John Mica

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the total amount of money that comes from Washington, DC, towards local education, I believe, is about 5 percent of all education funding.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I remember serving in the legislature and I saw that bureaucracy. I saw the huge bureaucracy that we created and that we force, and I cannot solve those problems today with this bill, but what I can do is to help this House as it makes those important choices, and we will, by this amendment and by the agreement that we have reached, restore title I to its level of funding for last year. So this is an important amendment. Again, it is a clear choice. Do we spend the money on bureaucrats in Washington, or do we spend it in local classrooms on students and teachers?

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I heard with great dismay the other side of the aisle, some of the previous speakers, talk about the Republican extreme agenda. I want to talk about the Republican agenda and respond to their comments. I have heard that, I hope, for the last time. They talk about Republican proposed changes in education, in job training, environment, and welfare. I want to talk about my perspective and how I came here and what I saw and what we tried to do. First of all, let us look at education. We did not propose any cuts over the next 7 years in education. We actually proposed an increase in expenditures of $24 billion. It is not just how much money you spend on education or any other program. We are spending more money, billions of hard earned taxpayers' dollars on education, we are spending more on programs for education. The question is how you spend the money and what results you get. Let us look at the results. Our children have diplomas they cannot read. I have 71 percent of my students in central Florida in one community college requiring remedial education upon entry. Is that success? We are paying for metal detectors in our schools instead of teachers. We have built an administrative bureaucracy, starting in Washington, in Atlanta, in Tallahassee, where we are paying administrators and we do not have money to pay teachers. Teachers and students are our last priority. It is this bureaucracy that we have built and we are supporting that the American people do not want. Job training. Here is an article from several weeks ago in my local paper. This is a State of Florida report. State and Federal governments spend about $1 billion a year on vocational job programs in my State. Less than 20 percent of those who enter the job training program ever complete it. Of that, 19 percent get a job. This is what the argument is about here. This is what it is about. We are spending incredible amounts of money, our people are out busting their buns sending taxpayer dollars here, and the job training programs in my State, one State, $1 billion, a total failure. This is what the argument is about. This is what the shutdown was about, because for 40 years they did it their way, and this is the result. I have students that cannot read. You try to employ someone and get them with basic skills and you cannot do it. The environment. We had a debate here yesterday about the environment. Superfund, supposed to clean up hazardous waste sites. What has it done? The money has gone for attorneys and studies. In Florida, we have one hazardous waste site that has had six project managers. One of the project managers came back and is now a consultant. I sat on the committee that oversees the EPA, and you will find that the people that work now as consultants are former EPA employees, about 80 to 90 percent of them. An incestuous relationship. A GAO study last year said that the sites that they picked to clean up, the few that they clean up, are not the sites that pose the most risk to our children's health and our public safety. Is what we are doing with your dollars, your taxpayer dollars in the environment, what we have done, what we have set up, is it effective? The answer is no. You are paying more and getting less. Forty years of tax-and-spend. They tried taxing you even more here. I submit the reason the American people feel like they have less is because they have less, because they have taxed you more in the past 3 years. You have less, you have less opportunity, and you have less left over in your paycheck, whether you are a senior citizen and they taxed your Social Security, whether they gave more money to those who wash up on our shores illegally than they gave in benefits to our veterans. That is what this is about. It took shutting government down. And then the President tried to embarrass us. He was as guilty as anyone in the process. He did not want to work together. He wanted to make political advantage of it. This is what it is about. Then Medicare. They destroyed Medicare. They are watching it die on the vine and they do not care about it. I have family members who are senior citizens that depend on Medicare. We want to save Medicare. We want to protect Medicare. They want to destroy it.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, first I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] for this amendment. It is an amendment that should pass overwhelmingly because EPA is off track. Now, I am a Republican, I have children and I support the mission of EPA. That mission is to clean up our environment, to clean up our land and our water, to clean up our air. But somehow that mission has gone astray. Let me give a couple of good examples. Mr. Chairman, I want to point out how EPA spends some of its money. Let me cite what EPA did to me, for example, with some of these funds. They sent an invitation around the Hill and they sent invitations to my office inviting us to attend an event. The only problem is that they sent it to me with the names of my two past opponents as staff assistants. So EPA was keeping a list of political opponents, sending an invitation to me with the name of two people, one who was going to run against me, did not file, and another one who filed and ran against me. Is this the right use of taxpayer money? Let me give another example. Here is EPA Watch, which watches over EPA and reports on their activities. EPA signed a contract with PTA-- and I am a past card-carrying member of PTA, I have children, I have belonged to the association--but they signed a grant, and basically the purpose of the grant was to get PTA to organize lobby against any of the proposals that we made for changes in the operations of EPA. Is that the right thing to do with the money? Listen to this. This is what EPA Watch says: Congressional sources close to the illegal lobbying issue expressed amazement that EPA, after all the scrutiny it has undergone, would dare to fund a newsletter with such an obvious political mission. I am for cleaning up the environment. I am for clean air, for clean water. I want my children to inherit a better land. But what are they doing with taxpayers' hard-earned money? We just heard an amendment about sending monkeys into space. I submit, Mr. Chairman, that this is monkey business in EPA that should stop, that in fact we should pass the Kingston amendment, that we should bring some sense, some purpose, some direction. If the office of compliance can spend their money on going after things of this sort and not requiring compliance with cleaning up the environment and the air, there is something wrong in the system. I support the effort of the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston]. Other efforts have been made to try to get that agency which is off course, on course. It is our responsibility to direct that agency in the way it expands our taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. I support that agency, I will do anything I can to help our environment but this agency has to have direction. Finally, there are almost 18,000 people in EPA. Twelve years ago there were about 6,000. There are 6,000 now in Washington, DC. These people have to find something to do. Eighteen thousand people on the payroll and they are not in your States. They are in regional offices and they are right here, 6,000 of them, within 50 miles of where I am speaking. They need direction. This Congress' responsibility is to give them direction. They should not be doing the things they are doing. They should be cleaning up the environment. I support the Kingston amendment and urge its adoption.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, there is an empty seat in the House of Representatives today, and there is a great void that will never be filled, and that is the void created by the death of my friend and our colleague, Bill Emerson. We will miss him. We send our condolences to his family. Some of the previous speakers have reflected on Bill and his many contributions. I am not sure if the pages and Members all know about Bill's great legacy, but Bill came here as a page and served in the Congress. I remember seeing back in the Cloakroom, there is a photo of Bill as a young man helping when the shooting occurred in the House of the Representatives. When nationalists fired into the House Chamber, Bill was one of the young pages helping Members back then who were wounded. That picture still hangs in the Cloakroom. Mr. Speaker, I came here as a freshman just several years ago, and Bill was doing the same thing, helping Members along the way, new Members like myself, to learn more about the House of Representatives and its procedures and how to go forward. He never changed his role. Bill Emerson was a tough bird, too. I remember talking to him as he was undergoing his treatment and giving him encouragement and also asking about some of my own dealings here. Should I move forward? Should I proceed? Sometimes I am pretty aggressive in my service. Bill, whether he was in the wheelchair taking chemotherapy or whether he was advising me as a new Member, he always said, ``Mica, give 'em hell.'' I always admired his counsel and his advice and his determination that we should serve this body with every ounce of vigor that we can muster, and he did that right to almost his last days. Now he has been taken from us. I remember him coming into this Chamber in his wheelchair and his concern was, and he expressed it to me, was not about his treatment but he said: ``Oh, darn it.'' He did not use those exact terms. His concern was that he did not want to miss his obligations to this body, his service to the House of Representatives. That was his concern right to the end, that he complete his service. We have an example by a life of an individual who served first his family, and then his State, Missouri, and this is a great loss also for our Nation to not having his service here. This Congress has a great void without the Bill Emerson who had a tough veneer but had a warm heart and a great record of service to this body that will never be matched. Bill, we miss you. But I want to tell you that I will be out here, Bill, and I will continue to ``give 'em hell,'' as you directed, and do the best I can to serve the constituents of my State like you served your State and our Nation. So long, Bill.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, first I have to take a moment and compliment Chairman Regula and his staff. They have done a tremendous job. I sometimes see him as having tremendous responsibility and wisdom in this process and he has been more than fair to me, he has been very fair to the State I represent, Florida, and very fair to the environment. I also would be remiss if I did not thank Secretary Babbitt. I flew up during the Easter recess and met with him. He responded to an environmental concern in Florida. And this Congress has responded to environmental concerns in my State, which is being pressured by environmental problems and concerns. When we come to Congress, however, we have an important responsibility, and that responsibility is to make choices. This is a tough choice because there are good, worthwhile programs. But I cannot think of anything that we do in the long term for so few dollars that makes such a big difference to what we are going to leave behind. In a few decades, most of us will be history. Some of us will be pushing up daisies and some of us will be someplace else, but the legacy that we leave behind will be determined today by this policy. When you have a program, and I consider myself a fiscal conservative, and I get up with some folks of a little bit different philosophy, last year I was here with the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] and now with the gentleman from California [Mr. Farr], certainly a little bit different philosophy, but we agree that this is a sound investment with our dollars, that we have a surplus in the fund of $12 billion and that we get $900 million in, and this is an investment for the future. My colleague, Mr. Shaw, from south Florida came up and spoke about what was happening in our State. I grew up in south Florida. I saw what happened in south Florida. I saw the mistakes that were made in south Florida. Today we can see where we developed to the Everglades and now this Congress has to appropriate a quarter of a billion dollars to take back some of that land. In my district, I am in central Florida and the same thing is happening there. We see the mushroom. Since I have been in office for a little over 36 months here, I have 2 new cities, one of 68,000 people, the third largest city in central Florida, in my district. I have another new city. The growth is phenomenal. And I will not get another chance. This is not a program where we are saying buy land and you do not want land out West. This is a program where local governments and State governments in concert with the Federal Government, and the way this darned thing should work, acquire land. We say that for children. I will not be here to enjoy it. We will not have another opportunity. I can tell you the developers are waiting with their plow. We are asking when you make these decisions, and I know they are tough decisions, I know the chairman is pressed to consider us, consider the legacy, consider these choices, and consider what we are going to leave behind us for this next generation and consider also that we will never get another chance in States like Florida and other areas, and again that this is a voluntary program and that is it a program of cooperation. I urge my colleagues, whether liberal, conservative, independent, moderate, Republican, Democrat, this is the chance to make a big difference in the environment that our children and grandchildren live in. This is a chance for them to inherit the earth, a part of that earth, and leave it a little bit better than we found it. I urge Members, I beg Members to consider this amendment to expand the funds in this particular provision offered by the good gentleman from California [Mr. Farr] and let us vote for this and vote for opportunity for the environment for the future.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I do not know. We do not have the 2,000 documents we requested, and I call on the Congress to issue the contempt citation.

Mr. MICA. Yes, I would be glad to.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, Shakespeare said, ``Something is rotten in Denmark.'' Mr. Speaker, I say something is rotten in the White House. I am talking today about the case of Filegate, which has raised so many eyebrows, which has raised so many concerns. Each day a new revelation comes out on this matter. Each day I continue to be shocked and the American people become more concerned about what they learned. First we heard that the FBI had turned over or the White House had obtained 330 names to peruse. We understand the list went from ``A'' to ``G.'' Then we heard the number raised to 341 names. Recently we heard the FBI state that requests were made for more than 400 files. I learned today that one file was returned on June 10. I learned also today that 71 files were turned over on June 17. What is shocking is I learned today, too, that the White House still has 17 of these files. Mr. Speaker, the more we learn about this situation, the more I become concerned. Mr. Freeh, the Director of the FBI, said that the FBI was victimized. I think the FBI was victimized. I think the Congress was victimized. Even the Washington Post, one of the administration's most ardent supporters, now feel in their editorials yesterday and today that they were victimized. Mr. Speaker, this all came about because the committee on which I served, Government Reform and Oversight, requested files. We requested files for almost 2 years, and what did we get? We got stonewalled. It got so bad that we had to issue this contempt report to John Quinn, counsel to the President, requesting this information after our preliminary investigation saw the misuse and abuse of the FBI and the IRS in the Travelgate fiasco. That is how this came about. The more questions that we see being raised, the more questions we have. We do not know how many files were obtained. We do not know how many files were copied. We do not know how the files were used. We do not know whose civil rights or privacy rights were abused. Filegate came to light because of our investigation. Most disturbing to me as a member of the committee that was investigating this, Government Reform and Oversight, is that the FBI files of three of our subcommittee staff directors were obtained by the White House. To me, this is a clear and direct violation of the firewall which has always existed between the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the chief Federal law enforcement agency of our Nation. The Committee on Government Reform and Oversight is charged with investigations and audits of the executive branch of Government. Our committee has been stonewalled in repeated requests for documents relating to travelgate during the past 2 years. Only after we took this drastic step of threatening to issue a contempt citation of Congress did we receive one-third of the documents requested. It was through these documents that we discovered the unbelievable tale of the misuse of FBI files in the manner we have heard described, the manner we see here. Mr. Speaker, in light of what has been revealed, I believe it is incumbent upon this Congress to move forward immediately and issue this contempt citation to Mr. Quinn and the others. It is not sufficient for the White House and Mr. Quinn to suspend Mr. Livingstone. It is now absolutely critical that the Congress obtain all of the 2,000 missing documents, the documents that have been withheld from this Congress, withheld from our subcommittee, and that we conduct a thorough and complete investigation and review of this matter and this entire sorry chapter in this administration.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House today to again call on the Speaker and House leadership to bring forward the contempt citation against Mr. Quinn, legal counsel to the President, and other White House officials who have been involved in keeping documents relating to ``Filegate'' from the Congress and also from the Special Counsel. I serve on the committee charged with the jurisdiction of investigations and oversight. It is the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. We have been investigating this matter now for over 2 years. We have requested files for over 2 years. The pattern of evasiveness, the pattern of deceit by the White House in keeping these records both again from the Congress, the Special Counsel, and our committee is abhorrent. Let me just cite from our report, the contempt proceedings that were offered to the House, some of the facts relating to this matter. This all deals with Travelgate which our subcommittee was investigating. Weeks after the firings of 7 long-time White House Travel Office employees, President William J. Clinton staved off a congressional inquiry into the growing controversy by committing to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks on July 13, 1993, and this is what the President said: ``You can be assured that the Attorney General will have the administration's full cooperation in investigating those matters which the Department wishes to review.'' No mention then of executive privilege from the President on withholding documents from the investigators. In fact this is quite unprecedented. Even in Irangate, President Reagan offered all materials to congressional investigators. This is almost unprecedented, and again an issue that does not deal with foreign policy or national policy but is an investigation of the conduct within the White House, that this information is kept from us. This is what the President said in January 1996, this year. He stated, ``We've told everybody we're in the cooperation business. That's what we want to do. We want to get this over with.'' Yet we still have not, as of this day, gotten one-third of the documents relating to this matter. Let me read really the essence of what this is about, and let me quote from notes from a White House aide that we obtained just recently this year, dated May 27, 1993. This is the date of the document. White House Management Review author Todd Stern wrote this. This is not the Republicans, this is a White House operative. He said: ``Problem is that if we do any kind of report and fail to address those questions, the press jumps on you wanting to know answers; while if you give answers that aren't fully honest, e.g., nothing re: HRC''--Hillary Rodham Clinton, he uses the initials--``you risk hugely compounding the problem by getting caught in half-truths. You run the risk of turning this into a cover-up.'' Now, I did not say this. Our committee did not say this. No Republican said this. This is a White House aide. We see why they have kept these documents from us. The fact is that two-thirds of the documents we sought, were sought by a bipartisan subpoena, have been withheld from the Congress by the White House. The fact is, we now know why the White House has stonewalled the Congress. The fact is, the White House in this case misused the IRS and the FBI, the chief law enforcement agency of this Nation, in an incredible abuse of power. The fact is, and this will come out, the civil rights, the privacy rights, the Hatch Act, all of these laws I believe we will find have been violated. These are the rights and the privacy of past and present Federal employees. One of the most egregious violations is that they obtained the files of three of our staff directors of our Investigations, and Oversight Committee, the one on which I serve. The fact is that more than 2,000 pages of documents are still being kept from the Congress, from the media, from the Special Counsel relating to this matter. I call on the Speaker, I call on Chairman Clinger, I call on the House leadership to bring forward to the floor of the House of Representatives this contempt citation. We must vote on it, and we must find Mr. Quinn and officials at the White House in contempt of Congress for their actions in this matter.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

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

Mr. MICA. I would like to respond, if I may, to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young]. First of all, we appreciate the gentleman's leadership on the issue, the leadership of the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence]. I thank the ranking member of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran], who has worked with us. Our intent is to provide health care to as many folks who served, and their dependents, as possible, and that is our sole intent, and we also know the fiscal constraints that the gentleman is under. I intend to support him on this next measure which would get that, and I do know the circumstances of our military personnel and their dependents who do not have this health care; visited in Europe and saw, and other places where our military, one-third of them, live in substandard housing, and I know the damage that this potential cut could do.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and I know where the cuts in our work force are taking place. We have heard of 273,000 employees downsized; 80 percent of the cuts in this administration have come out of the civilian defense force. We just heard the last speaker say, What is the threat? The threat is we have had the largest arms sale in the history of the world, and we have missiles, and we have subs, and we have all kinds of weapons. Pick up the newspaper today and we see the potential of the threat. And our No. 1 responsibility under the Constitution is what? To provide for the defense of this country. It does not say to get into all these programs. It is no problem for us to come here or this administration to come here and spend $2 billion on Haiti; $2 billion on Somalia; another billion in Rwanda; Bosnia, $5 to $6 billion. And then we talk about a missile defense of $5 billion. We are really standing still. We are losing ground. Mr. Chairman, two-thirds of our money to three-quarters of it is on salaries and retirement benefits. We are now paying more on interest on the national debt than we are in real dollars for our national security, our No. 1 responsibility under the Constitution. Mr. Chairman, we cannot afford to err. We cannot afford as a Congress to make a mistake. That is the threat. That is where the money is being spent and that is our obligation under the Constitution.

Mr. MICA. Again, I thank the gentleman, I thank him for agreeing to the colloquy, and I thank the ranking member.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word and continue with my colloquy. Again, as the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] has indicated, we have agreed to withdraw this amendment because we have an understanding, we believe, with him that this will be addressed in the conference committee. I believe the amendment that was offered needs further refinement, and by addressing this issue in conference we will have the time necessary to thoroughly examine all the ramifications of the proposal. It may be necessary, in fact, to expand the demonstration projects in the amendment to include all non-active-duty individuals eligible for military health care. Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate the dedication and commitment of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young] to resolving the deficiencies in the military health care system and his agreement to address these problems in conference. I have the honor of serving as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Service, and the issue of improving access to health care for military families was a subject of our subcommittee hearing on September 12, last year. We have gathered information on this important subject, and, as my colleagues know, it is vital to our military retirees, their survivors and families, and we ask again for the cooperation of the gentleman as this legislation and this bill move on to conference in trying to find a solution, and we understand that the gentleman intends to cooperate.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I rise to enter into a colloquy with the chairman of the Appropriation Subcommittee on National Security, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young]. As the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] indicated, we have agreed tonight to withdraw this amendment.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I serve on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Members have heard speeches today about filegate. I just wanted to tell my colleagues how this started. This started as a result of our inquiry into travelgate, which was an examination of misuse of the FBI, and also of the IRS, by the White House. As Members will recall, we asked for the release of documents that we found out about by accident, and we got 1,000 pages. That is how we found out about this. We stopped a contempt proceeding without receiving the other 2,000 pages. I think it is time that we bring that contempt citation back before the House of Representatives and get the rest of the information about this disaster. Mr. Speaker, I read this matter and I thought I was reading about the KGB, the way this operation took place. I ask the House to immediately take action, and if necessary, enact a contempt citation and obtain this information.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, we have been here and we have done that. These folks on this side has 40 years to get the finances of this Nation in order. We are here tonight, we have presented a balanced budget. The first thing this side did when we took over was we cut $20 billion worth of spending over the last Democrat Congress' spending. Last year we cut $23 billion, and we have already heard the President taking credit for reductions. The only reason these reductions have taken place is because we have been here and we kept our word. We came here and we did what we said we were going to do, and tonight we are going to do it again. We are going to bring the finances of this Nation in order. They may have to do it kicking and screaming and using false statistics and accusations, but we are sobering up and tonight is part of that process.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, this deals with another slightly different subject, but I rise to engage the chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Mr. Callahan, in a colloquy. I would like to ask, Mr. Chairman, that earlier I had intended to offer an amendment to increase funding for the Micro and Small Enterprise Development Program. Although I did not offer that amendment, I strongly support this program. This is a highly successful program that helps people help themselves. By helping poor people to increase their income and assets, we are enabling them to improve their own welfare, health, housing and education, all at a very small cost-effective investment. This is a program that works, and this is the type of activity that we as a Congress should be encouraging. Mr. Chairman, when the opportunity presents itself, as you go into conference with the other body, it is my understanding you will work with me to support additional assistance for the Micro and Small Enterprise Development Program.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana should be adopted overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives, and I commend the gentleman for his leadership on this issue. We serve on the same investigations and oversight subcommittee of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. We have looked at the lack of a national drug policy. We heard the chairman of this committee speak just a minute ago about 70 percent of the hard drugs coming into this country, we found in our committee examination, are coming in through Mexico. The United States has bent over backward to help Mexico and this Congress has aided Mexico with a trade agreement. I did not agree with some of the provisions of that particular trade agreement. This administration bailed out Mexico. I cannot think of a nation who has done more to help an ally, to help a partner in the Western Hemisphere than the United States or this administration or this Congress. And what do we get in return? Seventy percent of the illegal drugs. We even went so far as to certify Mexico as compliant and we decertified Colombia, yet the onslaught of hard drugs coming through Mexico is absolutely appalling. The results should astound every Member of Congress and every American. Look at this chart showing what has happened here since 1992 when this administration extended this helping hand. Our 12th graders, our 10th graders, our 8th graders are getting slaughtered. Cocaine is coming in record amounts, heroin is coming in, marijuana is coming in. This amendment sends a message to Mexico that this Congress, this administration, these representatives of the people who are seeing their children slaughtered in the streets, who are seeing juvenile crime skyrocket through the ceiling are saying, ``Hey, wait a minute, Mexico, we have taken it all we can and we are going to send you a message that we want this stopped.'' It is a very clear message. The latest data by DAWN is absolutely startling. Cocaine-related emergencies increased 12 percent; heroin- related episodes increased 27 percent. This is for the first half of 1995. Marijuana-related episodes, 32 percent. Methamphetamines, 35 percent. Designer drugs are killing our young people and creating crime; 70 percent of the crimes in my district are committed by people who are involved in narcotics and they are coming through Mexico. This sends a message: Stop. And we mean it.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I picked up this morning's newspaper with dismay and read about the President of the United States traveling across the country. I guess he was in Las Vegas yesterday looking for answers to some of the problems facing our Nation. In particular he said he is obsessed with the juvenile crime problems. So he is wandering around the country trying to find out what has caused juvenile crime. I submit, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, he does not really have to look too far. All he has to do is look at his policies and see what has generated crime particularly with our juveniles in this country. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that if we look at the policy of the past 40 years--the policy of the other side of the aisle, we will see what they have sown we are now reaping with our children. I submit that people who laughed at Dan Quayle when he talked about family values are now having a sober moment, and all we need do my colleagues, is look at what we have legislated in this country to see what our children are doing. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the President of the United States can offer curfews, he can offer uniforms, he can offer to regulate cigarettes, he can offer to put v-chips in televisions, and those are not the answers of what is wrong or what will cure the problems with our young people. I say to my colleagues that what this Congress has done, creating a system of dependency, creating a system of welfare, creating a system where a child has not seen a parent work, where we have lost the work ethic, where the answer is that government should come up with another program, another credit, another directive from Washington; that is what the answers have been, and this is what we receive. And then we look at the problems. The President is meeting with local law enforcement agencies' officers and agencies, and I have met with them, and they tell us that 70 percent of the crime in this country is related to drugs. We spent, during the Reagan and the Bush administration, years getting drug use to go down, telling students just say ``no,'' and what did this President do? First he fired just about everyone in the drug czar's office. What was his next step? He hired a chief health officer of the country, who turned into a farce, Jocelyn Elders, and what did she say? She said, ``Just say `maybe'.'' Our kids are not dumb; they saw what this meant: Try it. And they are trying it, and we are reaping the harvest of this administration. And then he cut interdiction, interdiction, 70 percent of the drugs coming through Mexico, and rewarded Mexico. This is the policy that we have seen. We know we can legislate, and unless we pass legislation that encourages families to care for their own, unless we return to Judeo-Christian values, until we have a tax policy that does not take away opportunities for our young people to work with minimum wage, unless we say that, ``Children, yes, you have to work and you will receive. We must stop asking what Washington can do for you. It's what you can do for yourself.'' Until we get back to some work ethic in this country, until we stop forcing people to live in public housing--I saw on television where a little girl choked to death on a roach in public housing and last night watched on TV the public housing that we would not put our dog in, and that is the alternative that is offered by the other side, these old ideas, and that is what we are seeing in our public housing facilities. So the problem is here in Congress. We have created the problem. And we will have a choice, the American people will have a choice. Do we continue down the path of the last 40 years, do we continue with ignoring the drug policy? The President mentioned children in one speech 46 times, but he rarely mentions the drug problem in this country: heroin on the increase, methamphetamines, designer drugs, cocaine, marijuana that is frying the brains of our young people, and he will not mention it, and the media will not mention it. Someone has got to mention it because this is destroying this generation, and I have had it with this administration, I have had it with this President, and I have had it with the solutions of the other side of this aisle, and it is time we got serious and answered the real problems facing our children and our country.

Mr. MICA

Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House tonight to talk about a situation as serious as the one my colleague has just enumerated with the burning of the black churches in this country. Certainly I support her comments, and everything should be done in that regard to resolve this situation. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about another serious situation, and that is the lack of a national drug policy. I represent central Florida, a beautiful area between Orlando and Daytona Beach. I am so fortunate. Other areas of the country sometimes have problems, and we have problems. But it is normally a very tranquil place. People work and go to school. But lately I get home, got home last weekend and turn on the television. I do not know whether I am in Washington, DC, with the murders, with the atrocities that are being committed by certain individuals in our society or whether I am in Detroit or New York or wherever. Sometimes you read the conflicts. But last weekend, we had a 13-year-old car hijacking. We had the incident of 18-year-olds involved in murders, some double murders. I look out in the community, and I have seen people that I have worked with who have lost family now in this drug war. I wonder where our Nation's drug policy is. Really, what you sow, I guess, is what you reap in this business. I am really disappointed in the President and this administration. I come before the House tonight to talk about the drug policy. I am afraid that under the President, it has been an absolute disaster. I guess when you take some actions like the President has taken, first thing he did was dismantle the drug czar's office and fire everyone in the White House with only a handful left working on the drug czar. Then he appointed Joycelyn Elders our Nation's number one health official. And what did she say? She said: Just say maybe, maybe we should legalize drugs. Then we stopped sharing the drug information with our South American and other allies in the drug region. We saw how our policy was a disaster in that regard, only through an uproar in Congress did some of that get changed. Then we witnessed the destruction of our drug interdiction program, how we found recently assets that were destined for drug interdiction got diverted to Haiti, to other projects, how the Coast Guard, who in the Caribbean had a $630 million budget and now is getting up to maybe $370 million to fight drugs, a dramatic decrease in interdiction because this President wanted the money to go for treatment. I submit to my colleagues tonight that treating just folks in this drug war is like treating the wounded in a battle. Mr. Speaker, we have seen the results. The results are absolutely startling. Tonight I want to talk about a report that is out by the Drug Abuse Warning Network which talks about the increases of cocaine, which talks about the increases of marijuana, which talks about the increases of heroin. It is not just among our adult population. It is now in our children. Look at this chart, which details, and you can see from the 1980's, how drug abuse and drug use are going down. In 1992, when this policy kicked in, you see what has happened here, with 12th graders, with 10th graders, and even 8th graders. This is not an acceptable situation. Let me read from this report that just came out last week. The Drug Abuse Warning Network, commonly known as DAWN, collects data from hospitals and other reporting agencies. The news according to this report is terrible. Let me quote it: Compared with the first half of 1994, which was the high water mark for drug related emergency room cases, cocaine related emergency increased 12 percent, from 68,000, to 76,000. In heroin related episodes, that rose 27 percent. Marijuana related episodes increased 32 percent and methamphetamines and some of the designer drug cases grew by about 35 percent. So we have seen the results in our emergency rooms and our communities, with some of our children, some of our young people out of control. Mr. Speaker, let me also cite this report that we have seen what has happened with cocaine prices. On cocaine prices, we see the consequences of the changes in this administration's policy. Cocaine prices actually went down, and we made cocaine more available. Prices were from $172 a gram to $137. So in interdiction where we have dismantled the program we see the direct results. I serve on the committee that oversees our drug policy. Let me tell you, the report that we came up with on our assessment of this situation is detailed in this report released in March. I brought it before the Congress. It should also be startling to everyone in the media, everyone in the public, and everyone in this Congress. This details increases in heroin use, cocaine use, designer drug use. What is interesting even in the marijuana area is that the marijuana that was used in the 1960's and 1970's was nowhere near as powerful as what this report says is 30, 40 times as powerful and is messing up the brains and the genes and the minds of our young people. That is one of the problems that we see with crime, with disorder and again with the use of these drugs by our young people. So the reports are in. The Congress, my subcommittee over at International Affairs and Oversight has released this report. We now have the report of the drug abuse warning network that shows that the problem is even worse than what this chart details before us. But I think, my colleagues, that it is time that we took back our children, I think it time that we took back our schools, that we took back our streets, we took back our communities, the violence that we have seen, the crime that is related to drug abuse. My sheriffs and police chiefs have told me that 70 percent of the criminals that they have incarcerated are involved with drugs, and narcotics and illegal substances. So we know where the problem is. It is not going to be answered by curfews, it is not going to be answered by regulating cigarettes, it is not going to be answered by uniforms or V-chips. It is going to be answered by the highest leadership of this country, the White House, taking this issue seriously. It is going to be answered by this Congress providing more resources to a drug interdiction program and education programs, some of which have been gutted by this administration, and making drug abuse and misuse a serious topic of conversation because it is ruining our ability to live as a society. We heard about the black churches that have been destroyed across the Nation. Well, just in this city since I have been in Congress the last 3\1/2\ years, 1,000, in excess of 1,000, young black males between the ages of 14 and 45 have lost their lives in a drug war. I asked the President in any war I would send in the National Guard, and when we saw what was going on here with the deaths, he denied our activity. I participated in a hearing in San Juan today, and we found that where they brought in the National Guard where they had high intensity or problems that, in fact, they took their streets back. So we are going to have to take whatever measures are necessary because we are in a war. The victims in this war are children. We are losing a generation. Our jails are filled. We cannot put any more people in prison, so we are going to have to concentrate on what has become a national scandal and a national problem, and that is drug abuse and drug misuse. The direction the President has been heading in is the wrong direction. We need to get in the right direction, and we need every American to speak out on this, not just in Congress, but throughout the land. Mr. Speaker, we must solve this problem or we are not going to again have safe streets or have our children have an opportunity for the future.