost of illegal narcotics in this country is approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars. In addition to lives that I mentioned, 100,000 over 6 or 7 years, we had 14,000-plus last year, we have a cost to this country estimated at over a quarter of a trillion dollars. This Congress in our budget debate is debating a number of measures to deal with illegal narcotics just in this next fiscal year. The estimate is somewhere around $18 billion will be expended. We now have in the United States of America 13.9 million Americans who are users of illegal narcotics. Drug use by 12 to 17-year-olds in this period since President Clinton has taken office to now has doubled, has doubled since 1992, drug use by our teenage population. More than 6 percent of Americans have used illegal narcotics in the past 30 days. What is another dimension of the illegal narcotics problem in this country is the change in the pattern of usage. When I came to Congress, crack and cocaine were the big problem. Today, heroin is a major, major problem, not only in our urban areas but in suburban areas across this land, including my own area, central Florida, from Orlando to Daytona Beach, one of the highest income, highest educated, one of the most prosperous areas in America, and we have experienced an incredible heroin epidemic and particularly again among our young people. In the United States of America, first-time heroin use surged 875 percent from 1991 to 1996, again under the charge of this administration. Heroin-related emergency room admissions increased from 1989 to 1995 some 80 percent. In Florida, I want to talk about the problem that we have been experiencing again with heroin. Recently, a number of our newspapers featured headlines that said that heroin deaths increased 51 percent in the State of Florida from 1997 to 1998, a 51 percent increase in heroin deaths. Two hundred six deaths in Florida in 1997. Fortunately no Americans have been killed in Kosovo, no Americans have lost their life in the current Iraq crises. Even in the Gulf War, we had fewer than that number of casualties. But just in the State of Florida, we had 206 heroin deaths in 1997, a 51 percent increase from 1997 to 1998. In Orlando and again central Florida, a very prosperous area that I represent part of, we had 36 deaths, heroin deaths, and we had the highest death rate, we had 3.6 per 100,000 population die from heroin overdoses or heroin-related deaths. Additionally, our cocaine problem still is with us in Florida. We had 1,128 cocaine deaths in Florida in 1998, up from 1,039 in 1997. So we are seeing an incredible epidemic of heroin deaths, particularly among our young people, and even an increase in cocaine deaths. Now, you might say, how did we get into this situation? Let me review, if I may, for the Congress and for the American people the history of how this administration got us in this situation with these statistics, with an epidemic of heroin, with the continued problems with cocaine, with methamphetamine and designer drugs at epidemic levels in other parts of our Nation. The first thing this President and this Congress did when it was under the control of the Democrat Party, and I do not mean to say this in a partisan way, it is a matter of fact, but their policy was to eliminate much of the war on drugs. Their policy was to try to just deal with treatment of those who had drug abuse or illegal narcotics problems and put our resources in that area. The first thing this President did as President was to cut the positions in the drug czar's office, and they were slashed dramatically, practically closed down the drug czar's office. This was the very first action, as we may recall. The second action was to appoint a surgeon general who really said ``just say maybe'' to the use of illegal narcotics. Now, if you do not think that the chief health officer of the United States, who gives a mixed message to our young population, does not influence that young population in that important position, if you do not think the President of the United States, if he would say that ``I didn't inhale'' or ``if I had it to do over again I would,'' if you do not think that influences young people, then I think you have another thought coming, particularly when you see the statistics of the dramatic increase in illegal narcotic use from 1993 to today. Additionally, when the Democrats and the Democratic majority controlled the other body, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House, some of their first actions in the Congress in 1993 and 1994 when they controlled the entire governmental operation was to start to slash the efforts of stopping drugs at their source. These are source country programs. We know where 100 percent of the cocaine is coming from in the world. Every bit of it is coming into the United States, or was coming from and comes from today Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. That is it. There are no other locales. We knew where heroin was coming from, and this administration with this majority on the other side slashed the eradication programs, slashed the interdiction. Now, the most cost-effective way to stop illegal narcotics is at its source, where they are grown, where the supply comes from. The next line of defense is interdiction. What did the administration and this majority in Congress, this past majority in Congress, do? They cut interdiction. They slashed the programs for source countries, to stop drugs at their source cost effectively. Then they stopped interdiction programs. They also stopped the use of the military. They stopped, at least temporarily, the sharing of information with some of the countries in shoot-down policies. Only after a great ruckus in Congress were we able to reinstitute the information sharing policy that allowed us to give assistance and aid to other countries that had shoot-down policies, these principal producing countries, so that they could take action to stop those illegal narcotics from leaving their borders. So we have seen what this administration has done as far as the military, interdiction, eradication. Another thing that folks do not realize is that the Coast Guard is a great line of defense, particularly for Florida, around Puerto Rico. The Coast Guard has been the first line of defense around Puerto Rico. It stopped under the Bush and Reagan administration most of the illegal narcotics coming into the United States. Puerto Rico is part of the United States and once you get into Puerto Rico, you are into the United States, and the Coast Guard provided that shield. This Congress under the previous Democrat majority and under the Clinton administration slashed dramatically the budgets of the Coast Guard and particularly the defenses and ability to interdict drugs around Puerto Rico were eliminated. So this is what this administration had done. We know what the other administration had done. The Bush administration, the previous Reagan administration had put into place programs that cost effectively stopped drugs from coming into our borders, stopped our young people from using drugs, and we actually saw decreases in use of illegal narcotics and drugs coming into our Nation. Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue on how this administration lost the War on Drugs and how under the control of the previous majority this country lost the effort to interdict drugs cost-effectively at its source. In fact, under this administration and under the previous Democratic majority, they slashed stopping these efforts by funding a percentage that went from 33 percent of all the funds we expended in the drug war down to 12 percent. So basically what they did was gutted by two-thirds the programs to stop drugs at their source. Again, their emphasis was solely on those wounded in battle, treatment of those victims of illegal narcotics. This administration also decided to have the Department of Defense rank counter-narcotics efforts at the bottom of its priority list. If we look at a priority list developed by this administration in its priorities, previously under again the Reagan and Bush administrations this was a high priority. With DOD, the Department of Defense, it is now a low priority. The President, not learning from experiences of the past, proposed to this Congress through the Office of Drug Control Policy and the Drug Czar a budget to the Congress that is $100 million less this year than last year, and again in the areas that are most important to stop drugs cost effectively at their source, the President also failed to provide adequate proposals for funding of these programs, including again the Coast Guard which plays such a vital role, including the source country interdiction programs, including the use of the military. In fact, if my colleagues want to look at the budget, in addition to being $100 million less, there is $73 million that is being currently used to relocate our forward drug interdiction efforts in Central and South America. We have previously been stationed at Howard Air Force Base for these efforts, the advanced surveillance activities in our illegal narcotics efforts over the South American region, again where these drugs come from, again the source of production, the source of transshipment of these drugs. Our eyes and ears and our frontline defense in the War on Drugs is located in Panama at Howard Air Force Base, and $73 million in this budget is to move our operations to locations that will not under any circumstances be as good because this administration, and it is not widely publicized, but basically they blew the negotiating with the Panamanians, and the United States of America is being kicked out lock, stock and barrel from Panama as I speak here. We have lost $10 billion in assets, lost every one of them. They negotiated without success. We have lost every asset. There we have lost 5,000 buildings, over 5,000 buildings, and we will not be conducting one advanced forward drug surveillance operation there. In fact, we will be paying $73 million out of this budget that has been proposed by the President to make up for the failed negotiations which got us totally kicked out of Panama and giving these assets to the Panamanians is a disastrous consequences, I predict, not to mention that the Panamanians, through a corrupt tender, have given one of the ports to a Chinese group that basically is run by the Chinese Army. So the Chinese will control one of the ports through a corrupt tender, and this is the situation we find ourselves in, and again part of this President's budget is being expended. Even though he has $100 million less than we proposed last year and appropriated last year, additional funds will be paid to correct mistakes by this administration. So this is the situation we find ourselves in today. We have a very serious drug problem, and I want to, if I may, to put this chart up here and show the drug problem that we have in the United States, and again, as a result of the inactions or lack of proper actions by this administration in the 1990's we see this new pattern of illegal narcotics coming from South America. Again, production of cocaine through Columbia, Peru and Bolivia, and that was the pattern we saw at the beginning, it is the pattern we still see, but we see the drugs now coming through Mexico, and we see them coming from Columbia into the United States, some through Puerto Rico into the northeast United States and other routes, but the two major sources of illegal narcotics coming into the United States are Columbia and Mexico. Now let us examine, if we can for the record, how we got into the situation where again Peru and Bolivia were the primary producers of cocaine. I could not possibly believe this would be true if someone told me it 5 years ago, but this administration managed to make Columbia the biggest cocaine producer in the world, and they have done that because in the past 5 or 6 years of this administration they have fought every effort by Congress, they have fought every request of Members of Congress, they have fought requests of the Drug Task Force of Congress to get resources to Columbia to stop the production, to stop the trafficking of illegal narcotics from Columbia. This administration has done everything possible to make sure that those resources did not go to Columbia. They stopped helicopters, they stopped ammunition, they stopped resources. Now we have Columbia as the number one producer. It has outstripped Peru and Bolivia and is the number one producer of cocaine. What is even more incredible is 5 years ago Columbia produced almost no heroin, almost no heroin. Today Columbia is the source of most of the heroin coming into the United States of America. While this administration blocked equipment and supplies, resources, military and police aid going in to stop the production and transiting, when they blocked this, what happened? The drug dealers began producing, and of course we heard cocaine. Now they are the major producers, but in Columbia they are also now producing heroin, and it is not like the heroin of the 1980's. This is tough stuff. This is high purity, not 10, 12, 15 percent pure; this is 70, 80 percent. This is the heroin that is killing our young people on the streets of Florida and across this Nation. So again, through the inaction or improper actions or inadequate steps that this administration failed to take, Columbia is now the biggest drug producer on the globe. It is my hope, it is my prayer, it is the intent of almost everyone in the Congress who serves on the subcommittees of jurisdiction, that this administration now will allow helicopters, equipment, resources to get to Columbia. I met several times with the President of Columbia, President Pastrana. He is committed to the war on drugs. He has a very difficult civil war on his hands. Thousands and thousands of police and military have lost their lives at the hands of drug dealers and narco terrorists and Marxist terrorists in Columbia. We have a very difficult situation, but hopefully now this administration, with the urging again of Congress, will get the resources to stop drugs at their source, which the source is Columbia. Now the other major source area and problem that we have today is Mexico. Mexico has become the primary source of hard narcotics and marijuana coming into the United States of America. It is the primary source. Some of this is heroin and cocaine being produced in Columbia, but now in concert with the drug dealers in Mexico, and with the cooperation and with the consent in many instances of almost every level of government, corrupt government in Mexico, we see the drugs coming through Mexico into the United States. They are coming into the United States through the largess of this Congress which voted NAFTA, which voted almost an open commercial border between Mexico and the United States of America through again a policy that allowed us to give trade benefits. Now we have to stop and think. This Congress gave great trade benefits. They are not really an equal trading partner, not when they pay people 25, 35 cents, even $1 an hour. These are not equal trading partners as we did with Canada, which is a very equal trading partner. We gave them a great trade advantage. And what did they give us in return? An unprecedented supply of illegal narcotics transiting across our border. This is a fact; this is incontrovertible. The DEA administrator, who testified before my subcommittee and on the other side of the Congress, said the corruption among Mexican anti- drug authorities was, and let me quote him, ``unparalleled with anything I have seen in 39 years of police work.'' This is one of the most professional, most dedicated capable administrators we have ever had. He does not buy the administration line even though he is a member of this administration, and he tells it like it is. He has said that the level of corruption in Mexico is absolutely unparalleled. Now this administration has certified Mexico. Under Federal law we have a certification law that says that every year the President must certify whether countries who deal in illegal narcotics or are the source of illegal narcotics coming into the United States, that the State Department and the President must certify under this Federal law that they are fully cooperating with eliminating both the production and trafficking of drugs under this 1986 law. And this administration has the past several years certified that Mexico is fully cooperating and did so just a few weeks ago. How can an administration certify that Mexico is cooperating when even this Congress asked 2 years ago, this House of Representatives, simple steps for the Mexicans to take? First, to extradite those who are convicted of illegal narcotics trafficking, and to date I believe they extradited one individual, and that is only under the pressure of decertification, only under the pressure of so many people, from the Minority Leader, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), by a bipartisan majority saying that Mexico must take some steps to show that they are cooperating. But they fail to extradite major drug traffickers, they fail to install radar in the south, they fail to allow our DEA agents to arm themselves, they fail to raise the level, the number of DEA agents in their country that would be adequate to deal with the severe problem that they have, and they fail to enforce laws that they put on the books and have made a mockery of those laws, including the most egregious incident I have ever seen a country take, which was last year in an operation called ``Casablanca'' in which our Custom officials identified millions and millions, hundreds of millions, of illegal drug dollars going through Mexican banks and some into the United States, and when it was uncovered, the Mexican officials threatened to indict the United States Customs officials rather than cooperate with our officials. What we got in return was a threat against our agents, and only again until we came to the issue of possibly decertifying them through a step of Congress, the House of Representatives and the other body, not this administration who certified them. The President went a few months ago down and met with President Zedillo, and he met there in the Yucatan Peninsula, this little point here. We are told by our DEA officials and others in hearings that I conducted that the entire Yucatan Peninsula is corrupt, that it is run by drug lords. It is corrupt from the officer on the street to the governor. In fact, we knew it was corrupt. We are told the entire Baja Peninsula is corrupt. We are told that entire other regions and states in Mexico are corrupt from the bottom to the top. We had testimony at a recent hearing, which I conducted as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, that in fact this corruption may go even to the highest offices in Mexico. There were indications that there was as much as a billion dollars that one Mexican official was trying to place from his proceeds of dealing in illegal narcotics. Now, President Clinton went with President Zedillo and met in the Yucatan Peninsula, one of the, again, centers of corruption, one of the centers of illegal narcotics. We knew that the governor of this state was corrupt. We knew that he was involved in narcotics, but they have a quirk in Mexican law that is interesting, that when you are in office you cannot be charged. So they were waiting until a few weeks ago when this Mexican governor, we were told, would leave office so they could indict him. That is what we were told. Then what happened? Under investigation, this is The Washington Post, April 1, April Fool's Day, this would almost be funny if it was not the truth, but this Mexican governor of the Yucatan Peninsula, Quintana Roo is the name of the area, under investigation the headline says, ``Mexican disappears; governor may have fled to avoid expected arrest.'' Now, that should tickle the conscience of everyone in the Congress to see that the Mexican official that we were told was going to be arrested when he left office fled. Now, to really rub salt in the wound, this is the Miami Herald story of just a few days ago, missing governor fled to Cuba, paper reports. So here is where the President of the United States, the President of Mexico met. Here is where we were told it was corrupt from the bottom to the top, and now we are told that that official, who was supposed to be arrested, has fled the country and possibly may be in Cuba. Do they think the Members of Congress are going to ignore this? Do they think the American people are going to be fooled by the actions of this government to fail to take actions against one of the most corrupt officials? Do they believe, in fact, that this Congress will certify that Mexico is fully cooperating when they turn a blind eye on the escape of one of the major drug traffickers and one of the major officials in the Mexican Government? So this is where we are today. This is the history of the supposed war on drugs by this administration; again, an administration that has almost dissolved the Drug Czar's office; again, an administration that appointed a Surgeon General that sent a mixed message to our children; again, an administration, and the previous majority, the Democrat majority that slashed the programs that stopped drugs cost effectively at their source. These are, again, the results that we see when we certify that a country is fully cooperating and they make a mockery of the entire process of cooperation, a country that we help with trade, a country that we help with financial assistance. When it was going down the tubes, the United States Government held back the financial instability, that we still back through the International Monetary Fund, through world financial organizations and through the corporations of America. So I ask tonight, where is the outrage? There is outrage about Kosovo. There is outrage about Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But these folks from Mexico, these corrupt individuals, these illegal narcotics dealers, have killed 100,000 Americans in the last 6 or 7 years of this administration; 14,000 young people, young adults and Americans who lost their lives, a cost of a quarter of a trillion dollars to the American people. Where is the outrage? If it takes every week, if it takes every night, I will be here on the floor. If it takes 100 more committee meetings to bring this to the attention of the Congress that we need to make certain that we get this effort back on track, we need to make certain that we seek the cooperation and that we seek working with our allies, such as Mexico, to see that the flow of illegal narcotics, the production of illegal narcotics, hard drugs like heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, that are killing our young people are stopped at their source before they ever reach our border, before they ever imprison our young people and destroy the lives of so many Americans and destroy the lives of their families. So whatever it takes, I will be here. I see my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), on the floor. The Speaker has appointed myself, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) from Ohio, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum). The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) is in charge of working on the demand side and has done a tremendous job in trying to put together community programs which, again, this administration has not adequately funded, to educate our young people, to work in our communities, to work with local organizations. He has done an outstanding job. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), the Speaker has appointed him another cochair with me to the Speaker's Working Task Force on the Drug Problem for the House of Representatives. Both have done an excellent job. I commend them. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) chairs the Subcommittee on Crime and works on criminal justice legislation. So with those comments, I am pleased to conclude my remarks tonight, but I will be back as many times as it takes, as many hearings as it takes, and as much attention as we must give this problem that, again, I believe is the most important social problem facing our Nation, our Congress and the future of all Americans.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Chairman Thomas) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I think tonight what we have to deal with in Congress are the facts. I think the American people and the Members of Congress and history are interested in the facts. The facts, my friend, are quite simple. In the 103rd Congress, under the Democrat majority, the Democrats expended $223 million to run the committees. The fact is, under the 106th Congress, we are expending $183 million, committee funding of $40 million less than when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. The facts are that the numbers of staff in the 103rd Congress under the Democrat majority were 1,639. The facts are in this budget, proposed by the Republican majority, the staff positions are 1,153; 30 percent less staff. In addition to staff levels that have been reduced, the Republican majority in these 4-plus years have privatized the dining room, privatized the barber shop, privatized the printing office, provided public parking, which is a new thing that we provided the public, in addition to cutting staff, cutting funding. We even stopped the delivery of ice to Members' offices, long after refrigerators were instituted, with an additional 12 staff cuts. Those folks do not deliver ice anymore to us, even though we have refrigerators. We did all of this and we did it fairly, because I stood up here in the 103rd Congress and held up a chart similar to this that said 55 to 5. We may recall, and history recorded it very well in the Congressional Record, and that was the staff ratios on the predecessor of the Committee on Government Reform, which was Government Operations, 55 to 5. I just made a new one for tonight. This is the ratio accorded to us. In this budget, in fact, we give them 28 percent of the budget and 30 percent of the staff. If we just take a minute and look at the minority resource comparison, and these are the facts, my colleagues, 33 percent more we are providing. In the 103rd, there were only two. In the 106th Congress, the number of committees provided are now 9 with 33 percent of the staff; 25 to 32 percent was 12, is now 8; and less than 25 percent, in the 106th Congress, zero. We are being fair. We are being evenhanded. We are equally distributing the resources in a very progressive manner. The score was 5 to 55 giving the old minority this ratio, very unfair. Today we see an equitable distribution. These are the facts and these are the figures, and this is what we must deal with, Mr. Speaker. I believe the Republicans have done an excellent job in both allocating resources and at the same time addressing the concerns of the American people. That is cutting the staff and the expense and the bureaucracy in Washington and in this Congress.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella).

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to focus some attention for a few moments on section 4 of H.R. 807. This section is particularly important to our Nation's veterans. I want to thank again the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough), who is the chairman now of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, and also thank again the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the ranking member, for their strong support for this section and revision that has been provided space in this bill. When the Committee on Government Reform marked up H.R. 807, I was able to add section 4 in order to perfect the language of Public Law 105-339, the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act, which passed in the last session in 1998. That bill, which I had the pleasure of introducing with others in the House, expanded veterans employment opportunities and strengthened veterans preference in our civil service system. It was an important bill to our Nation's veterans. In fact, it was called the most significant veterans preference legislation since World War II and was strongly supported by every one of our Nation's veterans service organizations. A key provision of that act allowed veterans to compete for civil service jobs even if they did not have the status as Federal employees. Before the act was passed, competition for many jobs was limited to current Federal employees. However, after the act was passed, the Office of Personnel Management raised an important technical issue. OPM held that individuals who were selected under this provision could not be appointed to competitive service unless they already had what is known as competitive status. Instead, the Office of Personnel Management instructed agencies to provide these individuals with excepted service appointments. As excepted service employees, these veterans would have, in fact, fewer rights than their colleagues in the competitive service. Most importantly, as excepted service employees, these veterans would not be able to compete for other agency jobs under internal merit promotion procedures. This was not what I intended; this was not what Congress intended. Congress intended that veterans appointed under this provision would have all of the rights of their fellow employees in a particular agency. Mr. Speaker, the majority and the minority staffs of the Subcommittee on Civil Service and of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs met with the Office of Personnel Management's experts to discuss this problem. Section 4 enacts language suggested by the Office of Personnel Management. Under this language, in fact, veterans who are selected under the access provision of the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act will receive competitive appointments and competitive status. That is what we intended and that is what Congress wants. They will have the same rights as their coworkers. Mr. Speaker, we have discussed this situation extensively with veterans' organizations and various service groups represented by veterans. They are keenly interested in resolving this problem and have urged Congress to act as quickly as possible to correct and clarify this situation and cure this problem. They strongly support section 4, and I urge all Members to support section 4 and also this legislation. In closing, Mr. Speaker, this bill is really about fairness. The Federal Reserve already allows Federal employees who transfer there to receive credit for their years of service at other agencies. Congress should provide reciprocal rights under the Federal employees' retirement system for those Federal Reserve employees who transfer to other agencies, particularly when the cost is negligible. Likewise, there is no reason to deny individuals who transfer to the Federal Reserve the right to withdraw their funds from their own thrift savings plan accounts. Section 4 of this bill, as I stated, is extremely important to our Nation's veterans. It will, again, clarify the meaning of the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act, which was passed in the last Congress. Congress intended that those veterans selected for Federal employment under the access provisions of that act would have the very same rights as their coworkers and compete for other jobs. Both Republicans and Democrats support this legislation, as does the administration. We have worked very closely with the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, and others in crafting the language before the House of Representatives this morning. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 807, as amended, is a good piece of legislation, a bipartisan piece of legislation, and a fair bill. It is important to our Federal employees at the Federal Reserve Board, it is also important to those who have served our Nation. I urge all Members to vote for H.R. 807, as amended. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), chairman of the NRCC and also chair of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, who has brought the District of Columbia from the depths of disaster to fiscal soundness.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this morning I would like to take this opportunity to commend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Services, for introducing this legislation. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, for his strong support for this legislation. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking member, for their support on this bill and also moving it through the committee process in an expedited fashion. I also wanted to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations and thanks to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) for her strong support, not only of this legislation, but the gentlewoman is one of the most active individuals in the Congress in support of our Federal employees, no matter what capacity they serve our Federal Government in, and the citizens of America. Mr. Speaker, this bipartisan legislation today will provide retirement portability for certain Federal Reserve Board employees who take jobs in our executive branch of government. This legislation will allow those employees who participate in the Board's FERS-like retirement plan, and FERS is our Federal Employee Retirement System, for those not familiar with the acronym, to obtain FERS credit for their Federal Reserve years when they transfer to another Federal agency. The Federal Reserve already provides such reciprocity for employees who transfer to the Federal Reserve from other Federal agencies. Without this corrective legislation today, former Board employees would receive smaller annuities upon retirement than they otherwise should and they otherwise deserve. This is a simple bill that also corrects an inequity in current law that prevents some Federal employees from withdrawing their funds from their Thrift Savings Plan accounts. Under current law, employees participating in the Thrift Savings Plan who transfer to the Federal Reserve Board from other Federal agencies are not permitted to withdraw funds from their Thrift Savings Plan accounts. Current law specifies that employees, and I will quote from the law, ``must separate from government employment,'' in order to be entitled to withdraw funds. However, employment at the Board is considered to be government employment. Therefore, employees who transfer to the Board and commence participation in the Federal Reserves retirement plan may not withdraw the funds in their Thrift Savings Plan accounts. Section 3 of this legislation corrects that problem by allowing our Federal employees who have transferred or will transfer to the Board to move the funds in their Thrift Savings accounts to the Board's thrift plan. Mr. Speaker, sections 3's technical correction, along with the portability language in section 2, are appropriate and necessary remedies to ensure Board employees fair treatment under our current law. Section 4 of this bill is also critically important to the men and women who have served our Nation under arms. It clarifies the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act that we passed last year to ensure that our veterans will receive their benefits that Congress intended when it passed the Act again in the last session of Congress. Mr. Speaker, with those opening comments, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the bill, H.R. 807, as amended.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 807) to amend title 5, United States Code, to provide portability of service credit for persons who leave employment with the Federal Reserve Board to take positions with other Government agencies, as amended.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana for his cooperation, for coming out tonight and telling the American people about the situation we face with the corruption in Mexico, about the incredible volume of drugs that are coming across our border through Mexico, and about the apparent coverup and lack of investigation by this administration of corruption at the highest levels of Mexican government. Mr. Speaker, I simply wished to say that we will hold hearings, we will investigate, and we will pursue this matter to the fullest extent. We will conduct hearings on this. Our subcommittee and other committees of Congress will act, and we will get the facts and information no matter where they lead us.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, again the plot thickens here, and I want to continue reading from this investigative piece in today's New York Times. ``Customs officials said they remain skeptical of what the agents heard, including the traffickers' claim that Mr. Carrillo Fuentes's death in 1997 had actually been faked. But in December 1997, Javier Ramirez invited Mr. Alcala to Colombia for an elaborately staged meeting that seemed to raise that partnership to a new level.'' This meeting here with these folks. Let me continue. ``At a heavily guarded hacienda overlooking Bogota, an operative acting as Javier Ramirez's Colombian boss, Carlos, said he and his partners had $500 million to launder,'' half a billion dollars to launder. ``They wanted to know whether the Mexican bankers used by Mr. Alcala's boss, Juan Jose Castellanos Alvarez Tostado, could help. `` `Alvarez called us right back,' Mr. Gately recalled. `He said, `Let me send you my very best people, and we will get it done.' '' ``On March 6, 1998,'' just about a year ago, ``Mr. Alcala arrived with several businessmen at the tastefully furnished offices of Emerald Empire in a Los Angeles suburb. This time the businessmen offered a deal of their own. ``One of the men, David Loera, said he knew `a general,' who had $150 million in Mexico City to invest. Would Mr. Ramirez--who had told the traffickers he owned part of a Nevada casino used to launder money-- care to help? ``Over the next six weeks, according to government documents,'' again let me read this, ``over the next six weeks, according to government documents and the accounts of Mr. Gately and several officials, the deal was discussed in three more meetings and three more telephone conversations involving Mr. Ramirez, the undercover agents and the traffickers. All of the contacts were secretly tape-recorded and their words transcribed, officials said. ``In one call, two senior investment managers at Mexico's second largest bank told the Customs operatives that the money belonged not just to `a general,' but to the Minister of Defense. Later, the two Mexicans advised Mr. Ramirez that the minister was sending `his daughter' (a woman later said to be friend) to meet with them, along with an army colonel and a third person. ``However, the investment managers said, the amount to be laundered was much more than they had discussed: the minister had $500 million in cash in New York and another $500 million in the Netherlands, in addition to $150 million in Mexico City. ``Customs officials said they queried the Central Intelligence Agency, which works closely with the Mexican military on drug control and other programs. The CIA responded that it had no such information about General Cervantes, an assessment that other officials have since reiterated. ``But although General Cervantes has not been a focus of suspicion, Mexican and American officials have said several senior generals close to him had been under the scrutiny of investigators from both the Mexican Attorney General's office and a special military intelligence unit. ``On February 6, analysts at the Drug Enforcement Administration briefed Attorney General Janet Reno on intelligence indicating that the senior Mexican generals might indeed be cooperating with Mr. Carrillo Fuentes' organization, officials said. And in a separate Customs case in Houston, undercover agents had been approached about laundering millions of dollars for an unidentified Mexican Army general, officials said.'' Now listen to this, and again I quote from this article, ``On April 9, Mr. Alcala visited Emerald Empire with a cousin, who had just returned from Mexico with a message. The cousin `was very nervous about the deal,' Mr. Gately said. `He said it could be very dangerous if it got screwed up, because the money belonged to, `all of them, including the President.' '' The President, here it says Ernesto Zedillo. Then in parentheses, it says ``(A spokesman for Mr. Zedillo, David Najera, dismissed the claim as baseless.)'' ``Later that month, Mr. Gately went to Washington to brief officials including Mr. Kelly--who was then about to take over the Customs Service after having overseen it as Treasury Undersecretary for Enforcement. ``Kelly said, `How do we know it's really him?' Mr. Gately recalled, referring to General Cervantes. `I told him we do not know,' Mr. Gately said. `We cannot substantiate it. But we have no reason to believe that they are telling us anything than what they know.'. `` `They weren't trying to impress us, they were not trying to make deals with us,' Mr. Gately added. `So whoever had this money, I thought it was worth pursuing--whether it was the Defense Minister of Mexico or somebody we had never heard of.' ``People familiar with the discussions said they did not go much further. The general's supposed emissaries were to meet with Javier Ramirez in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 22. They did not arrive, and the traffickers reported they had become nervous. Mr. Kelly acknowledged that he had been pressing for months to wrap up the investigation; he said he had grown increasingly concerned that information about it might be leaked out, endangering the undercover agents. ``The final sting had already been postponed twice because Federal prosecutors were still preparing indictments. ``James E. Johnson, who succeeded Mr. Kelly as Undersecretary and has closely supervised the Treasury's relations with Mexico on enforcement issues, added a cautionary note that several officials said seemed to underscore his concern for the political stakes. Unless the agents had proof of general Cervantes's role, officials quoted him as warning, they should not bandy his name about in connection with the case. `` `We need to be very careful about how we talk about this sort of thing,' a senior law enforcement official, who would not speak for attribution, quoted him as saying. `If we don't have the goods, it makes us look like we're overreaching.'. ``Mr. Johnson would not comment publicly.'' ``The operation had already navigated a series of sizable obstacles. ``Mr. Gately and some other agents were worried that their boss in Los Angeles, John Hensley, had leaked information about the secret operation to congressional aides and others; Mr. Hensley had also pressed hard to bring the operation to an end, officials said. ``For his part, officials said, Mr. Hensley had accused his strong- willed subordinate of transgressions ranging from traveling without authorization to stealing millions of dollars. Mr. Kelly alleged that the charges against Mr. Gately had been investigated and found baseless; Mr. Hensley declined to comment.'' ``As discussions about this supposed $1.15 billion were going on, the undercover operation also suffered serious setbacks with the capture of an important Juarez operative in Chicago. The arrest brought money deliveries to a halt while the cartel hunted a mole. ``On May 16, more than two dozen Mexican traffickers, bankers and other operatives, who had been invited to the United States by the undercover team, were rounded up in San Diego at the Casablanca Casino Resort in Mesquite, Nevada. Officials said whatever thoughts they had entertained of pursuing the allegations about General Cervantes were dropped in the diplomatic backlash that followed.'' And, again, I told my colleagues what the Mexicans did is they threatened to indict United States Customs officials. ``While the Mexican authorities were asked to arrest about 20 suspects indicted in the case, they initially located only 6. One was a partner of Mr. Loera, the fugitive businessman who had first proposed the deal with `the general'. The partner was found dead in a Mexican jail from injuries that the police described as self-inflicted. Mr. Alvarez Tostado has never been found. His deputy, Mr. Alcala, awaits trial in Los Angeles. ``Soon after the operation, American officials said they revealed to the Mexican government some of their information on ostensible corruption in the case. They said they kept silent about more explosive evidence to avoid intensifying the furor that had followed their decision not to warn Mexico about the operation.'' And this is the Casablanca operation. ``Still, the officials said none of the information was ever pursued, and in a little-noticed statement in July, the office of the Mexican Attorney General, Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, dismissed allegations of money laundering by `senior commanders of the Army and officials of the Mexican government.' ``Mr. Madrazo said in a telephone interview that the Americans had told him only about unidentified Federal agents and a money laundering scheme involving `a general who had a daughter'. He said the name of General Cervantes, who has no daughter, was never mentioned. ``With the information that they gave me, Mr. Madrazo asked, what could I possibly have done, gone and looked for a general with a daughter?'' And that was the response that we have out of the Attorney General and other officials of Mexico. So, basically, what this article outlines, and I read it in haste, but I wanted to make sure it was included in the record, what this article and this investigative report outlines is, in fact, we may have corruption at the very highest levels of the Mexican government. This information is now public. We have known that there was very high levels of corruption. Here there are serious questions raised again that lead to a high minister's office all the way to the office of the President of Mexico. We also see in this article a situation in which it appears that high United States officials stopped this investigation when it was disclosed that this corruption reached both the top of Mexican cabinet officials and possibly even reached the office of the President of Mexico, President Zedillo. We also have here evidence tonight that the Mexican military, with whom the United States is confiding with in the war on drugs, is corrupt from the bottom to the very top. We must know who those generals are that are hoarding this kind of money in such an incredible fashion. What else do we know? Those who reveal the truth about corruption in the Mexican government are found dead, and United States officials who attempt to reveal the truth about corruption are either deterred or they are penalized or they come under close scrutiny. What else have we learned from this investigative report? United States officials, including the Attorney General, Secretary of State, and others may be risking our national security. And if we are losing 14,200 Americans from the effects of illegal narcotics, and 60 to 70 percent of those hard drugs are coming through Mexico, we know we have a national security problem of a huge proportion. The information revealed by this New York Times report deserves further investigation. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform, I intend to investigate it. We will not be deterred in seeing how high this corruption leads to in the Mexican government. Wherever it may lead us, we will follow it, and we will find out why officials of the United States Government brought these investigations either to a close or did not pursue adequately these investigations with incredible allegations of this magnitude. We will conduct those hearings and those meetings either in public or behind closed doors.

Mr. MICA. Yes, I will be glad to yield.

Mr. MICA. As they say in the mystery books, the plot thickens here. Let me continue if I may to read this into the Record. ``In November of 1995, Colombian drug contacts introduced the undercover agents to Victor Alcala Navarro, a representative of Mexico's biggest drug mafia, the so-called Juarez cartel. ``The Customs agents, posing as money launderers from a dummy company called the Emerald Empire Corporation, began picking up the Mexican's profits and laundering them as planned. ``In February 1997, at meetings in Mexico, Javier Ramirez was introduced to Mr. Alcala's boss. A few months later, the Customs source found himself chatting by phone with the head of the cartel, Amado Carrillo Fuentes. ``Over scores of meetings and million-dollar deals, the traffickers grew more open about the official protection they enjoyed in Mexico, law enforcement officials and government documents indicate. ``At one meeting in Mexico City on May 16, 1997, the traffickers took along 16 federal police agents as bodyguards.'' This is again police agents of Mexico acting as bodyguards for drug dealers. ``At another meeting, a man who identified himself as an official of the Mexican Attorney General's office picked up $1.7 million in cash, including $415,000 that the undercover agents had carried to Mexico for the cartel boss himself. ``During a later meeting in New York, Mr. Alcala told the agents that like Mexico's drug enforcement chief, who had been arrested for collaborating with the Juarez cartel,'' again let me interject an aside here, much to the embarrassment of our United States drug czar who had embraced the Mexican drug czar, and here he is arrested ``for collaborating with the Juarez cartel, the Defense Minister, General Cervantes, was in league with the competing Tijuana cartel.'' But here we have allegations about the Attorney General, the former drug czar, and the Minister of Defense, and we have hundreds of thousands of dollars, $1.7 million of cash being picked up by officials of the Mexican government.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to recognize the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana not only for his comments, but also for his continued interest in trying to bring to the attention of the American people the situation relating to Mexico's involvement in this drug matter. Again, the point being here, these drug dealers said that they had a client who needed to launder $1.5 billion more. Most important, those clients, one of those clients, they said, was Mexico's Minister of Defense. ``The Customs agents didn't know whether the money really existed, or if any of it belonged to the Minister, General Enrique Cervantes, officials said. But having heard about American intelligence reports, pointing to corruption at the high levels of the Mexican military, the agents were mystified by what happened next. ``Rather than continue the undercover operation to pursue the deal, Clinton administration officials ordered that it be shut down on schedule several weeks later. No further effort was ever made to investigate the offer, and officials said that prosecutors have not even raised the matter with the suspects in the case who have pleaded guilty and who are cooperating with authorities.'' Let me read this quote: ``Why are we sitting on this kind of information, asked the former senior Customs agent who led the undercover inquiry,'' and that agent was William F. Gately. ``It's either because we are lazy, we are stupid, or the political will doesn't exist to engage in the kind of investigation where our law enforcement efforts might damage our foreign policy.'' So here we have the question of whether or not we should have, and our officials should have, pursued this matter of corruption at the very highest levels, and in fact, it may have been compromised for the sake of damaging our foreign policy or our diplomacy, or our relations with Mexico. ``Senior officials denied,'' and I will continue reading, that foreign policy had influenced their decision to end the operation, saying they had been moved primarily by concerns for its security. They also emphasized that the agents had been unable to verify the Mexican traffickers' claims. ``Other officials of the administration, which has based much of its Mexican drug strategy on collaboration with General Cervantes, said they were confident that he was above reproach. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant Francisco Aguilar Hernandez, dismissed the traffickers' proposal as self-serving lies.'' But now listen to this part of this story: ``But a detailed account of the case, based on confidential government documents, court records, and dozens of interviews, suggests that United States officials walked away from an extraordinary opportunity to examine allegations of the official corruption that is considered the main obstacle to anti-drug efforts in Mexico.'' Basically, they walked away from the investigation. ``For nearly a decade, American officials have been haunted by the spectacle of Mexican officials being linked to illicit activities soon after they are embraced in Washington. And just weeks before the Customs investigation known as Operation Casablanca'', which I referred to earlier, ``which ended last year, administration officials received intelligence reports indicating that the Mexican military's ties to the drug trade were more serious than had been previously thought. But when faced with the possibility that one of Washington's critical Mexican allies might be linked to the traffickers, the official gave the matter little consideration. They said they opted for a sure thing, arresting mid-level traffickers and their associates, and at least disrupting the money-laundering system that drug gangs had set up. To reach for a general, they asserted, would have added to their risk with no certainty of success. ``Obviously, it was a significant allegation, the Commissioner of Customs, Raymond W. Kelly, said in an interview. But he added, there was skepticism about it. Was it puffing? It just was not seen as being, I wouldn't use the word credible, but it wasn't verified. Quote: ``When senior administration officials announced the stink last May, they took a triumphant inventory: The indictments of three big Mexican banks and bankers from a dozen foreign banks and the arrest of 142 suspects, the confiscation of $35 million in drug profits, and the seizing of accounts holding $66 million more. The officials claimed that the success was a result of a long-standing administration fight against money-laundering. But Mr. Gately, who retired from the Customs Service on December 31, said his investigation had run the gauntlet of resistance from the start. ``The Justice Department, uncomfortable with cases in which undercover agents laundered more money for drug traffickers than they ultimately seized, was imposing new limits on the time that such operations could run and the money they would launder, officials said. And though the restrictions did not apply to Customs, a branch of Treasury, Justice Department officials continued to play strong skeptical roles in supervising cases throughout the government. ``One Federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity admitted that he had initially dismissed Mr. Gately's plan. `You're out of your mind', the official remembered saying. Several colleagues said it was the sort of response that Mr. Gately, 49 years of age, tended to see as a challenge. A decorated former Marine who enlisted for service in Vietnam at 17, he had already been at the center of several cases that mixed internal struggle and public success. Friends and critics described him in similar terms: Driven, sometimes abrasive, and usually creative. ``After leading an investigation that revealed ties between the Italian Mafia and Colombian cocaine cartels, Mr. Gately cowrote a 1994 book about the case, Dead Ringer, that cast him as a lonely crusader surrounded by small-minded bureaucrats. `It is the story of one man who refused to succumb to corruption,' the prologue reads, `who believed in his oath and mission and the consequences he paid for believing in what he was doing.' ``As the senior Customs drug investigator in Los Angeles, Mr. Gately said he first heard from a confidential source in 1993 about an important shift in the way that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers were converting cash into funds that could be freely spent. The source said, `Traffickers were depositing their money with corrupt Mexican bankers who sent it back to them in almost untraceable cashier's checks drawn on American accounts that the Mexican banks used to do business with in the United States.' Mr. Gately hoped his source could infiltrate that system, collecting cash from drug wholesalers in the United States, and wiring it to corrupt bankers in Mexico. ``The bankers would issue drafts for the money and Customs would develop evidence against the suspects on both ends of the transaction. Many Customs officials, however, doubted that the ruse would work. Drug enforcement agents wanted to use the source in another case. Because the man had a criminal past, one Federal prosecutor opposed using him at all and threatened to indict him on a 10-year-old case. Even when Mr. Gately was eventually able to recruit another undercover intermediary, a Colombian known by the pseudonym, Javier Ramirez, he and others, said a senior Justice Department official'', and this is very important, ``Mary Warren, pressed him to limit the operation's scope.'' So we have an official in the Department of Justice pressing him to limit the scope of this operation. ``What she wanted to know was when was this going to be over,'' he said of Ms. Warren, ``who declined to comment. What was our end game?''

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come again tonight to the floor of the House of Representatives as chair of the new Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources to talk about a situation that is confronting our Nation, Congress and has touched almost every household in America, and that is the situation dealing with illegal narcotics. The situation basically is out of control and affects our young people. Some 14,200 Americans died last year because of drug- related deaths. This is a problem that has been swept under the table by Congress, by this administration and not really addressed adequately in my opinion. As chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources responsible for developing at least the House side of our national policy, I intend to continue my efforts to bring this situation to the attention of the American people and to my colleagues here. Mr. Speaker, the situation is so bad relating to narcotics, particularly among our young people, that the statistics are absolutely staggering and should shock every American, particularly in the area of hard drug use by our young people. The statistics since 1993, when this administration came into power, of drug use among our teens and our young people, the instance of use of heroin by our teenage population has soared 875 percent. In the area that I come from, Central Florida, a relatively prosperous area, an area that has economic stability, growth, viability, no inner city problems, our area has been absolutely wracked and ravaged by deaths, particularly again among our young people, our teenage population and young adults by heroin deaths. In fact, in the Orlando Sentinel, a headline at the end of last year said that the drug overdose deaths in Central Florida exceed homicides. One of my first duties and responsibilities as chair of this new subcommittee to deal with drug policy was to conduct a hearing in Central Florida on the issue, and I was told by the father of one of the young people who died of a drug overdose, a heroin overdose, ``Mr. Mica, those who have died from drug overdoses are in fact homicides.'' And that situation is repeating itself across our land. Not only do we see increased use of heroin among our young people and in my area and other areas, we are now seeing more and more Mexican black tar, high purity heroin, coming across the border into Texas and other border States. Additionally, the amounts of methamphetamines coming into middle America, the western States and across this land are soaring dramatically. The episodes in our emergency rooms from overdoses across the land are increasing, not decreasing, and again we are seeing more and more of the drug abuse of these hard, high-purity drugs such as cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines among our young population. Tonight I wanted to spend most of my time talking to my colleagues that are listening and the American people that are listening about where those drugs are coming from, and it is very easy for me to identify where those drugs are coming from. If I may, if we could pay attention to this chart, it is very easy to see that the drugs are coming from South America, primarily Colombia where heroin and now cocaine from coca production have increased since this administration has stopped equipment or stopped in the last few years equipment reaching Colombia, helicopters, ammunition, eradication equipment reaching that country. Incredible fields of poppies are being grown in Colombia, and now we are told that Colombia is also the largest source of coca production in the world, exceeding even Peru and Bolivia, which both countries have managed to curtail some of their production. But it is coming through Colombia and then transiting through Mexico. Mr. Speaker, today 60 to 70 percent of the hard drugs entering the United States of America enter through Mexico, and this chart shows the pattern of Mexican and Colombian based organized crimes, crime in the 1990's and currently. So, again we know exactly where these drugs are being produced, and we know who is producing them, and we know who is trafficking in those drugs. Let me use, if I may, a quote that disturbed me as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, and this is a quote from our chief DEA administrator. He said, and let me repeat it, in testimony: Recently in my lifetime I have never witnessed any group of criminals that has had such a terrible impact on so many individuals and communities in our Nation. Mr. Constantine said corruption among Mexican anti-drug authorities was unparalleled with anything I have seen in 39 years of police work. This is our chief drug enforcement officer for the Nation, and these are his comments. Now it would be bad enough to hear that from our DEA chief enforcement officer, but all we have to do is as a Congress look at the statistics about what is happening with Mexico. We look to see how our partner, how our friend, how our ally is cooperating in the war on drugs in the effort to stop the trafficking and production of illegal narcotics. Let me address two fronts. First of all, Mexico, which was a minor producer of heroin, has now become a major producer of heroin, so they are producing heroin and in larger quantities than they ever have and at a higher deadly purity rate than we have ever seen before. The second area that we would judge countries' cooperation with the United States in dealing with the drug problem would be the amount of drugs that are seized in that particular country, and that is how we base our certification of a country in cooperating and making them eligible for foreign assistance, international finance and international trade benefits. What are the other measures? As I said, first of all, again production and then trafficking. In trafficking the statistics are absolutely startling. In 1998 the seizures for heroin fell in Mexico, the seizures for cocaine and coca products fell in Mexico. So the major hard drugs in Mexico actually in the area of seizures decreased in Mexico, so they were actually assisting us less in seizing hard drugs coming across the border. Then if we look at the other dangerous deadly drug that we have talked about as methamphetamine, we find that not only the drug, but the ingredients and the precursors to produce and traffic in methamphetamine, another deadly hard drug today that is taking its toll on so many young Americans, is also up, production is up, incidents of finding this across our land are up. Now I spoke very briefly about the process of certification of a country, and there is confusion among the Congress and lack of knowledge about the certification process. I was able in the 1980's, as chief of staff for Senator Hawkins, to work with Senator Hawkins, Members of the other body in Congress and this side, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and others who were here, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), and the Congress adopted a drug certification law. That is a simple law, and what it does again is it says that any country who deals in illegal narcotics shall be certified annually by the Department of State and the President of the United States as, and the terms in the law are very specific, as fully cooperating to do again two things. One, to stop the production; and two, to stop the trafficking. Now that is the certification. The administration and the President must certify to Congress that these countries that are dealing in illegal narcotics are in fact cooperating with us, fully cooperating with us to stop the production and trafficking, a simple law, a simple certification. And what do those countries get in return for their cooperation and being fully certified? Mr. Speaker, they get basically several benefits. The first of these would be United States foreign assistance. So if they are fully cooperating, they get United States foreign assistance, foreign aid. They also would get foreign assistance as far as international financial benefit and support. So in the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, IMF, the United States, which is the major underwriting partner for financing all of these international operations and actually the basis of financial stability for so many countries, including Mexico, the United States lends its vote to approve various loans and grants and assistance from these international finance organizations. So that is another criterion. Then the third area is the trade area. We give trade benefits. I cannot think of any nation in the world that we have given a better trade advantage to. We have different levels of trade equity but there certainly is an inequity between the United States, between our wages, between our labor standards, between our environmental standards, between all the things we judge trade equity and economic equity, there is a disparity between the United States and Mexico. Stop and think that we passed NAFTA giving that country some of the best trade benefits ever bestowed by any government to any other nation or ally. We give, in fact, those trade benefits to Mexico and we ask very little in return. In fact, we have almost a $16 billion trade deficit, and our trade deficit in the United States and I plan to hold a hearing on this issue because it is another issue that has not received the adequate attention or concern by the Congress or its appropriate committees, but the deficit has now ballooned. It is in orbit, the highest it has ever been, trade deficit. That is, the United States is buying more foreign goods than selling those goods. Only for so long can the United States continue to have this incredible hundred billion dollars in excess flowing out year after year from the policies of this administration, but that is one more benefit that we gave to Mexico and they are benefitting by the trade surplus that they experience in selling us their goods, again, produced at a different level. So all of these benefits are given to the country of Mexico. In return, we ask very little and, in fact, we go through this certification process every year to say who is helping us and who is not assisting us and should they get trade foreign assistance benefits. That brings me to the topic that I wanted to raise tonight, and that is the question of certification of Mexico and what is going on with our Mexican allies. Are they cooperating? I just read the quote by Tom Constantine, who is the Director of our Drug Enforcement Agency, very harshly critical of what is going on in Mexico. Two years ago, this Congress stumbled and part of it was because of Wall Street weighing in. They were concerned with this big trade agreement, that there might be some repercussions and American businesses have now invested in Mexico and the interconnection of these economic relationships by decertifying Mexico there could be some implication, and they extended the real meaning of decertification and have since, with the cooperation of the administration, turned this into a political process rather than a policy process of this Congress and how it extends benefits to other countries. Again, those benefits trade financial assistance and economic benefits in regard to international organizations. So that has been distorted and the process is distorted. Two years ago, this Congress concerned about the certification of Mexico at that point, passed a resolution and asked Mexico to do several things to help end this war, if it was to be a joint war, but to take certain very specific actions but not unreasonable requests to deal with the narcotics problem that was just as bad then as it is today. In fact, it has gotten worse today as a result of nothing being done by Mexico to address the specific concerns of this Congress. Many people who were here several years ago remember what we asked Mexico to do in a cooperative fashion. First we asked for extradition of Mexican officials who were involved in drug activities. We asked for extradition of the drug traffickers who were charged and we asked for the arrest in Mexico, by Mexicans, of major drug traffickers. So we asked for extradition of those who were involved in illegal narcotics activities at the highest level, major drug traffickers; and we asked for, again, cooperation in trying to bring under control some of the corruption that existed in Mexico at various levels of their government. A second thing we asked for was Mexico to sign a maritime agreement with the United States. A maritime agreement is important because if we look again at this chart we can see the drugs travel not only overland but also through some of the water areas that surround Mexico, and United States officials and United States enforcement officers who work off of this coast, in even our military, have no rights, no maritime agreement. Mexico is the only country in this region with which the United States does not have a maritime agreement except, I believe, Haiti. The only reason we have not had one with Haiti is because the administration has done such a great job with their system of justice down there, where we spent three or four billion dollars, and the parliament has not met and we have had basically a dictatorship that refuses to operate in a legitimate fashion. So we have a parliament or a Congress in Haiti that basically has not been able to meet and approve a maritime agreement, but that is not the case in Mexico, even though what has happened in Haiti in not signing an agreement with the disorganization of their government, with the pouring of billions of U.S. dollars into that pit, we have a different situation, a different set of circumstances with Haiti and that failure as opposed to the Mexican record of failure and failing to sign or come to terms on a maritime agreement. That is number two. We asked for radar in the south. Now, of course, if we just look at this chart again we see that the drugs are coming in through Mexico through the southern border and transiting through their country. A simple request still not adhered to. The fourth request was to enforce some of the laws that had been passed. Now, we did get Mexico to pass some tougher laws several years back, but it is nice to have a law. The question is enforcing the law. What happened when we asked for cooperation? Last year, our agents uncovered an incredibly large activity relating to money laundering in Mexico. The scope of it was mind-boggling and hundreds of millions of dollars being laundered through Mexican banks. We arranged for a sting operation and Mexican banks customers were arrested. What did the Mexicans do? Did they cooperate with us, enforcing the law as we had asked 2 years ago in money laundering and corruption? No, they did not. In fact, the Mexicans had the audacity to blast the United States and then threaten to indict our Customs officials. This is an operation known as Casa Blanca. So here again was another item, the fourth item that we had asked for cooperation from Mexico; two years ago, and the situation is worse than it was then. An additional item that we asked for, a simple request, was our agents, our DEA agents who work around the world, particularly where there are international narcotics problems and they are welcomed by most host countries. What did Mexico do to a request that they secure protection, they allow our agents to arm themselves and that we also increase the presence of those agents in that country for the purpose of conducting investigations with Mexican officials? What they did was really take little or no action. We still have a cap on those agents and our agents still do not have the protection they need. So these are a few of the basic requests this House of Representatives asked Mexico 2 years ago to comply with to assist us. Again, nothing, at most very little, has been done. What disturbs me the most about the situation with Mexico is that instead of getting better on any front, the situation becomes worse and worse. Tonight, before the House of Representatives, I am going to read most of the article that appeared in today's New York Times, and I ask every Member of Congress who tomorrow will receive a copy of this article from me to take time to read this article. We have been concerned about corruption in Mexico at the highest levels. We have been concerned that this administration made decisions about certification not based on facts, not based on intelligence information, but based on diplomacy and also in trying to protect United States officials which I believe have covered up a horrible situation. This article that I am going to read tonight that appeared in The New York Times by Tim Golden, again I refer to every Member of Congress and ask that they pay particular attention to its contents, because its contents is very damaging to what has taken place regarding Mexico. Mr. Speaker, let me, if I may, read this. I will try to read most of the article. I think again it deserves our attention, and it was written today. This is not something that is dated. ``Early last year as undercover United States Customs agents neared the end of the biggest inquiry ever conducted into the illegal movement of drug money, bankers working with Mexico's most powerful cocaine cartel approached them with a stunning offer. The agents, posing as money-launderers from Colombia, had insinuated themselves deeply into the Mexican underworld, helping the traffickers hide more than $60 million. Now moneymen working with the cartel said they had clients who needed to launder $1.5 billion more. The most important of those clients,'' they said, now listen to this, ``was Mexico's Minister of Defense.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I come reluctantly to the floor to oppose the use of United States troops on the ground in Kosovo. I do that because of two reasons. First, because of the lack of trust and confidence that I have in this President, and secondly because of the pattern of experience. When I got elected in 1992 and began service in 1993, this President inherited the question of Somalia which President Bush had started as a humanitarian rescue effort. President Clinton turned that into a national tragedy, a loss of our troops as we saw our troops drug through the streets of Somalia. Where are we in Somalia 4 or 5 years later? Just a few days ago 60 were killed in Somalia. Then we had Haiti, our second experience in nation-building. And what have we done in Haiti? We have traded one corrupt government for supporting another corrupt government at the cost of billions to our taxpayers. This President and this administration opposed an international pan-African force in Rwanda before the genocide of our time took place. That was the experience then, they said no troops then, and after the genocide we sent our troops into that area. Bosnia. Time and time again we have set deadlines for our troops in Bosnia, and our troops are still in Bosnia and our troops are spread thin across the globe with these deployments from this President, this administration. Only after Congress stepped in and made sure that we micromanaged the military effort in Bosnia did we ensure that our troops would not be killed, that they would have adequate equipment and that they would serve under United States command and not U.N. international command. We have no exit strategy. Our military is stretched to the limits. When the wives and mothers of our reserve forces call me, I am going to refer them to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and this President.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support this evening of the Fowler amendment. If we look at the Fowler amendment it really does not prohibit United States assistance to stop the bloodshed that we see in this region of the world. My colleagues, I do not think there is anyone who serves here among us that would like to see another person die, another person harmed, would like to see the continuation of tragedy in that part of the world that we have witnessed on television, we have witnessed in media accounts. We all want to see that end, but, my colleagues, we have been there and we have done that before. I have only served 6 short years in the House of Representatives, but from the time I came to first serve here we have seen what has happened under this administration. Again, I reiterate and recite the experience of Somalia. It started out as a humanitarian mission, a compassionate mission, and we were sucked into this conflict. If we look at the newspaper just a few weeks ago, we will see that 60 people were killed in Somalia; that, in fact, our policy failed there, our efforts failed, and the killing goes on. We spoke from the well here about Haiti, about a policy relating to Haiti. We spent $3 billion. We are the most compassionate government and Congress on the face of this Earth to try to bring peace and order and stability to Haiti and other nations. I say that tonight Haiti is just as unstable as it has ever been and, again, we have turned from one set of dictators to another set of dictators. We saw the example of Rwanda and how this administration failed to act when we had the greatest genocide in the history of my lifetime, my short lifetime, that only after continuous pleas of the United Nations were rebuked. I spoke here on the Floor of the House and others did asking that the United Nations be allowed to send a pan-African force with no American troops there to stop the situation from turning into a disaster. We knew what was going to happen, and this administration blocked that effort. In Bosnia, we heard about the quarter of a million people who have lost their lives there. I have been to Sarajevo and I have looked across the parks in Sarajevo that now have the white crosses of the tens of thousands who died. Why did they die? They died because of the failed policy of this administration. They did not come to the rescue of the people when they needed it. A quarter of a million had to die and advisors from this administration, who we talked with, resigned in disgust. They kept people from protecting themselves in that region, and that is why we had that quarter of a million die. We were promised time and time again here that our troops would be gone, thousands of troops gone, and we still have 6,000 to 8,000 troops in that area and we were told when we visited there recently that, again, it takes 10,000 to support the several thousand that we now have there years later. So, yes, we want to stop violence. Does nation building work? Sometimes a thousand years of conflict cannot be resolved by our troops or our fine efforts. Tonight, as we are here enjoying the comforts of the United States, there are 30 armed conflicts in the world. There are people dying throughout the world for various reasons in almost every hemisphere. Can the United States be the policeman of the world? I say that we cannot. Can we support organizations like the United Nations, who should go in and take actions? Yes, we should. Should we support NATO? Yes, we should. Have we helped NATO over the years to build forces to resolve conflicts in the European theater? Yes, we have. We have been good neighbors. We have tried to assist but, again, we have been there, we have done that. Let me say finally why we are in the situation in Kosovo, and that is again because of a failed policy by this administration.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House tonight to talk once again about the drug situation in the United States and the various questions related to drug policy that face the United States Congress. I had the privilege to be named as the chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the House of Representatives, which will be charged with both authorization responsibility as it relates to national drug policy and also oversight of our drug policy for the House of Representatives as we begin to try to fashion a coherent policy for the United States. It is my privilege tonight to again bring to the attention of my fellow Members of Congress and also the American people the situation we have facing us relating to the ravages of illegal narcotics. It is interesting that, at this hour, the President of the United States is in Central America, and he is there because 9,000 people died in a natural disaster, Hurricane Mitch. It is rightful that this Nation try to assist those countries in Central America, other allies and friends, neighbors to the south who have seen the ravages of a natural disaster. However, those 9,000 people killed by a natural disaster do not equal those killed in the United States just in 1 year due to the drug abuse problem and illegal narcotics. Drug abuse killed, last year in 1998, 14,218 Americans at a cost of $67 billion. These are the ravages of a war on drugs that we have been losing, a man-made disaster that has taken thousands and thousands and thousands of lives. Just during the time of the Clinton administration, before it expires in its 8 years, over 100,000 Americans will die because of drug-related deaths. In my area in central Florida, and I brought this little clipping from the newspaper, this headline of the Orlando Sentinel, ``Drug deaths top homicides,'' and this is from the last few weeks of last year, December 23, 1998, the headline disclaiming that, in peaceful central Florida, affluent to good economy, the drug deaths are now topping homicides as a cause of death in our area. That is why I believe this particular problem is so important to me. It is not just central Florida where we have a problem. A recent DEA report says that close to 4,000 Americans have died in each of the last 3 years from heroin-related overdoses. We are seeing more and more deaths as a result of high purity, high quality heroin that is coming into the United States. Additional statistics should alarm every Member of Congress and every American. More than 6 percent of the population over 12 years of age, 13.9 million people have used drugs within the past 30 days, according to official estimates. Rates of use remain highest among persons age 16 to 25. What is so devastating about the headline that I held up, the heroin deaths in my area, the drug-related deaths is, most of these are our young people, young teenagers in many instances who find themselves the victims of deadly drug overdoses. This age group is the most affected by the drugs that we see on the street. In fact, in our young teenagers, an astounding fact in the last 6 years, there has been an 875 percent increase in heroin use by teenagers, young people, again victims of high quality heroin and higher amounts of heroin being imported and transited into this country. The use of crack cocaine and powder cocaine rose gradually in the 1990s as young people's views of how dangerous they were began to erode. In general, crack use continues to show an upward drift in the lower grades. Again, these are among school children in 1998. And this is another disturbing trend we see again in a very young group of vulnerable Americans. The combination of low price and high quality has helped drive the number of heroin users in the United States from 600,000 to 810,000 in the past 3 years. This is according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and this is just a recent release of these statistics. Over 210,000 additional heroin users in the United States in just a short period of time. The Office of National Drug Control Policy also estimates that 59 percent of the estimated 176 tons of South American cocaine processed in 1998 was smuggled into the United States through Mexico. Mexico, in fact, is the leading smuggler of heroin, methamphetamine, and the base ingredient for methamphetamine, as well as other drugs coming into the United States. We know where heroin is coming from. We know where cocaine is coming from. We know where methamphetamine is coming from. That is why I was saddened and disappointed in this administration in, again, certifying the country of Mexico as fully cooperating with the United States in eliminating illegal narcotic production and trafficking when the facts are that Mexico is producing more heroin than it has ever produced. That is also according to our DEA, our Drug Enforcement Agency. Additionally, not only are they producing more heroin, more hard drugs, more heroin and more cocaine are transiting through Mexico in the United States than any other country. In fact, it is estimated that between 60 and 70 percent of all the hard narcotics that enter the United States transit through Mexico today. That is an alarming fact. What is even more disturbing is that, even given these facts, the administration again has certified Mexico as fully cooperating with the United States in trying to stop trafficking and transit and production of drugs, as is a simple request in the law that was passed by this Congress in 1986. Now some people would give Mexico the benefit of the doubt in this situation. I chaired a subcommittee hearing recently, and we had in before our subcommittee the DEA administrator Tom Constantine. Tom Constantine testified in our hearing, and he also testified in the other body, and this is what he stated. He stated the corruption among Mexican anti-drug authority was, and let me quote his exact words, ``unparalleled with anything I have seen in 39 years of police work.'' He added that the Mexican Cartel spends $6 billion a year to bribe Mexican government officials. That is more than one-third of the total U.S. anti-drug budget. Now that is they spend $6 million to bribe Mexican officials. So is Mexico fully cooperating when our chief drug enforcement officer for the Nation says he has never seen such corruption in nearly four decades of police work? Additionally, the incredible amount of money that is being spent for bribes and corruptions. What disturbs me after the testimony that I heard from Director Constantine was that Mexico has not only been involved in corruption, and that is from the lowest level, the policeman on the street, to the highest level in the former president's office, what has taken place now is narcoterrorism in its embryonic stages. What I mean here is that complete areas of Mexico have been taken over by narcotraffickers. We know that as a matter of fact. We have testimony that says that the Baja Peninsula, the entire western portion of Mexico, south of the United States and California, is now run by one of the drug cartels, completely controlled, completely corrupt, not only corruption where they have been bribing officials, but now a corruption far beyond that that deals with narcoterrorism, patterns that we have seen in Colombia and other areas where narcoterrorists have taken over. What they have done should scare every Mexican citizen, should scare every citizen of the United States. Just a few months ago, they lined up 22 individuals, women and children, and they were brutally slain. They have also taken police officers and slain them, propped them up in police cars, to use as an example. So this fear and intimidation in the Baja Peninsula is an example of a country losing control of an entire state and entire region and again should be a tremendous concern to we who share a 2,000 mile border. In addition to losing the Baja Peninsula, we have been told that the Yucatan Peninsula has also been taken over by narcoterrorists, that the government of that state, that Mexican state is totally corrupt, and also under the control of international Mexican drug dealers. It is rather sad and it is rather ironic that the President of the United States would go to Mexico, offer Mexico additional financial assistance, additional foreign aid from the United States, and additional benefits in trade and other assistance of a good neighbor, international finance help, when we have, again, a country which is totally consumed by this narcotrafficking. Ironically, the conference between President Zedillo and the President of the United States and others in that delegation was held in Merida, which is the principal city of the Yucatan Peninsula. In addition to those areas, other areas were told of Mexico. In the mountains to the south and west of Mexico City and entire states and regions are now controlled in a corrupt and terrorist fashion by narco- terrorists. Again our DEA, administration, other international observers, and press accounts document that Mexico is a country on the edge of being lost. How important is it that we get this situation under control? It is absolutely vital, because, again, we know exactly where the illegal narcotics are coming from. They are being both produced now in Mexico, again larger quantities of heroin being produced there, methamphetamine originating from Mexico and coming into the United States, transiting into the United States. How are they transiting into the United States? Through open commercial borders. And how did that take place? Through the United States extending a trade benefit to the country of Mexico through NAFTA, through other trade agreements, to be a good open trading partner. So in our effort to extend trade assistance and trade benefits to the country lying to the south of us, we are now seeing a dramatic increase, again with an open, nearly open commercial border, of hard illegal narcotics into the United States. Now, what do we get in return? We get in return a flow of drugs across the borders that is unparalleled in the history of the United States. Now, we have tried our best to be good partners with our neighbor, Mexico. Two years ago this Congress took up a resolution of decertification and, rather than decertify Mexico, we outlined about six agenda items that we would like Mexico to assist us with as, again, good partners. Having given them incredible finance benefits, bailing them out; having given them trade benefits that I have talked about, opening our commercial borders, we asked for a little bit of help in what we could see as a tide of illegal narcotics comes into our country. We outlined on this floor of the House of Representatives six simple requests and asked Mexico to assist with those items. Let me repeat some of those items, and, again, all passed by the House of Representatives some 2 years ago this month. First, we asked Mexico to allow our agents to protect themselves. Our DEA agents, our drug enforcement agents, in Mexico, to protect themselves. And also to authorize appropriate privileges and immunities for such agents. That is part of the language here. What have they done? Actually, they put a cap on the number of agents. Did they cooperate? When we found one of the most incredible scandals of money laundering and corruption that we have ever uncovered in the international scene in Mexico, with Mexican banking officials, did Mexico cooperate with the United States in trying to bring these corrupt Mexican bankers to justice? No. What they did should be offensive to every Member of Congress, everyone in our Federal law enforcement agencies. They threatened to indict our customs officials who uncovered this corruption. So was anything paid attention to by Mexico on the first item that we asked for some 2 years ago? Absolutely no. Actually, they took offensive action against the United States. They did not fully cooperate. In fact, they tried to block and penalize those involved in the investigation. We also asked Mexico to root out corruption and also to extradite major drug traffickers. Now, here we are, in March of 1999, and what has Mexico done with our second request, which was to extradite major drug traffickers? Not one major drug trafficker has been extradited from Mexico to the United States. Not one Mexican national to this day. So the second item of request, and a very specific item that this Congress asked of Mexico, has not been adhered to or met in any way by Mexico. The third request, and, again, let me take these right out of the resolution that was passed here in the House, we asked for assistance in securing a maritime agreement, a simple maritime agreement that would allow us to go after drug traffickers who were on the high seas and also in waters as Mexican nationals. To date, we have not had a maritime agreement signed with the country of Mexico. To my knowledge, there is only one other country in the entire region that has not signed a maritime agreement with the United States, and that is Haiti. And that is another sad example of a failure of this administration, which spent millions of dollars trying to build up the judicial system and the institutions in Haiti. Actually, we spent billions. And those dollars have been wasted, because there still is total disorganization in the Haitian government. There is corruption. It also has turned into a major drug trafficking area, and they have not even been able to seat a parliament to sign or agree on a maritime agreement. But, again, back to Mexico, we have a situation where, after repeated requests, Mexico still has not signed a maritime agreement to help us with international narcotics trafficking. Additionally, we asked in this resolution that Mexico assist with locating radar to the south. That is a simple request, because we know drugs transiting and trafficking through Mexico are coming in through the peninsula and it is a simple request to have them assist us by locating radar in the south. Have they done that? No, once again. Additionally, we asked them to crack down on corruption. And we have done everything we can to ask them to go after officials at the highest level and the lowest level in Mexico who are involved in illegal narcotics trafficking. And what are the comments that we get back? Again, I would defer to our chief drug enforcement agent when he says that he has never seen a situation in four decades so rife with corruption, a situation where it is almost impossible to trust any agency, where there is only a handful of people that will assist in any way in the country. So these are the requests that the United States Congress made of Mexico some 2 years ago, asking them to assist us. Even the other body passed a resolution asking that Mexico assist the United States. To date, we have not had a satisfactory response from Mexico in this regard. At this juncture we are at an important point in our deliberations, as far as the United States House of Representatives is concerned, as to what we do to get Mexico to comply. I personally would not like to have to decertify Mexico, however, a resolution has been introduced in the House of Representatives by the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), and he has been joined by others, and there are more and more folks in the House that would like to decertify Mexico. We held a hearing last week and asked the General Accounting Office to report to the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform about the situation in Mexico. We asked the GAO to give us the straight scoop, to tell us what is going on in Mexico. Do they deserve certification; are they cooperating? The GAO testified and summarized some of the problems with Mexico, and let me read them for the Record. Number one. Mexico is one of the largest centers for narcotics- related business in the world. Number two. Mexico is still the principal transit country for cocaine entering the United States. Number three. Mexico is either a producer, refiner, or transit point for cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin. Number four. Mexico is a major hub for the recycling of drug proceeds. Number five. Mexico's Juarez drug trafficking organization is as powerful and as dangerous as Colombia's Medellin and Calais cartels used to be. Number six. Mexico's poorest border and the dawning volume of legitimate cross-border traffic provides nearly limitless opportunities for the smuggling of illicit drugs and the proceeds of sales of these drugs. And the seventh item that GAO covered in reviewing what is taking place is that several years ago the United States gave 72 Hughey helicopters and four C-26 aircraft for narcotics operations, as a good neighbor, as a friend, to try to get Mexico to use these in going after trafficking and eradication of the crops there. Unfortunately, Mexico has not provided the resources to keep these helicopters and aircraft flying, even after a promise of using them in the future, which they have not done and not made an effort. So here we have the testimony from the General Accounting Office of the United States which documents very clearly all the points that I have made previously in analyzing whether or not Mexico is fully cooperating with the United States to do two things, one, to stop the production of illegal narcotics and, two, to stop the transiting, and those are really the cornerstones of the certification law. Many folks do not understand, even those in Congress do not understand, the certification law. The certification law is quite simple. It asks those two things: stop producing drugs; stop transiting in drugs. The Department of State and the President must certify to the Congress that a country is, and the term is, ``cooperating fully'' to do those two things. Now, what do they get in return if they cooperate fully? They are certified as ``fully cooperating'' and then are eligible for United States foreign assistance. So what they get in return for being certified that they are ``fully cooperating'' is United States foreign assistance in the form of foreign aid, in the form of trade benefits, and in the form of international finance support. So the question before the Congress in the next few days and few weeks is, as we conduct this investigation, this review of who is helping us in this war on drugs, and particularly the biggest offender, the biggest source of illegal narcotics, is Mexico fully cooperating? The evidence to date does not lead us to believe that they are fully cooperating. The evidence to date does not lead us to believe that they should be certified as fully cooperating. The evidence is pretty clear to date that Mexico should not receive benefits of the United States government because they are not cooperating, because they are the biggest source of deadly drugs and narcotics coming into the United States across our borders from Mexico. Again, if we review what we requested 2 years ago from the list of requests, can we say that they have cooperated? The answer is unequivocally no, they have not cooperated with any of these requests. They have not been a good ally. They have not been a good friend. And the result, as we saw, is devastating: 14,218 Americans died last year as a result of drug-related deaths. Over 100,000 will die. Many more than died in hurricane Mitch, the natural disaster that I spoke of as I began my talk. And they are dying today. They are dying in this city, in Washington, D.C.; they are dying in Orlando, Florida; they are dying in Plano, Texas, and across our great land. We have a responsibility to our people. We have a responsibility to the laws that we have passed. We must hold these countries accountable. We must find some mechanism to stop drugs at their source, to stop drugs where they are trafficking from, and to make certain that we take this death and destruction off the streets of the United States of America. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, we will continue our review, our investigation, and our oversight of Mexico's cooperation with the United States, and we will find some mechanism to ensure cooperation. We will find some mechanism to stop these illegal narcotics. I intend to work with my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol in an effort to see again that we bring this situation under control and that we hold those responsible accountable and that we stop this death and destruction that is at our doorstep, not just in my hometown but throughout our land and throughout our Nation. I will continue to come to the floor every week and discuss this situation as it relates to the national narcotics and drug abuse problem that we have. We will find solutions. Again, I have pledged that. And to work with those on the other side of the aisle to find solutions to this and to my colleagues again down the hall on the other side of the Capitol.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House tonight and the American public to talk about a problem which I believe is our biggest social problem as a country, our biggest social problem as a Congress. That is the problem of illegal narcotics and the damage it is doing to our population, and particularly to our young people across this land. Some people in Congress or some people in leadership positions would have us think that the Y2K problem is the major problem, or that other dotting I and crossing T of legislation is the major problem facing Congress. But I believe that we have no more important responsibility as legislators of this Nation than to see that we do the best job possible in addressing a problem, an epidemic that is ravaging havoc, particularly among our young people. The statistics are mind-boggling. Last year over 14,200 Americans lost their lives because of drug-related deaths. Let me cite a few other statistics that every Member of Congress and every American should be aware of, when they turn away from the question of a drug problem, when they are given some other problem, smoking or Y2K or whatever the issue of the day may be that rates in the polls. Let me talk about the hard facts of what illegal narcotics are doing to us as a Nation. The overall number of past month heroin users increased 378 percent from 1993 to 1997 in this country. Between 1992 and 1997, drug-related emergency room episodes nationwide increased 25 percent, and they increased 7 percent between 1996 and 1997. Between 1993 and 1997, LSD emergency room incidents increased 142 percent; not declined, but inclined. Additionally, from 1993 to 1997, our youth aged 12 to 17 using drugs has more than doubled. It has increased 120 percent. There has been a 27 percent increase between 1996 and 1997. This is a 1998 national household survey. In 1998, more than three-quarters, actually 7 percent, of our high school teens reported that drugs are sold or kept at their schools, an increase of 6 percent over 1996. During 1997, statistically significant increases in heroin emergency room incidents were observed in Miami, a 77 percent increase; in New Orleans, a 63 percent increase; in Phoenix, a 49 percent increase; and in Chicago, a 47 percent increase. Let me also add this statistic. Significant increases in methamphetamine, speed, emergency room incidents were observed in Detroit, a 233 percent increase; Seattle, a 207 percent increase; Atlanta, a 151 percent increase; and St. Paul, Minneapolis, 110 percent increase. Mr. Speaker, we have, as a result, 1.8 million Americans behind bars, and the estimates are 60 to 70 percent of those Americans behind bars are there because of a drug-related offense. What is absolutely staggering is the cost of all of this to the American taxpayers. Let me tell the Members, from the drug czar's office in a recent report, what the cost is to the American taxpayers. American taxpayers footed a $150 billion bill for drug-related criminal and medical costs in 1997 alone. That is more than what we set in our 1997 Federal budgets for our programs to fund education, transportation improvements, agriculture, energy, space and all foreign aid combined. That is the cost to this Nation. One of the most staggering statistics, and I have quoted this before on the floor of the House of Representatives, is that our young people, our kids from age 12 to 15, in this population range, first-time heroin use, which has proven to kill, deadly heroin, surged a whopping 875 percent from 1991 to 1996. Mr. Speaker, what concerns me as someone from a wonderful district in central Florida, my district runs from Orlando to Daytona Beach, is not just the national statistics, the national impact, the national lives that are lost, but the local devastation that this problem has imposed on my rather affluent, good economy, highly educated population. A wonderful placid area. Mr. Speaker, every time I pick up the paper, and here is the latest newspaper, another individual, this one the latest, a death of a woman, age 38, died of a heroin overdose this weekend in central Florida. And this is in addition to another young man who died a horrible death, the sheriff told me, in a central Florida restroom of a heroin overdose. A recent headline in my area newspapers stated that drug overdose deaths exceeded homicides, and most of these were heroin, a very deadly drug which has come across our border and into our streets in record numbers. Now, how did we get ourselves into this situation? Let us go back to 1993 when the Clinton administration took over and they had a majority in both this House and the other body. What did they do? They changed our national drug policy. Under the Reagan administration, and I was there, I worked as a staffer for Senator Hawkins in the 1980s, there were many initiatives adopted by Congress that tried to get a handle on the national and international drug problem that at that time was facing Florida and our country. What we did was a number of things. First, we tried to stop drugs at their source. Then we created an Andean Strategy, eradication of crops of coca and heroin at their source. We also tried to interdict drugs using the military, using whatever means we had available, our Coast Guard, to stop drugs before they got into our border. And then we tried tough enforcement. What happened in that period of time, from 1992 to 1995, is that the Clinton administration made a policy decision to cut some of those programs. They cut interdiction from $2 billion to $1.2 billion in 1995. So, they went down 37 percent in the period from 1992 to 1995. The international programs to stop drugs at their source, the Andean Strategy, stopping drugs by eradicating the drugs and by crop substitution programs and other programs that stop drugs as they were being produced in the fields, was cut from $633 million to $289 million in 1996, a 54 percent decrease. These are the figures. Let me put these up here. Again, a 37 percent decrease in drugs interdiction budgets and the source country programs, the international programs. These are the exact figures, a 53 percent decrease. So what happened there? We had, in fact, a flood of drugs coming into this country. For example, with those decisions came some administrative decisions and let me cite some of those again that took place in the period of 1994 and 1995. National Guard container searches using the military to help in the war on drugs dropped from 237 in 1994 to 209 in 1995. Other National Guard workday drug interdictions fell from 597 in 1994 to 530 in 1996. Drug interdiction budget and asset cuts in the Department of Defense in 1995. The flight hours devoted to counterdrug missions was decreased from 51,000 to 50,000 in one year, and also shipdays active in drug interdiction were cut from 2,268 in 1994 to 1,545 in 1995. As a result, we have seen a flood of illegal narcotics coming into the United States. Additionally, there were some policies at that time that did incredible damage to us as a Nation. In addition to the source country decreases, in addition to drug interdiction cuts in the activities of the military, the administration first out cut the office of the drug czar and the drug czar's budget. The next really offensive move by the administration was to appoint a Surgeon General who sent a message to our young people of ``Just say maybe.'' Additionally, what hurt us tremendously in the effort to curtail cocaine production, coca production and also heroin production, was the abolition and the decision by the administration to stop a shootdown policy. We had provided information and assistance to South American countries, primarily Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, which were engaged in trying to curtail illegal narcotics trafficking and we provided them some information and assistance. A liberal decision out of one of our agencies stopped that type of assistance and, in turn, there was a period in which this shootdown policy was shot down by this administration, and it took a concerted effort and over a year to get that put back in place. We have done that. And, of course, they took the military out and cut the Coast Guard budgets, so we saw a flood of illegal narcotics coming into this country. During the period from 1995 onward in the country of Colombia, another administrative action did a great deal of damage. It was the policy of Congress, and we passed laws, we passed appropriations, asking that assistance go to Colombia. Because of concern of human rights violations, because of other problems with the last administration in Colombia, the administration basically stopped getting helicopters to Colombia, getting resources to Colombia, getting assistance to stop the production of coca and also heroin poppies in that country. What has happened in the meantime is an incredible flood of coca cultivation. In fact, the subcommittee which I chair recently visited Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico and Panama, and I will report on that in just a minute. One of the things that we found that was most startling was that now Colombia produces more cocaine than any other country in the world. It formerly was a processing center for cocaine and now is a producer. This policy, again from the 1993 to 1995, 1996 period of the administration, basically shut down our efforts and our assistance to Colombia to stop illegal narcotics cultivation, so we have cocaine major production there. Additionally, we had an incredible flood of heroin coming out of Colombia. It is coming up through the Caribbean into Florida and it is also coming up through and transiting through Mexico, working with the Mexican cartels. So these are the results of a failed policy that this administration adopted some years ago. The death in our streets, the dramatic increase in heroin on our streets. That cultivation is there for a reason. It is specifically because of a failed policy. Now, recently I received, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, a presentation by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The 1999 proposed drug control strategy, and also the budget for this administration. I have raised some great concerns about this budget and this strategy. This is a strategy for losing. This is not a war on drugs. This is a mild effort to eliminate some drug trafficking, some drug production. I believe that we can expedite what is proposed in this strategy. I believe there are some fundamental flaws in what has been proposed by the administration and this is a losing strategy and a losing budget and we certainly should have learned from the past. First of all, the most effective way to stop drugs are to eliminate drugs at their source. If one cannot grow coca, they cannot produce cocaine. There have traditionally only been two countries that have produced cocaine in large quantities: Bolivia and Peru. Both of those countries, where we visited and met with the presidents of those countries, have committed within the last 2 or 3 years, working primarily with this new majority in Congress, to eradicate drugs at their source. Very cost-effective. Very few dollars spent. Now, we learned through the budget that was proposed from 1991 to 1995 how not to do things and it is amazing that this new budget by this administration does not address proper funding for the microherbicide program. That is a program to eliminate drugs through a chemical process, conducting the R&D to deal biologically with the production of coca and other hard drugs such as heroin and poppies. Did we not learn that when we cut Customs and interdiction and do not properly fund them that drugs come from where they are grown to the next stage? Again, the President's budget, the President's strategy is lacking in adequate funding to provide the resources necessary to stop drugs at their next stage. And each of these stages I view as cost- effective frontiers in this effort. Once we get to the streets, once we get to local enforcement, it is extremely expensive and costly in lost lives and enforcement to try to catch those drugs when they are in our schools and in our communities and with our young people. This budget by this administration also fails to address one of the most fundamental needs, and that is that we have proper intelligence, adequate intelligence. If I have learned anything in this war on illegal drugs, it is that intelligence is so important, particularly in enforcement and interdiction and even eradication. If we know where the drugs are, if we know who is dealing the drugs, if we have the proper intelligence, we can save lives. Again we can cost-effectively stop traffickers in pursuit of their deadly profession purveying, again, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and other hard drugs. So, not spending the adequate resources or funding for intelligence is lacking in the President's strategy and in the drugs czar's proposal to Congress. Once again, we have seen the cuts for the Coast Guard that the administration made, and I cited some of those just a few minutes ago, that were mistakes and will be mistakes in this budget. So they have not adequately funded the operations of the Coast Guard. Let me give an illustration in central Florida. Some of the heroin that we have coming into central Florida has transited through Puerto Rico. Why through Puerto Rico? This is a new pattern in the last 5, 6 years. Because back in 1995, this administration and the years before that, several years before that cut the Coast Guard operations almost 50 percent. The Coast Guard is the line of defense around Puerto Rico and has kept that secure, again, through the 1980s and early 1990s from drugs transiting through there. That Guard was let down. Here again, an incredible error on the part of the administration and the drug czar's office. The President's strategy, if you call it a strategy, is to let down the funding for the Coast Guard for operation and maintenance, one of the most important ingredients for success. Finally, properly funding U.S.-Mexico border security. Now if we know that 60 to 70 percent of the hard drugs coming into the United States are coming in through Mexico, transiting through Mexico, then we know where we have a major drug transiting problem. It does not take rocket science to figure this out. So, again, we have another perimeter of defense that is not being secured by the proposal of this administration. What is of major concern to me is that some of the money in this budget in big chunks is being spent to correct mistakes and errors. One of the biggest mistakes and errors that we found in visiting some of the producing and transiting countries that our subcommittee visited was in Panama. In Panama, the United States of America is getting its clock cleaned. There is no other way to put it. We have been out-negotiated. We have lost basically our interest in the Panama Canal. We will be turning over, we will be giving the keys to the Panama Canal. I wanted to pull out my keys here as an illustration. These are the keys to the Panama Canal. We will be giving them to Panamanian officials by December of this year. What is scary is all of our forward drug reconnaissance efforts are located in Panama right now as we speak. The administration is scrambling at this hour because they lost the treaty agreements. They could not negotiate them. They got to the end. The whole thing collapsed. We are turning over $10 billion in assets, 5,000 buildings. We basically in May have to stop all of our overflights. So they are scrambling now to find another location, which we asked questions about, for our forward reconnaissance in the war on drugs. They will probably be relocated in Ecuador and also in Aruba and that area as they, again, are working at this point to patch together some forward reconnaissance operation. Not to mention that we will have to relocate such assets as AWACS and other reconnaissance equipment and airplanes from that area. So the situation in Panama is pure chaos. The situation regarding even the operation of the ports, we were told that corruption has dictated how the awards for control of those ports will be determined, and that the Red Chinese, in fact, will control one of those port activities and gain that through corrupt activities. A very scary scene, when it comes to dealing with the Panama Canal, with the billions of United States dollars invested in that area all lost. Also, from my perspective, the war on drugs, where we are being booted out, and at great cost in this budget, as I started to say, one of the biggest items is moving that operation, which will cost the taxpayers $73.5 million. I think that is just the tip of the iceberg. So those are how some of the dollars are being spent in a strategy that does not make sense. If you think that the administration would want to spend more than we spent last year and would come out and say we need to spend more resources, I am not a big spender, I am one of the lowest spenders in Congress, but of all of the things we should be spending more money on, it is this effort, whether it is education and prevention and treatment and interdiction, law enforcement, but actually from a total spending of $17.9 billion in last year's full appropriations for this effort to stem illegal narcotics, the administration drops down to $17.8 million, 109 net million dollars less in spending. In addition, if we add in the mistakes to correct in Panama, we are probably looking at $250 million in funds less than we spent the year before. Additionally, what concerns me is that the administration talks a good line about helping our communities' education and prevention. I might say that a Republican Congress added $195 million for the ads that are now being aired on television for the information program that is being conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and matched by the private sector. But, additionally, the administration played games with their proposal and their budget and their strategy by not funding some of the programs that we passed. For example, the Drug-Free Communities Act, they came in $8 million below our authorization and request. So if we want to do something about drugs in our communities, we have got to interdict. We have got to educate. We have got to enforce. But we have to have an honest proposal on the table from the administration. I do not believe that is the case. I would like to turn now, to the latest chapter in the war on drugs, and I will be addressing the Congress and the Nation on a repeated basis. People may get tired of hearing about it. But, again, since it has such a big impact on our communities, I will be here talking about it. Since the Speaker of the House has given me that responsibility as chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, I will, again, be bringing this consistently to the attention of the public and the Congress. The latest chapter is another sad chapter and mistake. Again, I said earlier, if we knew where 60 to 70 percent of the drugs were coming from, we would do something about it. We would target that. Now, we know where 60 to 70 percent of the drugs are. These are not my figures. These are the administration's figures, the Office of Drug Control Policy, the Office of the Chief DEA Administrator of the land. These are, again, their figures. We know where hard drugs, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine are coming from. They are coming from Mexico. Again, the latest chapter is that, yesterday, the President of the United States, and last week he said he was going to do it, but he did it on the deadline, yesterday, March 1, he certified Mexico as fully cooperating with the United States on the war on drugs. Let me say something about the certification process since I helped draft that with Senator Hawkins back in the mid 1980s, that law. The law is a simple law. The law says that the State Department shall review the progress of every country that is involved in narcotics production and trafficking and determine whether they are fully cooperating with, eliminating, or helping to reduce drug production and drug trafficking. That is what certification is. They must certify honestly, and the President must present honestly whether a country is cooperating, fully cooperating, those are the terms of the law, in eliminating drug production and drug trafficking. Why are they certifying? They are certifying to make that country eligible for foreign aid, foreign assistance, foreign trade benefits, and foreign financial assistance of the United States. These are benefits of the United States, again, in trade and finance and foreign aid. So if they are fully cooperating, they are eligible for foreign aid and foreign assistance. It is a simple law. The law has been convoluted. The law has not been properly interpreted by this administration. It certainly has not been applied appropriately by this President. The President ironically went to Mexico and met with President Zedillo several weeks ago. He said Mexico should not be penalized for having the courage to confront its problems. Now, that is a new Clinton-speak. What are the facts about cooperation, full cooperation? What is the pattern of conduct of officials there in trying to stop production and stop trafficking. Let me quote, if I may, the DEA Administrator Tom Constantine who has great courage, an official of this administration, in charge of our Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. He testified in a recent Congressional hearing on the other side of the Congress, and let me quote, ``In my lifetime, I have never witnessed any group of criminals that has had such a terrible impact on so many individuals and communities in our nation,'' Mr. Constantine said. ``They have infiltrated cities and towns around the United States, visiting upon these places addiction, misery, increased criminal activities and increased homicides.'' ``There is no doubt that those individuals running these organized criminal drug-trafficking syndicates today are responsible for degrading the quality of life not only in towns along the Southwest border of the United States, but increasingly, cities in middle America.'' This is what the chief law enforcement officer of our Nation said regarding Mexico's participation. This article further went on to state, and let me quote this, that ``No major traffickers were indicted in Mexico last year; drug seizures dropped significantly; fewer drug laboratories were seized; total arrests declined; the number of drug cases dropped; and seizures of drug-carrying automobiles, boats, and trucks also declined.'' Is this a pattern of cooperation? Is this a pattern that deserves certification so that Mexico is eligible for benefits and foreign assistance of the United States? Let me cite from another article and some other statistics about Mexico's performance. Again, 60 to 70 percent of the cocaine and heroin that come into the United States come in through Mexico. It is estimated that 85 percent of the methamphetamine, the foreign methamphetamine comes in from Mexico. It is produced in Mexico. Another recent article said that Mexico has increased heroin production by sixfold in the last 2 years. Not only are they transiting hard drugs, they are now becoming a significant producer of heroin from that country. Chemical precursor laws are not being enforced in Mexico. Mexican heroin seized in the United States between 1995 and 1996 quadrupled. Now, another significant thing, and every American should listen to this, and every young person who is listening should listen to this, the purity of the heroin coming into the United States from Mexico and from these other countries in the last 2 years has jumped from a purity level of 7 to 20 percent to 50 to 76 percent. That is why we are seeing so many deaths. That is why we are seeing the destruction of so many lives, because this is deadly heroin. These are deadly drugs with high purity and high potency coming into the United States. And any time a young person or anyone else abuses these drugs and mixes it with anything else, they risk death and they risk destroying their lives. Last year, 15 metric tons of heroin came into the United States through Mexico. We had a 27 percent increase in heroin use in the United States between 1996 and 1997. So more heroin is coming in, more heroin is being used, and most of the heroin that we see, again, is coming through Mexico or now being produced in Mexico. Now, we are neighbors, we are partners, we are friends. There are millions of Mexican-Americans in the United States who are good citizens. We have a long relationship of friendly trade, of finance, communication, and cultural exchanges between our two countries. I think the United States, and the Congress in particular, and this administration, have gone even overboard to extend benefits to Mexico as a partner, as a friend, as an ally and a neighbor. We have given probably some of the best trade benefits to Mexico as to any country in the world. When Mexico's pesos were faltering and the economy was heading down the tubes a few years ago, we, as friends and neighbors, went in and helped bail them out. In return, we heard the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Jimmy Duncan), talk about jobs that are lost in the United States and lowered opportunity. And what has happened is we have actually given up much of our trade, much of our manufacturing to Mexico. We just got the recent figures for 1998, and our trade deficit was $15.7 billion. That means more goods being sold by Mexico in the United States, contributing to our whopping trade deficit. So here we are good friends, we are good allies, and we ask for cooperation, and what do we get? We get an unbelievable quantity and quality of hard, deadly drugs coming into our country from Mexico. Let me again cite the statistics of the cost of drug abuse in this country. Last year, we had 14,218 Americans, and this is actually last year. They have the wrong date up here. They were killed last year at a cost of $67 billion. This is the cost in lives and Americans who will no longer see the light of day. And if we calculate 60 to 70 percent of the hard narcotics coming into the United States, we can figure that we have 8,000 or 9,000 Americans dying from drugs that came in through Mexico. I am not the only one that questions the certification of Mexico, and this should not be a partisan question. Let me, if I may, read a quote from the minority leader of the House of Representatives. ``After reviewing the past year's record, I am compelled to disagree with the President's decision to certify Mexico as fully cooperating with our government in the fight against drugs.'' And that is the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), who said that in a quote last Saturday in the Dallas Morning News. So, again, there is bipartisan concern about what is happening with Mexico. Why that concern? The statistics, again, speak for themselves. Mexican drug seizures for opium from 1997 to 1998, a 56 percent reduction in drug seizures. Is this fully cooperating to stop drugs at their source or as they transit through that country? Cocaine, a 35 percent reduction in seizures in the period from 1997 to 1998. And if we want to look at methamphetamine, how it is affecting some of the heartland of America, about 85 percent of the methamphetamines in Minnesota is smuggled from Mexico. And this is the source, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sunday September 27th of last year. Again, hard drugs coming in through Mexico; Mexico certified by this administration. Finally, the DEA administrator, Tom Constantine, again questioned what this administration is doing and talked about Mexico. He said, ``The truly significant principals have not been arrested and appear to be immune from any law enforcement effort.'' So this administration has certified a country as fully cooperating that, again, is dealing in death and destruction at every level of our effort to eradicate illegal narcotics from coming into this country. Now, what is my role? Again, I chair the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform. Today I join my colleague, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), who introduced a resolution to decertify Mexico. I did not sign on that resolution, although I now support that resolution because of the evidence I have found. However, the Speaker has asked me and other chair members of the majority to conduct a thorough review of the drug policy of the Congress, the drug policy of the Nation and also of the certification and decertification of Mexico and other countries that are dealing in illegal narcotics. I, as chairman, intend to conduct that review to see if drug decertification is the answer, to see what other mechanisms we can enact to hold Mexico's feet to the fire and other nations who deal in illegal narcotics and do not make an effort to fully cooperate and yet receive benefits from the United States Government. So that will be my task and my responsibility to work with others. We launch that investigation, that review and that oversight process tomorrow. One of the subcommittees of the Committee on International Relations will begin tomorrow looking at the drug policy issue in Latin America. We know, again, that almost all of the heroin coming into the United States, the huge quantities of heroin, comes from Colombia and is also produced in Mexico and transits to the United States. We know that cocaine is produced in Peru and coca in Bolivia, and now a majority of cocaine in Colombia, and that also is transited through Mexico. So we know where the problem is. What we do not know are the solutions on how to get a handle on it. We do know that we must restore a few dollars into the programs that are most effective, the most cost effective. Stopping drugs at their source, where they are grown, the crop eradication programs, we have now seen are so effective. And substitution programs in Bolivia and Peru we know are stopping production, they are stopping cultivation and providing alternative development for people in those regions so they do not go back to producing the basis for hard drugs. We know we have to work with President Pastrana, the new president in Colombia. We must get him the resources to eradicate the hectares of poppy that have grown while the administration stopped equipment and resources from reaching that region. We know we must do that. We must get a handle on the situation in Mexico. Mexico is losing control of its Nation. The Baja peninsula is now controlled by drug lords. Ironically, where the President met, in Merida, the Yucatan peninsula is now controlled by the drug lords; and other areas, regions and states of Mexico are totally controlled by narco-terrorists who are raining destruction, who have gone from corruption to terrorist intimidation of people in that country. I will say that there are people at the top, President Zedillo, a brave attorney general who we met with, that are trying their best, but I am concerned that they are about to lose control of their nation to narco-terrorists. So we must find a solution. We must find some way to hold their feet to the fire, to aid them, as good neighbors. We must reach across the aisle when the minority leader of the House says that what the President has done is not correct relating to Mexico, and we must find a solution that is correct. We cannot afford to let this go on. We cannot fill our jails with any more Americans. We cannot subsidize the quarter of a trillion dollar loss to our economy, not to mention the destroyed lives of our young people and other Americans who could have been so productive. So that is our task. It is an important task. It is, again, I believe the biggest social problem facing this Nation. Stop and think if we could eliminate 60 percent of the crime. Stop and think if we could eliminate 60 to 70 percent of those deaths. Stop and think if we could have more productive citizens rather than people strung out on drugs, ruining again their lives and their loved ones' lives, of what we could do in this Nation. So I believe it is an important task. I do not plan to let up for a minute. I do not have the answers at this point, but we will review every possible solution. We extend our hand of cooperation across the aisle to our colleagues and to anyone who is interested, who wants to come forward and help us with a problem that we must address, that we must resolve in the best interest of the Congress, in the best interest of our Nation, and in the best interest of those who hope to have any future in this country, our young people.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, as Congress this week begins the debate on reinstating the independent counsel law, I think, as a student of history, it is interesting to review what has taken place regarding that law. Regarding congressional action on that matter certain questions are raised: Should an administration investigate itself? Should the alleged wrongdoing of a major administration official be left to the attorney general or to a special counsel or an independent counsel? Those are the questions that are now being asked as we face the expiration of the current independent counsel law. Some say the problem is the law, some say the problem is the independent counsel. It is interesting to note, if we review history, what goes around comes around both in law and also in politics. A brief review of the independent counsel law, if folks would just take a moment to do that, reveals that we are about to return to where we started if the independent counsel law is not renewed. Mr. Speaker, even in 1972, President Nixon suggested the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal. As we know from history, President Nixon in 1973 also ordered the Attorney General to fire the Watergate special prosecutor. Those actions led Congress and President Carter to enact in 1973 an Ethics in Government Act. All totaled, the special prosecutor law was invoked 11 times from 1978 to 1982 with three appointments of special prosecutors. In 1983, that law was revised and renewed for another 5 years. In 1987, with the Iran-Contra statute, when it came up for reauthorization, and although it gave great heartburn, President Reagan in December of 1987 signed the reimplementing bill into law. With three investigations during the Bush administration, President Bush let the statute expire in 1992. With a new administration and new scandals, the Attorney General, Janet Reno, under the general law authority, appointed Robert Fisk as a special counsel, not an independent counsel, but under her general authority to investigate Whitewater, and she initiated that action on June 30, 1994. Vowing to head up an administration with the highest ethical standards, President Bill Clinton took the step of being the first President since Carter to endorse the institution of an independent counsel law. On July 1, 1994, President Clinton signed the reauthorization bill and commented about the law, and let me quote from the President: ``a foundation stone for trust between the government and our citizens.'' He dismissed charges that it had been, and I quote, ``a tool of partisan attack and a waste of taxpayer funds.'' Instead, he said the statute was, and let me quote, ``has been in the past and is today a force for government integrity and public confidence,'' end quote. The Attorney General spoke before Congress, the same Attorney General who will be having the Department of Justice advocate the end of the independent counsel law, and stressed the government's and her own support for the bill, and let me quote what she said: As a vehicle to further the public's perception of fairness and thoroughness, and to avert even the most subtle influence of what may appear in an investigation of highly-placed executive officials. How interesting it is how the law comes around and goes around. How interesting it is that today the shoe is on the other foot. The administration is about to advocate the abolition of the Independent Counsel law. I think we just need to take a few minutes and look at history and see how people have taken various stands, depending on whose ox is getting gored. I like to reflect on history, and I think this is a little lesson in history, particularly as it deals with the appointment of an Independent Counsel.