Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I hope this can move through unanimously. It is an important bill in the sense of paying tribute to the diversity of America and particularly to the Irish Americans. As a graduate of Notre Dame, a German Swiss graduate of Notre Dame, although many of my colleagues here are of Irish descent who are Notre Dame grads, it is a particular pleasure for me, as a graduate of Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, to move that we unanimously adopt this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I would first like to thank Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis and Ranking Member Henry Waxman for working with us in the Drug Policy Subcommittee and gaining their support and assistance in passing this bipartisan bill. It is tough to pass bipartisan bills, particularly major legislation like this, at this time of year and in general. This authorization program is multiyear, $530 million directly and hundreds of millions more in some programs that were added to the original ONDCP bill, and to do something like that unanimously and have it be worked through both bodies has been an incredible accomplishment and an adventure. I would also like to thank Judiciary Chairman Sensenbrenner, as well as the minority, for waiving the right to go to the Judiciary Committee. I know that is rare, but in our negotiations with the Senate, we had multiple changes over the last few days, and that was a very important waiver. His staff and the staff of Senator Specter in the Senate have been very important allies in moving this bill. Also Senators Grassley, Biden, Leahy and Levin have made multiple changes in this bill in the last few days, all of which I think have helped improve this bill. I very much appreciate the bipartisan spirit with which we are trying to pass anti-drug legislation. Of course my friend and colleague, Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking member, and I have had a great working relationship these past few years and have been able to tackle one of the toughest issues that is hitting both urban America, suburban America and rural America, together, and build a very close friendship during these years too and a passion. I know from his experience in Baltimore seeing it firsthand as a State legislator and as a resident in the communities so hard hit, he brought a passion to this issue that has been very important. It has been a real privilege working together during this period. I now would like to read my opening statement. Across America, individuals, families and communities continue to be devastated by the scourge of drug abuse, and it remains one of the most pressing and unforgiving problems our country faces. This bill is largely the same language that the House passed on March 9 on a vote of 399-5, with some improvements that came from negotiations with the other body and the administration. It is a forceful and bipartisan recommitment to our broad national efforts to control drug abuse and to renew our support for strong leadership from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, often known as the Drug Czar. By renewing this authorization, we believe we will soon see an even better coordination of the President's strategy to demonstrably reduce drug abuse by America's young people and to control its sad consequences. This reauthorization will preserve and improve our anti-drug efforts in a number of ways. It will preserve the success of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, or HIDTA programs. As the ONDCP's principal law enforcement program, HIDTA brings Federal, State, and local law enforcement together in specific high trafficking areas for sharing of intelligence and joint enforcement actions. It is perhaps the best model of governments working together in such a coordinated way, in a model that in Homeland Security we are attempting to duplicate but thus far have not had the same success. This bill keeps HIDTA in ONDCP where it belongs, focusing on dismantling drug trafficking organizations. It also provides a process for redirecting scarce funds to those HIDTA regions where the need is greatest, as well as enacting much- needed performance measurements. It will refocus the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which all of us see in radio and television and it is our principal program to reach young people on prevention. This bill clarifies the purposes of this campaign, establishing that it is intended for mass media advertising to direct and steer young people away from drug abuse. This will turn the campaign away from projects not related to such mass media advertising. It will strengthen the Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy. Perhaps you have heard that we don't exactly control the southwest border at this time. Increasingly, the drug trade and all its attendant violence and corruption is concentrating on the southwest border. This bill requires the director of ONDCP to issue within 120 days of enactment a strategy identifying how the government will deal with this narcotics problem on the border, the roles of the various agencies in it, and the resources needed. Quite frankly, it is astounding that such a southwest border strategy does not currently exist. It will elevate the rank and status of the ONDCP director because the director is tasked with coordinating the drug control efforts of numerous agencies, including Cabinet-level Departments. This bill designates that he has the same rank and status as a Cabinet officer. This does not interfere with the President's authority to determine the makeup of his Cabinet, but it does assure that the director will be able to work Department heads as an equal, which is critical when you are working with State, Defense, Judiciary, Homeland Security and the many other agencies. This is essential if he is to have full cooperation and teamwork from these other executive offices. It will improve effectiveness and accountability in drug treatment. The bill will enhance drug treatment programs by requiring, for the first time, a uniform system of evaluating the success of drug treatment. Further, it will prevent the director from certifying any Federal budget request related to drug treatment that does not provide for adequate result and accountability measures. I want to address a few other things that were added over the last few days with the Senate. One is the Drug Free Communities Act. This was developed by former Congressman Portman and Congressman Levin here and has been backed widely in this body. It usually has a separate reauthorization. It has been put into this bill. It is already under ONDCP, but it usually moves in a separate bill. It has been combined with this bill so we are also reauthorizing the Drug Free Communities bill, which is absolutely one of the most effective grass-roots prevention programs. It, along with drug free schools and the national media campaign, are our only prevention efforts. It reauthorizes the National Guard counterdrug schools, which uses our National Guard in different States. In Indiana they are very active in going into schools and is a supplement to the Drug Free Schools program. And it authorizes the U.S. Anti-doping Agency, which has been very critical in the steroids fight and something we have been pushing for to get national measurements and a more aggressive attitude towards abuse of steroids among young people, and this authorizes that agency. I once again want to thank all of those involved in this, particularly Ranking Member Cummings, Chairman Tom Davis, and Ranking Member Waxman of the full committee. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I wanted to make a couple of additional comments before I yield back fully. This is a very comprehensive bill. It includes many programs that Members are familiar with in their districts but they may not have realized was under the Office of National Drug Control Policy. One is the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center. That is the primary resource of the United States Government that transfers technology to your local law enforcement. It has also been a great model. This bill requires it to be coordinated more closely with homeland security. Quite frankly, I think one of the challenges in the homeland security is to make sure that they do what we have done in narcotics enforcement. And that is, if a local small town wants certain equipment because they think it is a fancy gadget, there is a review process that says that is not really what you need; this is more likely to effect and impact the type of narcotics enforcement you need in your community. But it is the primary transfer program for technology and a great model, and it reauthorizes that. Also, we have had an exasperating 3-year fight with the drug czar over the lack of coordination in this administration on methamphetamine. There is a section here, approximately 4\1/2\ pages long, in the National Methamphetamine Information Clearinghouse Act. While the Combat Meth Act we passed in coordination with many State acts have at least leveled off and in some States resulted, actually resulted in a drop in the so-called mom-and-pop labs that are home grown, in some States they are still coming in. Florida has had an expansion. Some of this is to moving to Internet and some to crystal meth. We have had no clearinghouse in the United States Government that worked with meth. This bill will add, in addition the our Combat Meth Act, it will put the office of the national director, who is supposed to be in charge of narcotics, in a position of having an organized effort now on methamphetamine, which has been in every State an increasing major threat to so many families. It has sections on drug- endangered children and others. Approximately 75 to 90 percent of all crime in America is related or at least enabled by drug and alcohol abuse; that in many States where we had hearings as many as 80 percent of the kids in child custody protection were because of meth or other drug abuse and danger to children. We heard horror stories about people high on narcotics who even put their baby children in a stove or others to warm them up because they were so wiped out. The Dawson family in Baltimore who were fire-bombed because they were afraid they were going to be witnesses in a case. This bill addresses most of those things. It is absolutely essential that we get this department reauthorized with some guidelines because, unless Congress does its work, there are no guidelines on the executive branch to try to respond to what we are hearing in our grass roots. So, once again, I want to thank Mr. Cummings, Mr. Davis, Mr. Waxman and those in the Senate who have worked so long and hard on this, and I urge all Members to pass it. Madam Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Has the gentleman closed on the other side?

Mr. SOUDER. I urge all Members to support the passage of H.R. 6344, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5697) to provide for the appropriate designation of certain Federal positions involved in wildland fire suppression activities, as amended.

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. H.R. 5697, the Federal Wildland Firefighter Classification Act, was introduced in June by Representatives Richard Pombo and Jon Porter to ensure that Federal wildland firefighters receive the recognition that they deserve in the Federal hiring process. Specifically, the legislation would designate employees who engage in firefighting duties as having the title ``wildland firefighter'' in Federal job classifications. The importance of this legislation is well documented in hearings and testimony before several congressional committees. Also, we have witnessed the sacrifice these firefighters are willing to make to keep communities and their property safe. Current wildland firefighter classification standards are far outdated and simply do not accurately reflect the all-risk duties performed by these brave men and women all year round. This legislation is the least we can do for these Federal wildland firefighters who lost their lives and those who continue to rehab from serious scarring and life-altering burns. I urge all Members to join me today in supporting this important legislation. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. I have no further speakers, and I also yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I have additional letters I would like to insert for the Record from Myles Brand, NCAA president; and from the National Council of Youth Sports, to go with the earlier letter from the high school organizations. Madam Speaker, I am going to dispense with most of my formal statement to try to address the question before us. This bipartisan bill was drafted just to deal with the rules-setting organizations, the rules of play. And the chairman of the committee, whom I thank for bringing this bill up, and the members of the committee were working together to try to address what I believe were extraneous concerns, but if they were real concerns of the House, we needed to address them even though they were not, in my opinion, in the first draft of the bill. Accidents are going to happen. The question is, will the injuries associated with athletics be allowed at all? How can you play youth football? How can you play youth soccer? How can you have swimming? How can you have wrestling if you are going to make it so that there is no risk? The balance that all these organizations have to do in their procedures to setting a rule is to balance the risk, the offense and the defense, and the care of the children involved and the young people involved in these sports. What this bill does is try to make it so that the people who are making the rules can't get sued unless in drafting the rules there was gross negligence. It has nothing to do with negligence of how a coach applies a rule, whether there are things that happen during the game that were judgment things. These are about the rules themselves. The net impact of not doing this has been that most of the major people providing the insurance premiums are looking at dropping this. Others have raised it by 400 percent. What this means for Peewee football; what this means for IHSAA, the Indiana High School Athletic Association; for the NAIA of Small Colleges, they are going to have to drop sports. They aren't going to provide the rules. That means there won't be different guidelines. There will be no different types of youth leagues. There will be no coaches or people willing to draft the rules as you bring these coaches together, because the costs will escalate. They are escalating exponentially. The losses by the different insurance companies are increasing so greatly that most of them are looking at getting out of the business. I hope that the House will carefully consider this so that the kids who so deeply want to play can be involved in these sports. One of the other byproducts, by the way, of raising insurance premiums is to raise the costs of playing, and this is going to hurt low-income kids the most because suburban kids may be able to afford the higher premiums and they may be able to get coaches who will take the risks or take personal liabilities to be on the things, but this is going to hurt those who most need the sports, in the urban areas and other places where they do not have this opportunity. I hope that this House will pass, on behalf of small kids, the high school kids, and the college kids of America, a bill that enables them to play and will understand that all this bill does is deal with the general rules of play. And thanks to the chairman's graciousness in working with the minority in this bipartisan bill, we have addressed what I don't believe was in the original bill but takes out all the civil rights questions, all the child abuse questions, and says those aren't relevant here. All it has to do with is rules of the game and whether there was gross negligence in developing the rules of the game. Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1176, the bi- partisan Nonprofit Athletic Organization Protection Act of 2006, which would help protect the ability of amateur athletic rule-making organizations to do the job that they have done for years, and that is to promulgate the rules of play for Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football, high school athletics, college athletics, including the NCAA and NAIA, club teams and elite amateur sports teams. I'd like to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner for moving this important bi-partisan bill through the Judiciary Committee and bringing it to the floor today. The bill before us has been modified since it passed committee to address concerns raised by the minority, and I'd like to thank the Chairman and his staff for their help in clarifying the narrow intent of the legislation which is to ensure that sports rule- makers are not held liable for athlete injuries (in which they had no responsibility). The bill only exempts non-profit rule-making organizations from liability for physical injury caused by an act or omission of the organization in its adoption of rules of play. The bill does not in any way prevent lawsuits from moving forward that claim harm caused by other rules or guidelines or claim gross negligence on the part of the rule-maker. It is undeniable that amateur athletic teams make a valuable contribution to the lives of young people. Active participation in sports--particularly at a time when obesity among American youth has reached an alarming level--encourages healthy lifestyles, while also imparting important social qualities such as leadership, teamwork and discipline. Over the past decade, however, amateur athletic rule-making organizations have been forced to defend themselves against a growing number of questionable lawsuits based on claims of negligence for passing or failing to pass rules to eliminate the risks of injury inherent in athletic competition. Unfortunately, accidents do happen. There will always be injuries associated with athletics but this is nothing new. For decades rule- makers have responded to changes in technology, coaching methods and athletes by making alterations in athletic rules. Each sport is an ever-moving target for rule-makers and no set of rules can ever make participation in sports as we know it, completely ``safe.'' Thus, it would be wrong to punish rule-makers, who in a good faith effort, have sought to anticipate and prevent injuries to the best of their ability. As liability costs for rule-making bodies have skyrocketed, these legal claims have had a profound impact on the financial stability of amateur and education-based athletic organizations. Several rule makers are now paying double or triple their previous annual premiums. Others have been forced to self-insure at rates significantly higher than previous years. All of these rule-making organizations are finding it more difficult to locate an insurance company to carry their insurance policy since more and more companies are getting out of the amateur athletic insurance business completely. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Kanaby, Executive Director of the National Association of State High School Associations (NFHS), noted that NFHS had experienced a threefold increase in their annual liability insurance premiums over the three previous years. This organization, which serves over 7 million young people, currently pays in excess of $1 million in annual liability insurance out of a total operating budget of $9 million. According to the testimony of Mr. Kanaby and other insurance industry experts, the staggering premium increases affecting NFHS and similar rule-making organizations are certain to continue. It is necessary that Congress act now to raise the standard for liability from ordinary negligence to gross negligence. This change in law would allow the volunteer rule-makers--often coaches with knowledge and experience in a particular sport--to continue doing the best job they can to mitigate risk while keeping the game competitive. If the status quo is maintained, the losers in this situation will be our nation's kids. As premiums continue to rise and with no relief in sight it is becoming increasingly difficult for amateur athletic organizations to continue providing a sporting outlet for our nation's young people. Moreover, it is highly probable that amateur athletic organizations will shortly be forced to either adopt rules of play that are not specifically crafted for a certain age category (for example, adopting college rules for high school athletics) or increase fees charged to participants in order to offset the liability costs. Both of these scenarios are not desirable and would damage youth sport participation. I hope my colleagues will consider the importance of preserving amateur athletics and join me in voting in favor of the bi-partisan Non-Profit Athletic Organization Protection Act. All of America's young athletes who participate in school-based athletics, Little League or other club sport teams will be thankful for your support. National Collegiate Athletic Association, Indianapolis, IN, March 31, 2005. Hon. Mark Souder, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Souder: The NCAA believes that amateur and education-based sports play a valuable role in the development of our nation's youth. The organizations that provide amateur athletics opportunities for America's youth make every attempt to adopt playing rules that will provide participants with a safe and fair experience. However, there remains an inherent risk of injury when participating in sports activities, which constantly puts these organizations at risk of liability. As a result, the viability of these organizations is being threatened due to the escalating cost of liability insurance. Therefore, the NCAA stands in support of your efforts to provide much needed protection for these nonprofit organizations through the ``Nonprofit Athletic Organization Protection Act of 2005.'' Sincerely, Myles Brand, President.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, George Soros is one of the most controversial figures in American politics, and I think it is important for American families to focus on what George Soros has said about himself, what George Soros has said about his objectives, and where George Soros has spent his money to influence public opinion. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once wrote that ``the best disinfectant is sunshine,'' and it is in that spirit that I submit ``The Guilt-Free Record of George Soros'' to be printed in the Congressional Record. The Guilt-Free Record of George Soros ``I am basically there to--to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of--of what I do.'' George Soros, commenting on being blamed for the financial collapse of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Russia. ``He can move world financial markets simply by voicing an opinion or destabilize a government by buying and selling its currency . . . [W]hen he saw cracks in the Asia boom, he began selling the currency in Thailand. Traders in Hong Kong followed suit, triggering a financial crisis that plunged much of Asia into a depression. (``George Soros,'' 60 Minutes interview transcript, December 20, 1998) ``I don't feel guilty. Because I'm engaged in an amoral activity which is not meant to have anything to do with guilt.'' George Soros, commenting on his actions in the currency markets. (``George Soros,'' 60 Minutes interview transcript, December 20, 1998) Soros Convicted of Insider-Trading, Ordered to Pay $2.8 million. ``George Soros's bid to overturn an insider-trading conviction has been rejected by France's highest appeals court, ending the billionaire's fight to erase a legal stain on his 40-year investing career. The Court of Cassation, the tribunal of last resort in France, ended its review of a March 2005 judgment that Soros broke insider-trading laws when he bought Societe Generale SA shares in 1988 with the knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target. Soros had been ordered to pay back 2.2 million euros ($2.8 million) in gains.'' (Gabriele Parussini, ``Soros Insider-Trading Conviction Upheld by Paris Appeals Court,'' Bloomberg, June 14, 2006) Soros: ``No Sense of Guilt'' for Confiscating Property from Jews in Nazi-occupied Budapest. ``But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was--well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets--that if I weren't there--of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would . . . be taking it away anyhow . . . whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the--I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.'' (``George Soros,'' 60 Minutes interview transcript, December 20, 1998) Extended quotation from the 60 Minutes transcript follows: ``When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews. (Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line) KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors. (Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train) KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew . . . Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm. KROFT: (Voiceover) . . . who escaped the Holocaust . . . (Vintage footage of women walking by train) Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm. (Vintage footage of people getting on train) KROFT: (Voiceover) . . . by--by posing as a Christian. Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right. (Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar) KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps. Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made. KROFT: In what way? Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and--and anticipate events and when--when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a--a very personal experience of evil. KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson. Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes. KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews. Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes. KROFT: I mean, that's--that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult? Mr. SOROS: Not--not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't--you don't see the connection. But it was--it created no--no problem at all. KROFT: No feeling of guilt? Mr. SOROS: No. KROFT: For example that, ``I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.'' None of that? Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c--I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was--well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets--that if I weren't there--of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would--would--would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the--whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the--I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.'' (``George Soros,'' 60 Minutes interview transcript, December 20, 1998). Soros Said That President Bush's Statements Remind Him of Nazi Slogans. `` `When I hear Bush say, `You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans.' It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (`The enemy is listening'). `My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me,' he said in a soft Hungarian accent.' '' (Laura Blumenfeld, ``Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush,'' The Washington Post, November 11, 2003). Soros Is the Primary Financier of Left-Wing Causes. Tax records of Soros' Open Society Institute show contributions of: $4.41 million to the American Civil Liberties Union and its state affiliates; $500,000 to the Pro-Choice Education Project to launch a (pro-abortion rights) ``public education and media strategy;'' $100,000 to Catholics for a Free Choice, an allegedly Catholic group that advocates for abortion rights; $100,000 to the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization that works against capital punishment; $100,000 to the Pennsylvania Coalition to Save Lives Now ``to support needle exchange programs,'' $80,000 over three years to the Gay Straight Alliance Network, to promote ``a traveling photo documentary exhibit by lesbian, gay, transgender, queer and questioning youth;'' $35,000 to the Abortion Access Project. (Jeff Johnson, ``George Soros'' $30M Welfare Check,'' CNSNews.com, April 26, 2005). The Soros Prostitution Agenda. Open Society Institute (OSI), a foundation funded and controlled by George Soros, sued the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ``over requirement that recipients of federal AIDS grants pledge to oppose prostitution. The group would be the second charity to challenge the policy, which AIDS activists say stigmatizes prostitutes and makes it harder to fight the disease.'' In June 2006, Open Society Institute published a study entitled ``Sex Workers Health and Rights: Where is the Funding?'' The report highlighted the role of OSI and various Soros foundations, in financing ``a large number of sex workers organizations'' and attacked the Bush Administration policy for refusing to fund such groups. OSI received at least $30 million between 1998 and 2003 from the federal government, mostly from the State Department. (Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2005; Open Society Institute webpages, http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/sharp/news/ usaid_20050923,: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/ focus/sharp/articles_publications/publications where_20060719/where.pdf Soros Called the War on Drugs a ``Fantasy'' and More Harmful Than Drugs Themselves. ``Tilting the balance against the drug warriors side is a short piece by Howard Fineman on the activities of George Soros. The billionaire financier, who calls the drug war `a fantasy' and says it does more harm to America than drugs themselves, has spent big money pushing his position that we should treat drug abuse as a medical problem, not a criminal one.'' (Bill Steigerwald, ``Newsweek Wants A Drug Debate,'' Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 30, 1997). Soros is Major Financier Behind Drug Legalization Groups. In 1994, Soros pledged $4 million over five years to the Lindesmith Center, a pro-marijuana legalization think-tank that merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to form the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports legalization of marijuana for ``medical'' purposes, repealing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, ending imprisonment for drug possession. (Neil Hrab, ``George Soros' Social Agenda for America,'' Capital Research Center's Foundation Watch, http:// www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/x3770435801.pdf) Soros Heavily Financed Drug Legalization Efforts For Marijuana. ``And the award for best supporting role goes to billionaire George Soros, the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization. He doesn't reside in either state [Arizona or California], but he bankrolled both efforts. . . . Most money used to buy misleading TV ads for both referenda came from out of state. In Arizona, as of the most recent reporting date (May 31), of $300,490 contributed to support Prop. 200, only $490 came from in state. The remaining $300,000 came from out of state, $200,000 of it from the Drug Policy Foundation--a pet charity of George Soros'--and the other $100,000 came directly from Soros himself.'' (Joseph A. Califano Jr., ``Pro-Drug Campaigns' Hidden Agenda,'' Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 22, 1996) Soros Helped Finance a Pro-Marijuana Children's Book. ``Dr. Robert Newman, served on the Board of Directors for the Drug Policy Foundation as early as 1997, and presently serves on the board of directors with another minority witness, Rev. Edwin Sanders, of the Drug Policy Alliance (the new name of the Drug Policy Foundation since its merger with the aforementioned Lindesmith Center). The Drug Policy Alliance describes itself as ``the nation's leading organization working to end the war on drugs.'' Along with its major donor George Soros, it helped produce It's Just a Plant, a promarijuana children's book. I will be very interested in learning from the witnesses today what they believe U.S. Government policy should be with respect to financing heroin distribution, safe-injection facilities, and how-to manuals like H Is For Heroin, published by the Harm Reduction Coalition, and children's books on smoking marijuana, produced with the help of the organization run by two of the minority's witnesses today.'' (Mark Souder, opening statement, ``Harm Reduction or Harm Maintenance: Is There Such a Thing as Safe Drug Abuse?'', hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, February 16, 2005, http://www.dpna.org/resources/ current/02-16-5c.htm; http://www.justaplant.com) Soros and Two Friends give $450,000 to ``take apart [California's] criminal justice system one step at a time.'' ``International financier George Soros and two other wealthy donors have contributed a total of $450,000 for a November ballot measure that would alter California's tough three strikes sentencing law . . . The donation marks the third time that this trio has backed criminal justice measures in California. In 1996, the three gave money to pass Proposition 215, which sought to legalize marijuana for medical uses. In 2000, they supported the successful Proposition 36, which diverts drug offenders from prison to treatment.'' (Bill Ainsworth, ``$450,000 to help try to weaken law,'' San Diego Union-Tribune, September 14, 2004.) Soros Effort To Infiltrate the U.S. Conservative Movement. ``The scheduled Friday CPAC event on ``A Conservative Drug Policy'' was to feature a mini-debate between Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and Calvina Fay. The ``moderator,'' hardly unbiased, was scheduled to be Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). The Soros Open Society Institute has given the DPA millions of dollars, including $2.5 million in 2004 alone. MPP has been funded by Soros as well as Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, who was arrested in New Zealand several years ago after customs officers found marijuana in his luggage. Lewis, who gave $340,000 to MPP in 2004, is also a major funder of the ACLU.'' (Mark Souder, Congressional Record, insertion in the record of article by Cliff Kincaid, February 8, 2006, http://reform.house.gov/CJDPHR/News/ DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=39349) Soros Support of Lynne Stewart, Lawyer to Terrorists. ``George Soros funds many controversial projects, some extreme projects. One quick example is the $20,000 that went from his Open Society Institute to the Lynne Stewart Legal Committee. Lynne Stewart was the attorney who represented the blind sheik who was involved in the first bombing of the World Trade Centers and was later convicted for aiding and abetting his activities while in prison.'' (Peter Flaherty of the National Legal and Policy Center, O'Reilly Factor, May 20, 2005, relying on Open Society Institute IRS Form 990 filings. Byron York, ``Soros Funded Stewart Defense,'' National Review, February 17, 2005.) Soros Attacks ``War on Terror,'' Compares Bush Administration to Nazis. Soros told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ``We are working with a very false frame when we talk about a `war on terror,' and yet it is universally accepted.'' He added, ``President Bush is exploiting it even further ahead of these elections . . . I would voice my concerns about the similarities between this administration and the Nazis and communist regimes.'' (Monisha Bansal, ``Soros Slams Terror 'War,' Compares White House to Nazis,'' CNSNews.com, September 15, 2006.) Soros To Encourage a U.S./Europe Split. ``Soros, the Hungarian-American financier who has historically invested his billions in encouraging democracy in eastern block countries, is turning his attention to Western Europe because he thinks the EU is failing. Soros is to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in foundations, the first of which will be either in London or Paris.'' Soros: ``The practical message for Europeans is that the world really needs a strong European Union with a mission which is different to America's priorities.'' (Rupert Stein, ``Soros lays foundations to restore EU purpose,'' The Scotsman, July 15, 2006.)

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the conference report to H.R. 5441, the fiscal year 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act. With this bill, the federal government takes important steps forward on securing our border and reforming the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It is heartening to see that Congress is beginning to wake up to the critical importance of a secure border. Indeed, this bill provides $21.3 billion for border protection and immigration enforcement--nearly an 11 percent increase over last year--including $5.2 billion for the department's Secure Border Initiative, the government's comprehensive multi-year plan to secure America's borders and reduce illegal migration through enhanced technology, infrastructure, and personnel. $2.25 billion is provided for the addition of 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, bringing the total to 14,800, and $1.2 billion for border fencing, vehicle barriers, technology, and other infrastructure improvements. H.R. 5441 also takes important steps to protect against the growing threat of border tunneling. Penalties for individuals who assist in the construction or financing on border tunnels will be subject to much harsher penalties--fines and imprisonment of up to 20 years. Anyone using a border tunnel to smuggle aliens, weapons, or other goods will be subject to a maximum term of imprisonment that is twice the punishment that would have applied had a tunnel not been used. In addition, I am extremely pleased that the conference committee provided more than-expected funds to assist in the transfer of the Shadow Wolves from the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) back to their logical home in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Shadow Wolves officers are Native Americans who combine modem technology with ancient tracking techniques to play a critical role in our government's counter-narcotics efforts along the 76 miles of border and 2.8 million acres within the Tohono O'odham Nation. When the Department of Homeland Security was originally created, the Shadow Wolves were placed under the control of the CBP. Unfortunately, however, the CBP's mission and methods were found to be notably unsuited to the ways of the Shadow Wolves, whose methods employ tracking smugglers more than merely defending a border line. This bureaucratic misjudgment has significantly hurt the Shadow Wolves' morale, causing their numbers to dwindle. Because of this situation, I appreciate the conferees' decision to provide $3.1 million--a million more than in the House bill--for ICE to pay for the newly-transferred Shadow Wolves' salaries and other needs. It is also important to note for our friends in Canada and Mexico that nothing in this bill should be misrepresented as changing our commitment to requiring a secure border ID. As we require more secure IDs to get a driver's license, to vote, and to get a job within the U.S., you can be assured that we certainly will require one at the borders. Working together, we can maintain our important trade and tourism relationships while maintaining the security or our Nation. Last, I am pleased that this conference report will enact important reforms to FEMA to help ward off some of the blatant examples of mismanagement seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For example, this bill creates a smarter FEMA management structure by establishing 10 FEMA regional offices and regional directors with the ability to coordinate and direct the federal response in times of crisis, so that FEMA is not trying to manage future disasters from Washington. By putting FEMA on the ground where the crisis is occurring, regional directors will be able to coordinate more effective and timely responses. Also, each regional office will maintain a multiagency regional strike team, with the ability to quickly respond to emergencies, and three national emergency response teams will be created in case rapid supplements to the regional teams are needed. Finally, while codifying the FEMA director's status as the principal advisor to the President and Secretary of Homeland Security, this bill refrains from establishing FEMA as an independent, cabinet-level agency--a misguided notion designed more to placate the media than institute meaningful reform. Mr. Speaker, I commend Chairman Rogers and the rest of the conferees for their hard work on this bill, and urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, Red Ribbon Week is a national week celebrated at the end of October that honors the sacrifice made by DEA Special Agent Enrique ``Kiki'' Camarena. It brings together local communities all over America for anti-drug abuse education and other prevention efforts. I would like to thank all the Members who cosponsored this resolution, as well as Speaker Hastert, Chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Chairman Nathan Deal of the Health Subcommittee, for their assistance in bringing this resolution to the floor this evening. I would also like to thank Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on our Drug Policy Subcommittee; and Congressman Lee Terry of Nebraska for their consistent efforts in the anti-narcotics arena. As you have already heard, 21 years ago in March, 1985, Special Agent Enrique Camarena of the DEA was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by drug dealers in Mexico. Red Ribbon Week began as a local commemorative effort in Special Agent Camerena's hometown of Calexico, California, when Congressman Duncan Hunter and Camerena's high school friend, Henry Lozano, created Camarena Clubs to preserve the agent's legacy. The National Family Partnership later formalized Red Ribbon Week as a national campaign, an 8-day event proclaimed by the U.S. Congress and chaired by then President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan. Red Ribbon Week is dedicated to helping preserve Agent Camarena's memory and further the cause for which he gave his life, the fight against violence of drug crime and the misery of addition. By gathering together in special events and wearing a red ribbon during the last week in October, Americans from all walks of life demonstrate their opposition to illegal narcotics. Such events include organizing drug prevention events in schools, distributing educational materials to young people about the dangers of drug abuse, and other activities designed to promote healthy choices. Approximately 80 million people participate in Red Ribbon events every year. Red Ribbon Week is also a tribute to the men and women of the Drug Enforcement Administration who daily leave their families to stand on the front lines of this Nation's counter drug efforts. Those efforts extend to Afghanistan, where DEA Special Agents operate in an increasingly hazardous environment to aid the fledgling and almost overwhelmingly antidrug efforts in that country. It is regrettable that the work of these agents frequently lacks the necessary assistance from the Department of Defense to complete their perilous mission. I call on the Department of Defense to increase its level of support so that the memory and sacrifices made by Kiki Camerena and others continue to have meaning and value. Drugs and terror are inexorably linked, and the fight against them should be a seamless, unified campaign, where Government agency assets complement each other so more agents do not die. Since 1985, we have made substantial progress in the fight against drug abuse, but even today it remains our number one health problem in America, claiming well over 20,000 lives a year. Each day all over America a new person and new people are tempted and fall to narcotics abuse. We must never slacken our efforts. We will never completely win drug war, because new people are tempted every day. But we can make progress. And when we stay at it in prevention, in treatment, interdiction, eradication and enforcement, we do, in fact, reduce the level of drug abuse in the United States, as has been the last few years. Mr. Speaker, once again, I thank the House for joining with me in supporting this resolution recognizing the vital work of drug abuse prevention, recognizing the DEA for their leadership, and encouraging all Americans to participate in Red Ribbon Week.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the National League of Democracy (NLD) and all of those who languish in crushing servitude. On 27 September 1988, the NLD was founded by the forces of Democracy in Burma. The NLD was founded at what seemed like a turning point in Burmese history. After decades of military rule and dictatorship, the leaders of Burma announced that free elections would be held in 1990. Led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD won those elections with 60 percent of the vote and 83 percent of the parliamentary seats. Alas, the military never allowed a new government to form. Sadly, Liberty was crushed and the promise of that time has never been realized. Today, Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest. Many other NLD members and other defenders of democracy are in prison, in exile, or in hiding. The brutal military dictatorship that very nearly did the right thing so many years ago is still in power. They continue to brutalize the people of Burma in savage ways that we can hardly imagine. International pressure is mounting, however. After turning a blind eye to Burma's actions Burma's ASEAN neighbors are distancing themselves from Burma. Last week at the United Nations, the First Lady of the United States Laura Bush held a forum on Burma. She urged the military leadership of Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi and the adoption of a U.N. resolution condemning Burma's dictatorship. And for the first time, Burma has been placed on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. For those of us who have been active on Burmese issues for some time, this is truly a victory. On Friday, Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. Undersecretary General for Political Affairs, will report on the latest situation in Myanmar at the 15-member council. Getting a resolution through the Security Council will be no small task. Burma's stalwart ally China is ever ready to block any criticism of its neighbor. The United Nations is not known for its tough stances on any issue. Time after time we have seen the U.N. shy away from condemnation of even the most egregious evil. I urge the U.N. to be firm. The United Nations Security Council must use this unmatched opportunity to defend the least among us. In closing, I congratulate the NLD on their 18-year commitment to democracy. I hope they never give up their struggle for freedom. I will never abandon my commitment to them or the people of Burma.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, as the nation's largest AIDS-specific care program, the Ryan White CARE Act plays a critical role in providing HIV/AIDS treatment and support equally to all U.S. citizens needing such medical care. Ryan White, as many of you know, was a fellow Hoosier and a heroic young man and this program that so many depend upon to stay health and alive is a great tribute to him. Currently, the federal government is funding wasteful and unnecessary programs that would otherwise be held in check if this reauthorization had already been law. This bill would require that 75 percent of CARE Act funds be spent on primary medical care and medication. This is important because in the past, funds were misspent on unnecessary and dubious programs while thousands living with HIV were on waiting lists for AIDS medications. Let me give a recent example of government waste that would have been better spent treating those with HIV but without access to treatment. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, $405,000 in federal funds was provided this month to the National Minority AIDS Council for its annual U.S. Conference on AIDS. Held at a beachside resort in Hollywood, Florida, the conference featured a ``sizzling'' fashion show, beach party, and ``Latin Fiesta.'' Indirect costs are not yet available from HHS regarding the cost of sending 67 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5 employees from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and one NIH contractor. While such spending strikes one as strange, the examples don't end there. The New York Times reported that New York was paying for dog walking and candle-lit dinners with AIDS funds, while other areas of the country do not even have sufficient funds to pay for medications for those living with HIV. Hot lunches, haircuts, art classes, and even tickets to Broadway shows were financed by federal funding. Indeed, although the federal government spends over $21 billion on HIV/AIDS annually, up to a staggering 59 percent of Americans with HIV are not in regular care. This misallocation of funds is great cause for concern and should motivate Members of Congress to respond by supporting the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act. By doing so, greater oversight in funding would be provided. The reauthorization of this act would prioritize medical care and treatment over less essential services and programs. I ask my colleagues to support this reauthorization.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his leadership and the ranking minority member. It is clear that we have had the goal for adding Border Patrol agents for some time in this Congress. A number of years ago when the Homeland Security Committee was first being created and we were looking at how better to protect our border, it became apparent that as we went to air marshals, we had more people leaving the Border Patrol than we could hire. When we were hiring into the Border Patrol, we were pulling them out of State and local police, and then they would move over to other agencies. Unless we take special efforts in this Congress to do more to retain our Border Patrol and pay additional money to them, we are not going to be able to meet the hypothetical goals that we have set for ourselves. When we debated about fencing on the border, we heard that we need to have more Border Patrol. We have had difficulty holding the Border Patrol we have and meeting the numbers of our current assessments which would only put us to a fraction of actually controlling the border. That is why in the House, and most on our side at least support border fencing and virtual fencing, but we also support dramatic increases in the number of Border Patrol and changing and making adaptations in their pay scales and in their retention because without that, we will not have adequate Border Patrol. So I thank the chairman for his leadership with this because this is an important part of a comprehensive border strategy for the people who are on the ground who have in many cases jobs where they sit there for long periods of time, where they may or may not see somebody coming in through the southern border in particular in very hot environments, and to retain somebody in that job requires additional assistance. And I am glad to see that we are authorizing that, that we are starting to move ahead, because this is one of the most critical steps, along with the fencing, in controlling the Southwest border.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding me time and thank him for this resolution. Mr. Speaker, we also want to, in addition to the Border Patrol, praise all of the people in the Department of Homeland Security, in the Coast Guard, in ICE, and Customs and Border Protection at the points of entry. For those who may not be completely familiar, the Border Patrol are the people who are in between the points of entry. Obviously, the men and women at the point of entry, the ICE agents internally, as they pursue the investigations which often cross into the zones of the Border Patrol, and at ports of entry, and the Coast Guard which are at water points of entry, are all working together in a seamless organization. Unfortunately, the Border Patrol often gets the least attention of those different agencies. And this resolution correctly gives them some of the credit that they are due. Often they are not only in these very hot zones in the south, at times cold in the winter, and in the north, very cold; often we forget we have a northern Border Patrol as well. That is actually, not the numbers, but a bigger percent increase than the south. They are often also alone. One of the reasons we need a fence and virtual fencing and other technological things to help our Border Patrol agents is often there is one there, or there may be four scattered over a mile and a half, and all of a sudden there is a group of seven SUVs coming at them, as we have had in Arizona, armed to the teeth. Even when we get a tip and put a Blackhawk in, you are looking at heavily armored vehicles coming at a few agents with no warning. It may be a case of where you may have groups of 300 to 400 illegal immigrants coming at one or two or three or four agents. They have no idea whether they are armed or not armed. There are zones along the border where there is not as much pressure on illegal immigrants, but which are huge drug-trafficking areas, not only on the south border, but on the north border, along Blaine, Washington. Going east from there is the trafficking of so-called BC Bud, this high-grade marijuana that is basically the same as cocaine. Arms trafficking going back into Canada. The largest export right now in British, Columbia is not timber; it is not any other product other than marijuana. And the reason cocaine and heroin and guns are going into BC where we now see violence breaking out, first RCMP officers killed in British, Columbia, are going through those zones where the Border Patrol in the north border are trying to protect it. Often one or two agents with armed, heavily armed people coming at us. And Neely's Crossing, just east of El Paso, where they have a bulldozer on the Mexican side. The drug lords have a bulldozer on their side. It is one of the only areas of the Rio Grande which is basically spotty puddles of water in that zone, has a gravel base. And they push additional gravel in there. Anytime we put a barrier up, they put it there. And as they brought one vehicle across at one point, some of our Border Patrol were tipped off. As this vehicle tried to get back across on the Mexican side, it got stuck. We know there were at least, the guess is, 10 tons of marijuana. We got about a 1\1/2\ tons out. They jumped out of their vehicles with AK-47s, armed heavily at our Border Patrol who then back up, which brings us to this fundamental question. Not only do these men and women deserve our credit for putting themselves at risk, not only do they have difficult jobs, and often are they outnumbered, but then this case that is occurring in Texas, without understanding all of the legal formalities, will have a chilling effect on the Border Patrol's willingness to defend us. Because, if they think they are going to be prosecuted if they try to defend us, depending upon the particular angle at a given time of what someone is doing, and they are in a shootout, and the other side has guns, deliver poison into the United States in the terms of narcotics, or potentially chemical or nuclear weapons, or potentially high-risk terrorists who are willing to pay high dollars, and our Border Patrol are afraid to even risk any type of confrontation because they are going to be prosecuted by our government, how are we going to stay safe? We need to praise them for taking the risk. We need to praise them for being willing to stay out in the cold and in the heat and be outnumbered and not know what kind of guns are at them. We certainly do not need to be prosecuting them. So I hope this resolution makes it clear where this House stands. I am sure we will have committee hearings. We may have to wait until the case goes through, but the Border Patrol needs to know that this Congress stands behind them, that we are going to get to the bottom of the type of procedures that are involved in this and make sure that they can defend not only themselves, but defend us, our children, our families and our Nation.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, as the gentlewoman knows, in San Diego we used to have, I saw with my own eyes in the middle of the night, about 1,200. But as we fenced that area, we broke up the big groups there in San Diego. And so in San Diego you no longer have the huge groups of 1,000. We thought we were down to groups of basically, I have seen 50 or 100 with my own eyes, but as the gentlewoman had probably heard, I cannot remember if you were there when Secretary Chertoff was speaking to our Homeland Security Committee this morning, but that Congressman Pearce from New Mexico said that there are a number of cases, particularly in New Mexico right now, because as we worked on the Arizona border, pushed them into New Mexico where he said this morning that he had seen 300 to 400 at a time in New Mexico. That is questioning the statement of a Member from New Mexico who just saw this in the last 7 to 14 days. I myself have seen 50 to 100, and I used to see 1,200 before we built a fence in San Diego.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, first off, I have had hearings on this very subject, not as a whole, but because certain gentlemen may only be absorbed in their own realm and may not realize that there is a narcotics subcommittee on drug policy and criminal justice. We have had multiple hearings on the border over the past few years, multiple. It has been brought to the attention in a bipartisan way about this problem with tunnels, and I am thrilled that the Judiciary Committee chairman has brought this bill. There have been 50 of these tunnels, 51 now with the new one just recently. There is a huge problem in the narcotics area. The reason it is primarily an issue in the narcotics area is because of the cost of building these tunnels, because of the engineering, particularly the ones with lighting and ventilation, that go between warehouse to warehouse is so expensive, that you basically want to use it for high-dollar items. The high-dollar items are usually cocaine, heroin, marijuana. Narco- terrorism on the major streets in the United States is coming through these tunnels, and it is about time we dealt with this subject. Furthermore, it appears, and the DEA believes, that the people who engineer and design these tunnels are then murdered afterwards, and sometimes the tunnels work night and day. The one in January was a larger one and appeared to be working night and day and were discovered; other ones they would only bring open for high-value targets to move through. Now, a high-value target is in the eyes of the person willing to pay. Yes, cocaine, heroin, and those are the general things moved through, but a high-value target can also be a terrorist. A high-value target can also be someone who is dealing with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, because they are willing to pay the amount to move through those tunnels. It is more than worth it to the person who built the tunnel to recoup their costs. This is extremely important. It is a loophole in the law that we need to address. I also serve on the border subcommittee on Homeland Security. The fact is we are making progress. We are stopping these people. The fact is the DEA, through their hard effort, have found 51 of these tunnels. What we need is a law that holds the people accountable who have done this, and it is that we cannot sit around and wait for the Senate to come back on all this kind of stuff. This should be done now, and the border needs to be secured. I favor looking at comprehensive, but first seal this border. I thank the chairman for his leadership. Mr. Speaker, given the more vigorous efforts in recent years to intercept drug traffickers on the high seas, drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) have clearly shifted their operations to the U.S.- Mexico border. The vast bulk of these drugs are smuggled through the ports of entry and--to a lesser extent--between those ports. Such illegal shipments are difficult to intercept, in part due to the enormous volume of legitimate traffic of people and goods at these locations. But recent discoveries of sub-terranean tunnels crossing the border point to the problem of a growing sophistication and determination of the DTOs to inflict their deadly product on the people of this country, regardless of expense and labor. As the lead Federal agency tasked with bringing down the DTOs both in this country and abroad, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is well aware of this threat and has worked ceaselessly to counter it. Working with their Federal, State, local and foreign counterparts, the DEA has worked hard to develop confidential sources in this country and abroad who will provide information leading to the discovery of more of these tunnels. It is evident from the size and sophistication of recently discovered tunnels that they are linked to some of the largest and most ruthless DTOs operating along our borders. Financial resources to construct and operate these tunnels cost millions of dollars, which are only available to these large-scale organizations. Tunnels discovered by DEA have been equipped with reinforced ceilings, water evacuation and ventilation systems, and even concrete floors. However, the smuggling of drugs through these tunnels can result in a significant return on this investment. As such, the discovery and removal from service of these tunnels significantly disrupts the operations of these organizations which count on these conduits for entry into the U.S. Most importantly, closing down these underground corridors hits the DTOs where it hurts--their bank accounts. Recent successes have been encouraging. The most ambitious of these was discovered on January 26 of this year, a tunnel which opened into a vacant warehouse just east of the Otay Mesa port of entry in California. A tip from a confidential informant to the Tunnel Task Force--staffed by DEA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)--led to the discovery of this tunnel, which started 150 yards south of the border and proceeded an incredible one- half mile into the United States. A DEA investigation determined that the tunnel--which was equipped with electric lighting and ventilation-- had probably been operating since November and had been used day and night since its completion to smuggle marijuana and other illegal drugs into the country. Any trucks leaving the warehouse loaded with drugs would have quickly disappeared into the steady and heavy traffic of legitimate goods flowing through that immediate area. Thanks to the hard work of DEA and other agencies, at least 51 of these tunnels have been discovered and shut down already. Almost all of these are in the San Diego and Tucson sectors of the border. Of note, Federal, state, and local organizations have banded together and fused resources in the establishment of a Tunnel Task Force, which is responsible for bringing to justice those responsible for this threat to our national security. Officers from DEA, ICE, CBP, the San Diego Police Department, Chula Vista Police Department, and the National City Police Department all participate in this endeavor. But the discovery of a tunnel under the U.S.-Canada border into Washington State shows that our northern border can also be threatened by this new smuggling tactic. DEA agents working with their counterparts in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police discovered the 360- foot long tunnel after setting up secret surveillance on the American side in early July. Three Canadian citizens were recorded moving large bags through the tunnel which later were found to contain heavy loads of marijuana and ecstasy. These individuals were later arrested, pled guilty to various offenses and were sentenced to nine years in Federal prison. Finally, we can hardly forget that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001 did so under false pretenses. We have increased our security considerably since then, and this undoubtedly makes the possibility of entering this country through one of these tunnels a more attractive proposition for potential terrorists. While the DTOs are not likely to use their tunnels for smuggling average illegal immigrants, they might allow them to be used by special-interest aliens for the right price. Therefore, we can be thankful for all the efforts of DEA and other agencies to detect and shut down these tunnels before they lead to catastrophic harm to our people. Mr. Speaker, the problems of cross-border tunnels is urgent and growing, and we would be shirking our duty to the people if we dither any more. We don't need to study and ponder the challenge any longer. We need to pass this bill now and give Federal agencies like DEA stronger leverage in going after those people who seek to use this insidious method to smuggle dangerous narcotics and--potentially-- dangerous people into our country.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it has been my privilege here in Congress to serve as the Drug Policy chairman, and also as a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, and thus, during most of my career, I have been on both the north and south border. A number of years ago, prior to the creation of the Homeland Security Committee, we did a major border report, the most comprehensive border report ever done in the history of this Congress. In that process, we had done roughly, I believe, six hearings on the Mexican border and three on the Canadian border, and I have personally visited nearly every border crossing on both the north and south border with very few exceptions. In that course of time, it becomes apparent that some of what Mr. Reyes has been saying is absolutely true. We do not have enough money for the Border Patrol. We do not have a salary scale with which to keep them in the Border Patrol, and I have worked over multiple years to keep increasing that. In fact, we have tried to increase the Border Patrol here in Congress, because it is not easy to just stay standing in the sand, in the heat, day after day. We have tried to vary their positions, but when they get other opportunities to be air marshals, when they get other opportunities to take other posts, they tend to leave. We, in spite of our hiring, have been putting hundreds and thousands through training and can barely gain in the numbers. We need to be more aggressive, and we need to have a realistic pay scale and job opportunities for the people who go into our Border Patrol, but absolutely we need to ramp up at a faster rate the number of Border Patrol people. We need to make sure they have adequate facilities with them, cars, equipment, radios, that when some of the drug terrorists or people who are moving large numbers of people come out with more military weapons and guns than our Border Patrol have, and in greater numbers, we have a human problem at the border, and we need to understand that in many cases those who are trying to invade us are armed, and armed more aggressively. We may have places where we have one agent or two agents with 100 to 200 people coming at them. It is a very difficult job, and we ought to raise, defend, expand and give the equipment to our Border Patrol. That is what we do in the Homeland Security bill, and we need to ramp it up faster. But there is another problem here, and my friend Mr. Reyes and I have been at joint hearings, we have traveled together, and I very much respect his position. But with the people along the border, it is a much more controversial issue. But as we look at a broader immigration strategy in the United States, and I absolutely agree with that, we have three different problems, the illegal immigration problem, the terrorism problem and the narcotics and contraband problem. Narcotics and contraband would also include chemical, nuclear and biological weapons and parts. Basically, if you can't protect your border, you are not safe. If you can't protect your border, you don't know who is here. If you can't protect your border, we cannot stop what will be a flood now of meth precursors and meth coming across the border now that we have changed our internal laws. This is a comprehensive question, and we need a comprehensive solution. But part of that is a fence, and you have to have different types of fencing, physical fencing, fences that keep people out or at least going over the top so the Border Patrol can kind of bend behind them and get them in groups, rather than having to station 20,000 Border Patrol agents who cannot cover 1,000 miles. You have to have fencing to drive them to certain locations to give time for the Border Patrol to sag and work with that. It is not realistic. That is why the fences work well in San Diego, why the fences worked well in El Paso. In the areas where there are gaps in those fences, and it is difficult in Mr. Reyes' home area in El Paso, is where the road comes so close to the line or the railroad comes close, and there isn't fencing, and there is a huge challenge for the Border Patrol. Now, we have some places, let me give you an illustration, which I have talked to Chairman Hunter, and I don't believe is in the 700 miles, but we have talked about we need to add it, that is over in west Texas in the sector, I believe it is Marfa, just right at the edge of the Marfa sector just east of El Paso. There we have a place called Neely's crossing. We recently had a case where a truck was moving what we believe was 10,000 pounds of marijuana, 10,000 pounds, 5 tons. Our Border Patrol came up on the vehicle. They negotiated with them and they said they got stuck in the sand, because when they saw the Border Patrol coming they tried to back up and they got stuck. They got about 1,700 pounds, they estimate, out; and then they came back with their guns and said basically, we have got a tow vehicle here. You can't take this. Now, if you can smuggle 10,000 pounds of marijuana, you can certainly get nuclear, chemical and biological. Now, why are they running trucks through that area? The Rio Grande in that area is not a continuous, huge, wide river. It is pockets of water. There are only certain places in the Rio Grande and other places on the border where you can take a truck that handles 10,000 pounds because it sinks. But there is gravel in that area, and guess what? They have a bulldozer on the other side. Every time they try to put up a border on that side, they bring the bulldozer across from the Mexican side and bulldoze it down. They bulldoze it down. When I was there with the sector chiefs on either side, they started up the bulldozer and they said, ``Mr. Souder, you need to get out of here. It is not safe anymore.'' Our agents had to retreat when they came out with their guns. This is a huge problem at Neely's Crossing. That is one of the areas where there has to be at a minimum a barrier fence that can take a 40- mile-an-hour hit from a large vehicle, because no Border Patrol agent can stop it. In New Mexico, as I was visiting in New Mexico, we pioneered a fence there because there have been vehicles at high speed and knocking down some of these fences that will now take that kind of hit, as well as they are doing it in Yuma, Arizona. People are coming into the Barry Goldwater Air Range. We have to either stop our training or we are going to drop a bomb on these individuals. They are going through the Organ Pipe Cactus Park, and some of the most beautiful hiking trails in America are no longer safe. We had a park ranger killed there. It is chaos in Organ Pipe. In South Padre Island National Park, they have, they said, drug dealers coming up, all sorts of things. It is in times in danger of being overrun. We have fish and wildlife areas where habitat is being absolutely destroyed by the number and the quantity of illegal immigrants moving through. We need to have more Border Patrol agents, but they need the supplemental fencing to help control that. And it will not reduce the number of Border Patrol agents. It will decrease the demand. The thing the American people need to understand is, this will be expensive. We can't work out our internal controls and figure out whether we are going to do work visas, what we are going to do for the people here, if we don't have secure IDs and we don't have a fence because, as I just heard in one of the hearings I conducted for Ms. Harris, Mrs. Myrick, Ms. Foxx and Mr. McHenry in North Carolina, they had a lady whose daughter and son-in-law were killed in an automobile wreck, one was killed, one is still comatose, and they had been deported three times for drunk driving before. Until we control the Southwest border, until we figure out how to get secure IDs, all this other talk is basically irrelevant. I favor trying to work this out, but we can't; when you have multiple people calling in with similar names and just picture IDs and no fingerprints, you can't run employer enforcement. And if you are going to deport them, if you don't have a way to stop them at the border, it won't work. This needs to be incremental, it needs to be comprehensive, but it has got to start with the border, and fencing is a key part of that. The agents will always be the critical part, because they will come around the fences, they will come over the fences, but it is one way to control the size of the vehicles, the size of the weapons, the quantity that is coming at you. And I strongly believe that we need this fence, and I do not understand, I do not understand, the Democratic opposition to a fence.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I first want to thank our majority whip, the chairman of Government Reform Committee and Senator Coburn in particular for the way they moved this bill, introduced the bill and moved this bill through. We all realize that the government needs to be more transparent and we are working towards those directions. But as you heard Mr. Blunt mention earlier, our subcommittee, the one that I chair, had one of the more frustrating experiences. Chairman Davis, myself, many of the subcommittee chairmen in Government Reform's job is to do oversight over the executive branch, and it is very hard to get the data we need to do proper oversight. We started in December, actually October 6, 2005, to ask USAID for some information on whether they were following congressional guidelines as far as a particular group and program that we had been tipped off may not have been following those guidelines. USAID at the meeting denied they were funding this organization. We asked them for documentation. They said documentation didn't exist. My staff director, Marc Wheat, and our hard-working staff, dug up on Google in actuality documents that the State Department said didn't exist. We also had people from other agencies that leaked us documents. So they in effect came to us and told us a mistruth about what existed and didn't exist. They also buried it in subcontractors. This organization, SANGRAM, had in fact been a high risk candidate already because they had publicly opposed having prostitution be illegal. They had written, We believe that when involuntarily initiation into prostitution occurs, a process of socialization within the institution of prostitution exists, whereby the involuntary nature of the business changes increasingly into one of active acceptance, not necessarily with resignation. This is not a coercive process.'' In other words, they believe prostitution is a legitimate form of a job. Now, that is contrary to Federal law. But even though this group had taken that position and even though our government had let them participate, they had tried to disguise in the grant process who was getting the money. We had a case of an organization that went in to rescue some women from prostitution, and when they were rescued, this organization, funded with taxpayer dollars, contrary to U.S. law, went and took the women back into prostitution in Asia. We cannot on the one hand be trying to get women out of prostitution, and on the other hand be funding it contrary to law. The fundamental problem here was we couldn't follow the grants. The reason you need transparency and the reason we need transparency in the executive branch and the reason we need transparency in the legislative branch is so we can at least see where the money goes. Then you can debate with your politicians whether it is the right policy or the wrong policy. But when you can't find where the money goes, it is impossible to do responsible legislation and absolutely impossible to do responsible oversight. I thank the chairman of the Government Reform Committee for making the executive branch be accountable as well, and for our leader and for the cooperation of the Democrats on this issue. This should be a bipartisan effort. Let the sun shine on all earmarks and let the sun shine on all grants Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2590, Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. The database envisioned in this act will be a vital tool for creating a more open spending process. As we all know, government spending is often an impenetrable web of confusion and dead-ends. Exactly who receives taxpayer money may be difficult to ascertain. In some instances, agencies cannot answer definitively if an organization receives taxpayer funding or not. Such messy records and bookkeeping would not be tolerated in the private sector. Furthermore, the government does not allow the private sector to keep such abysmal records. Establishing the database proposed in this bill will cut through this web and allow easy access to who receives money and for what purpose. The need for this type of system will help not only in area of earmarks, but also in the awarding of government grants and contracts. The necessity of such a database is best illustrated by an exchange between USAID and the Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. In my capacity as Chairman of the subcommittee, on October 6, 2005, I sent a letter to USAID seeking information about its funding of the pro-prostitution non- governmental organization called SANGRAM in violation of Public Law 108-25, the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003. According to an unclassified State Department memorandum obtained by subcommittee staff, Restore International, an anti-trafficking NGO that works with law enforcement agencies in India, was ``confronted by a USAID-funded NGO [SANGRAM] while the former attempted to rescue and provide long-term care for child victims of sex trafficking. The confrontation led to the release of 17 minor girls--victims of trafficking--into the hands of traffickers and trafficking accomplices.'' According to this memorandum, SANGRAM ``allowed a brothel keeper into a shelter to pressure the girls not to cooperate with counselors. The girls are now back in the brothels, being subjected to rape for profit.'' On November 16, 2005, a USAID briefer asserted to Government Reform Committee staff that USAID had ``nothing to do with'' the grant to the pro-prostitution SANGRAM, and that the Committee's inquiries were ``destructive.'' The Subcommittee is now in possession of documents that demonstrate that USAID must provide a revised briefing to Congress on its true role. These documents prove that USAID money financed the pro-prostitution SANGRAM through a second organization named Avert, which was established with the assistance of four USAID employees as a pass- through entity. USAID has held the ex-officio Vice Chairmanship of Avert since inception. According to these documents, the USAID board member of Avert voted twice to award funding to SANGRAM (July 27, 2002 and again on December 3, 2004), the last time being some 18 months after the provisions of Public Law 108-25 prohibited taxpayer funding of pro-prostitution groups like SANGRAM. That SANGRAM was a high-risk candidate for not complying with Public Law 108-25 should not have been a surprise to USAID. SANGRAM was a cosigner, along with many other high-risk candidates, of a May 18, 2005 letter to President Bush opposing the anti-prostitution pledge. Subcommittee staff found posted on a USAID-sponsored Web site, a 5- year-old report from SANGRAM that states: ``We believe that when involuntary initiation into prostitution occurs, a process of socialization within the institution of prostitution exists, whereby the involuntary nature of the business changes increasingly into one of active acceptance, not necessarily with resignation. This is not a coercive process.'' I agree with President Bush that ``It takes a special kind of depravity to exploit and hurt the most vulnerable members of society. Human traffickers rob children of their innocence; they expose them to the worst of life before they have seen much of life. Traffickers tear families apart. They treat their victims as nothing more than goods and commodities for sale to the highest bidder.'' It is inconceivable that an organization like SANGRAM could have received funding from the American taxpayer had USAID put in place an adequate management system to carry out Public Law 108-25. On December 13, 2005, a large briefing team from the Department of State and USAID met with staff from the Subcommittee I chair concerning this matter, in order to demonstrate ownership of the problem and to layout corrective measures being taken. To my dismay and astonishment, the briefers were not prepared to discuss (and exhibited little knowledge of) the pass-through entity known as Avert that USAID established and which served as the mechanism whereby NGOs in India were monitored and financed with American tax dollars. Subcommittee staff knew more than the State/USAID briefing team about this matter thanks to Google searches on the web for critical documents that had not been provided to the Subcommittee by the Administration. In the months since that December 13 appeal was made for an electronic registry, the Subcommittee request has inspired two pieces of legislation: first in the other body, and the second we are debating here today. This scandal of financing pro-prostitution groups by USAID was highlighted by the authors in both chambers as illustrating the need for this legislation. I urge the swift passage of this legislation. If we are going to continue to spend tax-payer money, the American people deserve to know how it is being spent and by whom. Flagrantly disgusting examples of the misuse of tax-payer funds must be made known and eliminated.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim Mr. Poe's time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, my subject for tonight is on Afghanistan and the narcotics problem, but before I address that, I would like to insert into the Record an excellent newspaper article about Tom Jehl, who died Tuesday in Fort Wayne. He had this tremendous love for the University of St. Francis and Fort Wayne football team, and that love and this story is about how it kept him alive in the drive for the national championship, and how this year it is the inspiration for that team. This is in NAIA, not Notre Dame's division. They will be the national champ in that division, but the University of St. Francis has been in the championship for the last few years, and Tom Jehl was their biggest cheerleader, and he is going to be sorely missed in Fort Wayne, and I hope it inspires the team, the Cougars, to go all the way this year [From the Fort Wayne News--Sentinel, Sept. 13, 2006] In January 2005, Fort Wayne businessman and Lifetime Sports Academy co-founder Tom Jehl was diagnosed with aggressive strains of carcinoma and sarcoma cancers. A few weeks later, doctors at the Mayo Clinic told Jehl he had six months to live. Jehl died Tuesday at age 76. This story is how he turned that prediction into 21 months with the help of some young friends. When Jehl was informed of his diagnosis, one of the first people he called was University of Saint Francis Football coach Kevin Donley. The pair had met eight years earlier while waiting to participate in an hour-long radio sports show. ``I didn't know anything about Lifetime Sports Academy and Tom Jehl,'' Donley said, ``and he didn't know anything about me and thought I was a fool to start a football team at Saint Francis. I thought, `This guy's getting a half-hour of my deal,' and he's thinking, `I'm getting a half-hour of his deal and they'll never play a game.' '' Almost, but not quite. ``I was trying not to listen to him,'' Jehl said a few weeks ago, laughing. ``Out of the comer of my ear I hear him say `We intend to win a national championship,' and I was like, Oh, brother, are we bringing a caseload to Fort Wayne! And he's on before me?' '' A former Central Catholic quarterback, class of 1948, Jehl's first love was football. He played his college ball at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, before joining the Air Force, and it had always been his dream that Fort Wayne high school players would have a closer option. A few weeks after their meeting, Jehl walked into Donley's office and asked how he could help. Over the next few years, Jehl helped the school name the football stadium after Bishop John M. D'Arcy and then was the major contributor to get artificial turf for the stadium. ``I don't think we'd be where we are with our football program without him,'' Donley said. ``He's been such a mentor to me and a friend to me and has helped me in this community to know what the heck to do. He turned out to be one of the best friends I have in life.'' In April 2005, Donley and Saint Francis President Sister M. Elise Kriss asked Jehl to attend a healing prayer Mass at Trinity Hall. When Jehl and his wife, Marg, arrived early, Kriss said Donley wanted them to stop by a spring football practice. As Jehl approached the field, Donley dismissed the players. The Jehls and Kriss walked to the front of the building where the team was waiting, pointing up to ``Tom Jehl Football Complex'' posted on the side of the building. ``I had no clue,'' Jehl said. ``I never heard a cheer so loud in all my life. Then I thought, `What the heck am I going to say?' '' Afterward Donley made a few remarks, talking about how the players had been praying for Jehl every day and were dedicating the season to him. Jehl remembered making a few comments, mostly saying the right things, including telling the players maybe he could make it to the first game in September. ``Mr. Jehl, the final game is Dec. 15, and you aren't getting off the hook until then,'' linebacker Brian Kurtz said. ``You're going to be around here until Dec. 15, and we're going to win it all for you.'' The players presented Jehl with a silver ring from their runner-up finish in 2004 and told him the goal was to get him a gold one the next season. Jehl said he'd try. After all, the Cougars had lost the title in the final seconds and would be favored to return to the championship game. ``I kind of got revved up a little bit, and I had been pretty negative about the whole future of my health,'' Jehl said. ``I wasn't doing myself any good walking around and talking about my time period and such. About a week after the Mass, I began to change completely. I figured they went to all that trouble, so who was I to walk around with such a negative attitude?'' The doctors' prognosis never wavered, but Jehl kept fighting with natural herbs, prayers and encouragement. Inhaling energy from the children at Lifetime Sports Academy, he made it through the summer as the Cougars prepared for another title try. With Jehl watching every game from the sidelines, the Cougars kept rolling. ``It was like living in one of the most unbelievable stories of all time, and I felt it all the way,'' Jehl said. ``They knew I was there, and I knew they were there. They put their heart into it, and many said they'd be praying for me every day.'' The Cougars again reached the national title game. Jehl flew to the game with friends and gave a pre-game prayer, saying ``Let's finish the job,'' at the end. This time the score wasn't so close. Carroll College won 27-10. After the game, Jehl didn't say anything to the players, just climbed on the plane for the ride home. He knew there was nothing he could say. ``The other team was more ready for us,'' he said. ``It was a good fight, and a couple of plays turned things around. They came that close. I think that if they had won that game, I'd have been cured right there.'' But the cancer was spreading, and Jehl spent more time than ever this summer at Lifetime Sports Academy, talking with coaches and enjoying the kids. Though he was unable to go to the Cougars' season-opening game in Iowa last Saturday, he attended the Saint Francis preseason scrimmage two weeks ago, 15 months past his original diagnosis. Narcotics Problem in Afghanistan Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the temptation in Afghanistan right now is to say, I told you so. I have been trying not to jump up and down and say, I told you so, but I can't resist doing it at least once: I told you so. In the narcotics committee, we have been raising for years, since we went into Afghanistan, that the heroin problem was going to lead to a rerise of the Taliban. It was inevitable. Now, there are broad strategies in Afghanistan that are very complex. Afghanistan has never really been governed as a nation. It has always been much more tribal even than what now people are becoming familiar with between the Kurds the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq. And for those who say in Iraq we should have allowed the Baaths into the government, we should have let more territorial control, well, we did that in Afghanistan. So we tried both ways. In Afghanistan, President Karzai, a good man, a dedicated man who has understood the battle, has tried to work with the tribal leaders in the region. But in those regions, in the absence of a workable economy at this point, they went from a somewhat large narcotics country to the dominant heroin country in the world. Let me give you some idea of that scale. Under the Taliban, they had produced, let's take this on an equivalency because I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but let's say 20 million hectare, or 100,000 hectares and 20 million tons of whatever the quantity of heroin is. A number of 20. Then they went down to zero. When the government changed in Afghanistan, initially there wasn't a growth in heroin, but it went up by a factor of three times. Then it went up again by a factor of four times what it was under the Taliban, an equivalent of 60, then an equivalent of 80 if you use a 20 base number. Now, supposedly, this was getting stabilized. But again this year, the UNDCP, the narcotics office of the Department of the U.N., is saying that it rose 59 percent again. Now, 59 percent is an extraordinary number, but over a base that is four times the previous world record and now it is up 59 percent again, what you see is that what used to be the grain and bread basket of the world, down around Kandahar and the Helmand Province, is now heroin as far as the eye can see. Afghanistan has not always been the heroin center of the world. They have always had some heroin, but they had it up and down over the years. Since we have moved in there, because the Department of Defense, and particularly the British, who had charge of this, have neglected to do the spray operations, have neglected to go after this, they now have a problem that is nearly insurmountable, and now it has spread to the Taliban. Congressman Hoekstra as well as Congressman Shadegg and Congressman Ruppersberger and I were what may be the only delegation that will ever get into Helmand. With the battle between the State Department and the Defense Department, finally the State Department did let us get on the ground. We got down to Helmand. I have been to Colombia 12 times. I have been in Afghanistan before. But when we got down in the Kandahar- Helmand region, we got up in a Black Hawk and went for 45 minutes, and as far as the eye could see there was heroin, with poppies coming out. And when you see the immensity of the heroin problem, that is going to move in to all the nations around it, spread from Afghanistan into the other stans, Uzbekistan and Kazihkstan, and move on into Turkey and into Europe. It is going to corrupt. It is not like Colombia, where you had the Medellin cartel and the Cali cartel. Here you don't have that same type of one dominant country moving through. The Afghans don't manage the heroin all the way through. It is going to corrupt the entire eastern side of Europe and move into Asia. On top of that, it is corrupting the government inside. And every time I have gone to Afghanistan, I have asked the same question. They say, well, these guys have really sophisticated weapons. They are getting IEDs similar to what we see in Iraq. They are getting new rocket launchers that can take our airplanes out. What do you think they are buying them with? Do you think they are making Dell Computers in Afghanistan? Do you think they are making plastic parts for the auto industry in Afghanistan? No, they are buying them with heroin. And we have been asleep. The British have been asleep, NATO's been asleep, and the U.N.'s been asleep while the heroin is on the ground growing in massive quantities and now funding the killing of troops from my district. Men and women from my district are being shot at with heroin money because of the addiction around the world and because our governments wouldn't act. Now, there are some things we can do. First off, we need the Department of Defense and our Federal agencies, and particularly the British, who are extremely frustrating in this process, and the NATO people that are taking over to start to recognize that narcotics is the core funding of terrorism in Afghanistan. They have no other income. Secondly, we need back the Schumer amendment in the DOD appropriations bill that put $700 million towards the drug problem in Afghanistan. And I am not always a big ally of Senator Schumer, but we need to back his amendment here. He is right. We need a unified campaign like in Colombia, where drugs and terror are treated the same way. This is an inseparable problem, and we better get it now or we will never get Afghanistan back the problem Counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan are failing. A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicated that opium cultivation rose 59% in the past year. . . . from 104,000 to 165,000 hectares. Afghanistan is producing 92% of the world's opiates including heroin and this total actually exceeds global consumption by an astounding 30%. The problem is particularly acute in the southern provinces and most notably in Helmand. If one considered Helmand an independent nation, it would be the world's second largest opium producer following the rest of Afghanistan. Afghanistan's central government has been unable to exert enough influence to stem the rising opium tide and this has fueled rampant corruption at the provincial level. why it's important This rise in opium production coincides with a resurgence of Taliban inspired violence especially prevalent in Afghanistan's southern provinces. The drug profits, totaling at least a third of Afghanistan's GDP, are fueling a deadly insurgency that has reached unprecedented levels since we toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. American and allied soldiers are fighting and dying every day because of this illicit relationship. In a larger sense, the Taliban's resurrection is threatening Afghanistan's emerging democracy and restricting the growth of legitimate trade and commerce. It's no coincidence that the largest increases in opium production occurred in the areas where the central government is weak and the Taliban is strong. At the provincial level, there is widespread corruption between government officials, narco-traffickers, tribal leaders and Taliban insurgents. The Taliban is encouraging farmers to grow poppy while providing protection for narcotics shipments through Afghanistan. This symbiotic relationship is destroying the fabric of Afghan democracy and threatening to reverse all of the nation's progress since 2001. Afghanistan's drug based economy is destabilizing the entire region and providing the financial means for a return of radical Islamic fundamentalism to this fledgling democracy. the way forward The Department of Defense (DOD) and other federal agencies need to accept that narcotics smuggling in Afghanistan is fueling the Taliban- led insurgency. Defeating the Taliban is impossible without simultaneously addressing the drug problem so the DOD must play a greater role in non-eradication efforts. On September 7th, the Schumer amendment was inserted into the DOD appropriations bill for $700 million towards the drug problem in Afghanistan. At conference, I recommend mandating this funding to jump- start a new, counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan. Since narcotics and terrorist operatives function in a mutually beneficial and symbiotic fashion, our national policy must shift toward a ``Unified Campaign'' against drugs and terror similar to the initiative in Colombia which has yielded significant results. Our national policy should not focus solely on eradication. Instead, the DOD must be mandated to support other federal/international agencies in pursuit of narcotics traffickers as well as terrorist organizations. More specifically: Purchase or lease adequate DEA helicopter lift and support gun ships to support enforcement actions against drug kingpins (also known as High Valued Targets or HVTs) or heroin labs. Utilize the State Department's ten Huey II helicopters, currently being used for eradication, to support DEA law enforcement operations. Purchase an adequate number of counter-narcotic canines to support all drug enforcement operations including airport security/cargo inspection and road check-points. Provide $18.5 million for the DEA to create human-intelligence networks. The successful counter-narcotics lessons from Colombia are also clear. Upon the U.S. Congress' request, the Colombian National Police visited Afghanistan in July 2006 and made several recommendations to curb the narcotics problem. The Colombian police are experts at dealing with the terrorism and drug nexus so we should give great weight to their recommendations. They encouraged the Afghan police to develop their investigative and intelligence collection techniques to exploit human informants in order to take-down drug kingpins as well as to trace and eliminate the trafficking networks. In addition, the Afghan police needs to learn how to develop legal cases in order prosecute major drug kingpins. A key mechanism of the DOD's efforts is the use of the Central Transfer Account (CTA). This account was developed to preserve the integrity of the Department's counter-narcotics efforts and should remain firewalled from other uses. A recent reorganization proposal within DOD to expand the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Counter-Narcotics responsibilities to also include counter- proliferation and other unspecified ``global threats'', derails the singular focus of the CTA. If the CTA's resources are combined with other responsibilities, such as the Nunn-Lugar program which focuses on dismantling Soviet-era nuclear warheads, the DOD's counter-narcotics mission would be seriously distracted if not compromised. Counter- proliferation and counter-narcotics are distinct activities and the DOD should not combine both functions under one office. Finally, provincial corruption is the lubrication which keeps the narcotics engine running in Afghanistan. The potential profits from narcotics trafficking are a compelling temptation to many officials in this poverty stricken nation. Unless the Afghanistan government, with the support of the international community, can root out corruption at all levels and successfully prosecute those who violate their own laws, we'll struggle to gain any ground. conclusion Narcotics smuggling is feeding the terrorist insurgency in Afghanistan. The two activities are inextricably linked and must be combated in a unified fashion. We must succeed in Afghanistan. The maintenance of a stable and democratic Afghanistan is pivotal for regional and global security.