Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the abuse of illegal narcotics and its silent, everyday impact on the health and safety of families and the stability of every community across the country continues to be one of the most pressing issues facing the United States. This bill, introduced by myself and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the distinguished chairman of the full committee, is a forceful and bipartisan recommitment to our diverse national efforts to control drug abuse and to renew our support for a strong Office of National Drug Control Policy, to plan and coordinate the President's strategy to measurably reduce drug use by American youth and to control drug abuse and its consequences. Mr. Speaker, most people driving on two-lane highways throughout the farmland of northeast Indiana would probably find it hard to believe that the plague of illegal narcotics hits home even there, but drug use and abuse is not unique to the big cities on the coasts. In 1996, Indiana law enforcement knew of only a single methamphetamine lab in the entire State. Only 5 years later, there were 499. That number dropped to 375 in 2002, but it is still an indication of the kinds of challenges places like Indiana face when it comes to illegal drugs. Meth is not the only problem in Indiana. Fort Wayne is not a huge city, about 225,000, but there have been some huge cocaine busts there this year. This summer alone, two separate stings in Fort Wayne yielded 50 pounds of cocaine with a street value of $2.3 million. We thought cocaine was nearly gone. We were wrong. Mr. Speaker, almost half of the 12th graders in Indiana say they have used marijuana in the last year. Almost 9 percent say they have used powdered cocaine; 15 percent have used methamphetamines, but that is not the worst of it. Almost four in 100 sixth graders in Indiana say they have used marijuana in the last year. One in 200 have used powdered cocaine. These are 11- and 12-year-olds. Consequently, one might ask, is there any point in fighting this battle at all? I am frequently asked whether we believe we can ever completely eliminate illegal drug use. The simple answer to that question is no. We cannot eliminate sin. But that does not mean we cannot and should not try, any more than we would give up on spouse abuse or child abuse. It does mean that we can make a difference in some cases. The current administration has made a real effort to fight the scourge of illegal drugs, and that effort has shown results. Usage statistics that peaked in the late 1990s are now making a slow but steady decline, both nationwide and in my home State of Indiana. The numbers I cited above are too high, but they are improvements over statistics just a few short years ago. What does that mean? That means there is a long fight ahead, but things are far from helpless. We can make a difference in people's lives, and that is why this bill is so important. This bill does not and cannot address each of the many specific national programs involved in our coordinated strategies to reduce demand for illegal drugs, the prevention and treatment, reduce the supply of narcotics through source-country programs, and interdiction and to disrupt and dismantle drug trafficking organizations and control the consequences of drug- related crime through coordinated law enforcement. The details of these programs continue to be dealt with by each of the separate authorizing committees of jurisdiction. It does, however, provide a cornerstone and ensure that these programs will be coordinated and effective through the broad guidance and coordination of the Office of National Drug Control Policy on behalf of the President. The legislation reauthorizes ONDCP and its programs for 5 years. It makes some significant revisions to current law that will enhance the effectiveness and accountability of the National Drug Control strategy and its programs, streamline and simplify the process for its development, and provide increased flexibility to the ONDCP Director to respond to changing circumstances. For example, we have replaced an inflexible legal requirement for a bloated 5-year strategy, guided by pages of outdated statutory mandates, with a flexible and responsive annual strategy that still follows the same basic principles to ensure a comprehensive and responsible drug strategy. We have also worked in many areas to improve performance measurement for the annual strategy, Federal drug control programs, ONDCP programs, and even some private sector efforts to ensure that these programs will be effective and accountable. For example, we are now requiring that the director conduct a specific evaluation of the performance of each Federal agency in carrying out its responsibilities under the strategy each year and have mandated, for the first time ever, that a uniform system be developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug treatment programs in the United States. The bill also provides for direct evaluation of the effectiveness of the media campaign in its individual ads. Another key theme of the bill is our efforts to ensure that ONDC programs, most notably the HIDTA program and the media campaign, remain directed to their original intent and purpose in areas where our oversight activities have clearly demonstrated some lack of focus. Finally, the bill is intended to ensure that the Federal Government maintains appropriate attention and resources directed to drug control, which has recently too often been subjugated to other purposes and policies. This bill is a true bipartisan effort passed by unanimous vote in subcommittee and authorizing subcommittee, and by voice vote in the full committee, and represents the outcome of ongoing consultation and discussions with the minority. The bill contains a complete text of the Dawson Family Community Protection Act that was introduced by the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), to address witness and community protection initiatives in the wake of the tragic death of the Dawson family in Baltimore at the hands of violent drug dealers. The bill reported from the committee also contains a number of items requested by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the distinguished ranking member of the full committee, many of which reflect a clear bipartisan agreement that the media campaign should not be used for political purposes. The bill also contains many suggestions from Members on both sides of the aisle including the work of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) on the media campaign and changes to the current law requested by Director Walters in the administration. It incorporates suggestions and ideas from key outside groups including the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, drug treatment providers, the Partnership for Drug Free America, and members of the Federal, State, local and tribal law enforcement participating in the HIDTA and CTAC programs, most notably the Drug Enforcement Administration. While no one is necessarily completely happy with this bill, the final result was a bill that achieved nearly unanimous bipartisan support in the committee. This is a strong bipartisan bill to send to the other body. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make sure that Members understood there was one program we have not talked about at all today which is CTAC, the Counter-Drug Technology Assessment Center, which has a technology transfer program that is so important to so many of our local and State programs; 5,356 local and State agencies across the United States have tapped into this technology. I also wanted to point out for those who are somewhat confused about HIDTAs that, for example, in New York City, Detroit and Los Angeles, over half of the members of that HIDTA are local law enforcement and two-thirds are State and local law enforcement. This was a program that said rather than just have Federal law enforcement, let us build and leverage the resources of the State and local communities by working together. If we do not adequately fund this program, every city has pretty much told us that they will pull out because they have to use their State and local dollars to join with these HIDTAs, and it is a very marginal decision to do so, but they believe putting two-thirds of the officers in has been beneficial in reducing crime in their area. In New York City, the HIDTA there is referred to as the U.N. of law enforcement because after 9/11, they have consolidated not only the narcotics, but the anti-terrorism efforts to make sure that New York remains safe because it has been on orange alert since 9/11. It is on orange alert when the rest of us are on elevated alert. And to cut back the HIDTA, or eliminate the HIDTA, in New York City would be devastating to anti-terrorism protection as well. Lastly, I want to point out that I have had excellent discussions with the ranking member, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and with the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman). We have continued to disagree, but understand that we need to work out some kind of additional language that gives flexibility on drug treatment, although that should not be the primary function, and HIDTA dollars should not be used for that effect. We continue to talk about the grandfathering in of the two programs that are not grandfathered in under this and if, whether that money could be used like it is in the Washington-Baltimore HIDTA to work on drug treatment, and I pledged that I would continue to work on this as we move through conference. So I hope that given the many changes, this bill makes a very strong statement to drug dealers across America, that we are not going to back off. It makes a very strong statement on marijuana use and the dangers of marijuana. It talks about how to tighten the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program to make sure it has a clear anti-drug message. It includes efforts to make sure that the HIDTAs focus on national drug trade and not just at the local level where we lock people up but how do we get into the systems. On the supply side, we have also asked for new assessments on the accelerating problem of Columbian heroine. I believe that in the end this bill represents a bipartisan approach to a balanced, coordinated and effective strategy to address the serious problem of drug abuse and its many effects across our country. I urge all Members to support H.R. 2086.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to clarify one of the matters from the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) because under President Bush, in 2 straight years of requests, he has had larger increases in treatment than in supply reduction. And it is good to see that she at least agrees with the President and House leadership on that matter. While we may have other disagreements, we all agree that we need to focus increasing amounts on treatment. I also wanted to clarify that the purpose of this particular bill and HIDTAs was to have these high-intensity drug treatment areas where local and State law enforcement could tap into the Federal law enforcement, so rather than just going after the user on the street, we could actually have local and State law enforcement move up through the system to find the networks, to try to get the major drug dealers. That has not stopped all the street-level arrests, but it has made differences in Los Angeles and in Indiana, where we now see us able to go up the chain and try to get the big people behind those who are abusing the people in our neighborhoods on the street. I also would like to clarify one other thing that has been sent out to some offices that has some false information from one of the conservative groups that has a false allegation about the amount of money being spent in this bill. This bill is a freeze for the next 2 years. In the third, fourth and fifth year, there is a $15 million increase in a $1 billion bill. We have worked hard to try to manage this financially, and it is incorrect to imply that this bill is anything other than a freeze for the next few years. I think the wording is confusing on the criticism. Furthermore, it proposes to criticize the one major prevention program we have, the media campaign, because of an OMB study. We have addressed a number of the things in this bill that OMB has asked for which was more restrictions. The letter also confuses authorizing and appropriations bills and also has false data in it on whether the ad campaign has been effective. In fact, it is accurate, but there is a misleading thing. It implies, it says that the media campaign has been ineffective, but then in its wording says ``among certain age groups,'' meaning it has been effective in most categories with most drugs, but among a few it has not. Therefore, they sent out a memo falsely implying that we increased the spending and falsely attacking the ad campaign, and that did not do this group justice which has been a great crusader for responsible spending. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the chairman of the full committee.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), the former chairman of the subcommittee.

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2086) to reauthorize the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as amended.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As I earlier mentioned, the famous Yankees dynasty compares like to the Boston Celtics who had Larry Bird from Indiana as one of their anchors and the University of Notre Dame which, of course, is based in Indiana, although most people do not realize that. I do want to pay tribute to two Yankee ties who clearly show that even the Yankees have Hoosier ties, which partly makes them successful. Don Mattingly will not be remembered in the same light as Ruth, Mantle, and DiMaggio given his lack of World Series rings; but this Evansville- native-turned-New York Yankees legend has made a claim to be one of the best pure baseball players the Yankees ever had. During his prime in the 1980s, he had an on-base slugging of over .900, bettered only by Wade Boggs. On top of his outstanding hitting, he also tied for having the best fielding percentage of any first baseman ever to play the game. Between 1985 and 1989, he won a Yankee record for five consecutive Gold Glove awards at first base. Indiana is proud to be the home of this Yankee legend. The second Yankee I want to highlight with Hoosier ties is a man who never played a game for this proud organization. George Steinbrenner, better known as The Boss, has been called many things by his critics. Unsuccessful will never be one of them. During his tenure as the principal owner of the Yankees, he has guided this franchise to six World Series titles and put them back on top as the most recognized sports franchise in the world. I highlight this because Steinbrenner was a 1948 graduate of the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana. The Steinbrenners are a three-generation Culver family. George Steinbrenner's father, Henry, was a 1919 Culver Summer Schools graduate, and each of his children graduated from the academy as well. So I not only pay tribute to the New York Yankees but some of their Hoosier roots with the New York Yankees. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 306) congratulating the New York Yankees on the occasion of their 100th anniversary.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, for several years now we have been having the discussion on how best to help faith-based organizations. Very few clear answers have emerged. Today we are here to discuss H.R. 7, the Charitable Giving Act, which addresses the two areas where I believe the government can best assist faith-based and community organizations in their work. A few months ago I initiated a series of field hearings to talk directly to the faith-based providers of social services. We've put the cart before the horse in this debate, and what we're trying to do with these hearings is to take a step back, and ask the providers what qualities they possess that makes them unique. Time and time again, they are telling me that it is their faith that drives them to do the work that they do, often in undesirable conditions for little or no recognitnition. Our second hearing was held in San Antonio, where Freddie Garcia has built a very successful drug treatment program that is not only faith-base, but faith-saturated. Jack Willome is a San Antonio businessman who volunteers his time to help Victory Fellowship with financial planning. During his testimony at our hearing he recounted a conversation he had had with a friend prior to his involvement with Victory Fellowship. His friend counseled him, ``Jack, when you're giving money away, your first objective should be to try to do no harm.'' When we as the Congress are debating how we can best support the scores of faith-based organizations working in our neighborhoods, we need to heed that same advice. Do no harm. We know that organizations like Victory Fellowship, Lutheran Social Services, Prison Fellowship, Chicago's Emmaus Ministries and T.E.A.M. III in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, are helping people every day, and they do not apologize for the role faith plays in their programs. As we start attaching restrictions and qualifications to the money government is wiling to give faith-based organizations, we put ourselves in the position of asking those charities to drain their programs of the very qualities that make them effective providers of social services. So how can we best help these organizations without asking them to dilute or eliminate their religious character? The Charitable Giving Act, is a good step in the right direction. Research shows that individuals who receive a tax deduction for charitable giving contribute more than individuals who do not receive such tax benefits. By allowing the 86 million Americans who currently do not itemize on their tax returns an opportunity to deduct a portion of their charitable contributions, we are recognizing that the best way to help the private sector is to encourage more charitable giving by individuals. We know that there are limits on how much money the government is able to spend on social services. Unfortunately, the demand for social services far exceeds the money government is able to spend. It doesn't matter who is in office, the dollars just aren't there. So, we need to turn to the neighborhood organizations that are providing services, with or without government aid. Americans know which organizations in their communities are making a difference. By encouraging individuals to increase their charitable giving, we improve the likelihood that the dollars are going to go to the organizations that will produce the best results. Jack Willome also testified about the fundraising and fiscal accountability of Victory Fellowship. He said that that 90 percent of Victory Fellowship's budget comes from the giving of people who have benefited from the ministry. As he testified, It's the only project I have ever been involved in as a donor where I have total confidence that the organization has the ability to sustain the operations in the new facility, and I don't have to worry about that because of their track record. The financial support of the ministry, guess where it comes from? The people who have come through the front door of that home after--as their characters are being transformed and they become involved in Victory Temple Church and they give financially to the work of the church.'' It makes no difference if the government is involved with a faith-based organization or not. Those charities will be accountable, first and foremost, to their clients and to their donors. The support of the community is perhaps our best indicator of how successful an organization is at improving the lives of their clients. I believe that the best way we can help the faith-based community is to encourage private sector philanthropy for all individuals who contribute to charitable organizations, not just those who itemize. Approximately two-thirds of tax returns filed do not claim itemized deductions; therefore those taxpayers are not eligible to deduct their charitable contributions. The majority of non-itemizers are low- and middle-income taxpayers--the very taxpayers who would benefit from this piece of legislation. Here are a few examples of who would benefit from this bill. A non- itemizing, single taxpayer with a taxable income of $45,000 owes about $8,060 in federal income taxes. This legislation would reduce the individual's taxes owed by $62.50 if he or she donated $500 to a charity of his or her choice. Likewise, a family of four with a taxable income of $65,000 would save $125 in taxes for a donation of $1,000 to a local charity. While the savings may seem small, it is certainly better than the current tax policy of providing no benefit to non- itemizers. It is my hope that Congress will revisit this issue in the future to further expand tax relief for individuals and families who contribute financially to the valuable work of faith-based organizations. The second thing we can do to help the countless faith-based and community organizations serve their communities is to provide these organizations with the training and technical assistance they need in order to serve their clients more effectively. Mark Terrell, CEO of Lifeline Youth and Family Services in Fort Wayne, a program that provides prevention, intervention, and aftercare service for families and children in the Fort Wayne community testified at our Chicago field hearing that there needs to be a system put in place that will help both small and large agencies meet the financial reporting requirements that are necessary when using public funds. The desire and ability of these organizations to do great work within a community that desperately needs their help can be undermined or undone when they don't have the skills or resources necessary to meet high-maintenance reporting requirements. The authorization of a Compassion Capital Fund recognizes the unique contributions of faith-based and community organizations to the provision of social services by providing the resources necessary for these smaller organizations to improve and expand their services. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services created a Compassion Capital Fund funded with $30 million appropriated by Congress. HHS then took $24.8 million of that appropriation and awarded it in grants to 21 intermediary organizations whose purpose was to help smaller organizations operate and manage their programs more effectively, train staff, and expand the types and scope of the social services they provide to their communities. Two years ago I stood in this Chamber and told you about Pastor Jesse Beasley. Pastor Beasley was trying to start a youth program for kids to protect them from the drug problem and high murder rate affecting Fort Wayne. Now, two years later, that desire to help improve the lives of his neighbors has led Pastor Jesse Beasley along with several other Fort Wayne clergy to begin a program called T.E.A.M. III, which is an acronym for Touching and Equipping All Mankind. T.E.A.M. III now provides mentoring, a summer feeding program, a workforce development program and other social services. As T.E.A.M. III is working to provide services, they would benefit from the training that a Compassion Capital Fund would provide. They know where the need is, they have the faith to tackle any problem that comes their way, but they may need additional assistance if they desire to apply for a federal grant. There are a lot of small faith-based and community organizations in this country that have the heart for service but lack the finances to hire a CPA or attorney on their staff. I commend the Ways and Means Committee for including a $150 million Compassion Capital grant fund in this bill. This authorization level will enable the Health and Human Services Department to expand their technical assistance services to greater numbers of faith-based organizations. The Charitable Giving Act of 2003 is the culmination of several years of hard work, and I am proud to be a cosponsor of this important bill. It contains, in large part, what I believe are the most effective ways the federal government can lend its support to faith-based organizations. As Jack Willome said, it does no harm. It encourages individuals and businesses to make private contributions to organizations that are truly transforming people's lives--not just through assisting people with their physical needs, but also their spiritual needs. While government can be helpful in alleviating some of the problems our society faces today, it will never have the answers for some of our country's neediest people--people who need more than their physical needs met. They need help spiritually; they need God to fill the void in their lives. Community and faith-based organizations are critical to the stability and health of our country, and they rely on the support of private donations, not government aid. I encourage my colleagues to vote for this legislation. The return on the dollar from private donations resulting from this legislation will be immeasurable. Not only will individual lives be changed, but our entire society will change as crime rates do down, unwed pregnancies decrease, drug rates and suicides diminish and, in time, those same people begin to give back to their communities as others once helped them.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford) for their leadership on this bill. It is something that I have long waited to see, an actual change in our Tax Code to give more incentive to charitable giving. It is unfortunate that partisan politics has been, again, injected into this. Because as we have been holding a series of faith-based hearings around the country, one thing that we recently heard in Texas in San Antonio from the most effective faith-based drug addict rescue group in the State of Texas, and, really, in America, said, where do you think the financial support of our ministry comes from? The people who have come through the front door of that home. This bill will give those people a chance to get a tax break, many who have very little funds who have been ignored because of the way our Tax Code is structured in charitable giving. This is one small step, and I hope we can expand it in the future, but an important step and the most important step. We have been on the floor arguing over charitable choice. I said from the beginning that the Tax Code was the most important and the second most was the Compassion Capital Fund, which is also in this bill to help these little usually urban or rural organizations get an ability to do a 501(c)(3) corporation. And this bill also covers that. I am thrilled with this bill.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share a few thoughts about our Governor from Indiana for people outside Indiana who are not as familiar with him. The past few days have been an outpouring of grief and almost a celebration with the O'Bannon family about our Governor that is different than anything I have seen in Indiana politics. It is partly, I think, a transition of an era. Frank O'Bannon represented a different part of politics when it was not quite as, how would you say, aggressive, it was not quite as negative. He was a friend to everyone. Even when we had differences it was a different type of relationship. He came from the little town of Corydon, which was our State capital. As you would look at it, it would be a picturesque vision of what Indiana was when we started in southern Indiana and moved to the north. And Indianapolis in the north has now the bulk of the population and the bulk of the power, but Corydon still represents kind of old Indiana. When he ran his campaign, no matter who his opponent was and no matter what kind of campaign they ran, he ran a Hoosier-roots type of a campaign. You would see him and his wife on their porch in Corydon. You would see him talking with his grandkids. You would see him talking and sending a different signal than often is put forth in politics. It was a symbol of comfort much like Governor Bowen used to have, saying in Indiana we may not be flashy, we may not all have blow-dried hairdos, we may not be as slick as other people, but we are going to produce good, honest government that is going to continue to move Indiana forward. We are in a period of transition. And, interestingly, this man whose family was deeply rooted in early Indiana history and whose father had been a public servant, in addition to his normal public service he realized that Indiana was in this transition period. And while we sometimes disagreed on how best to do it, I think one of the things he will most be remembered for is his commitment to education at a time when Indiana is struggling with funds, like everybody else, and we have limited funds in education, to take those education funds right now and concentrate them on getting kids able to read by age 3. He understood that if Indiana was going to move forward, whether you had the old Indiana or the new Indiana, whether you were kind of a comforting grandfather figure like he has been in Indiana, or a young slick politician coming up, if we did not have basic education in Indiana we weren't going to be able to compete with the States around us and around the country. He and his wife have a tremendous legacy of preserving Indiana landmarks of many different things. But I think his effort to make sure that all kids can read will be one of his major legacies and also his legacy of how a public servant should be in relationship to other members of his party, of other parties, and to the people of Indiana. That is why we are seeing this extended outpouring of grief because we are worried that the Nation is changing and we are losing the type of values that Frank O'Bannon brought to government.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for his leadership on this difficult bill. When you make changes that are important to help poor kids in America, those who are disadvantaged, you will get controversy. You have plenty of it, but I congratulate you on trying to improve a good program. Let me directly address this amendment. This amendment would in effect say that if you have strong religious values of any faith, check it at the door or do not apply. In fact, it was also said by another Member that many organizations and people who are currently serving these kids are not asking for this amendment. Of course not. They have the contracts. Let us be frank here. In these inner-city areas where the Head Start programs are concentrated or in the rural poorer areas, we are mostly looking at black and Hispanic small churches that have been cut out of the system. We are also looking at rural white churches, the only institutions that have often stayed in those communities and they would like to be involved and some of those of deepest passion. If you are a Christian church, you believe your church is supposed to reflect the glory of God. You do not want to be forced to hire who the government says you must hire. If you have somebody who has had things that violate your faith, you do not want to be told that you cannot violate them. You want to be involved in helping people. You want to practice that compassion, whether you are Muslim, whether you are Jewish, whether you are Christian. This amendment would say to those small churches who are the pillars of those institutions, no, you are not eligible. Of course the people who have the contracts want this. This has already been ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. They have said that there is a constitutional right, even when you get public funds, to keep your religious liberty to hire and fire who you want. This is a question of do we believe these programs are effective. Do we believe the local-based programs in these communities have a value there; that the minority churches that I have visited in the urban centers who want to get involved with the kids and give them a chance, should these churches be allowed to participate without accepting the mandates of the Federal Government. This is not about big white suburban churches coming in and discriminating. This is mostly going to be minority churches in these poor areas who want to apply for these grants, and you are saying, unless you are willing to take the Federal Government telling you who to hire, who to fire, do not apply. And that is wrong, and it is a constitutionally protected right, and this amendment would be a disaster to many of those small churches who want to participate.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, one of the earlier speakers said this is just a signal. If it were so, it is a wrong signal, it is a wrong time; but it is not just a signal. It would actually deprive real dollars from people who are trying to fight narcoterrorists who are funded by our drug habits. While 40 million and 35 million, a total of 75 million, may not seem like a lot here because we spend so much money, it is a significant percentage of this budget. The previous speaker said that this has been mission creep. It has been exactly the reverse. It is mission reduction; and in fact, this request is substantially under the last request. In fact, there are fewer dollars being spent in this budget than the previous budget. In fact, more Colombians are repairing helicopters than in the past, more Colombians are spraying than in the past, more Colombians are on the ground. We now have specially trained antinarcotics units. The military have gone through human rights training and met those standards, in addition to the Colombian National Police. We are achieving our goals on the ground, and this amendment would help devastate those goals at the very moment of their success. We have had this debate for each of the last 3 years since President Clinton signed Plan Colombia into law. While there still may be two points of view this year, the facts clearly show that the debate should, in fact, be over. Thanks to the strong leadership of President Uribe, there can no longer be disagreement that the program is showing clear results. Just maintaining on the House floor that it is not working does not mean that it is not working. My colleagues can say things, but they cannot be true. I have been to Colombia twice this year and have seen firsthand the signs of remarkable success in that nation. The Uribe government has taken control of areas previously held by narcoterrorist guerrillas. There are many towns in Colombia that are still under terrorist control, but the number is declining. There are now people moving back to their hometowns. There are mayors willing to run for office again because the ELN and the paramilitaries are in somewhat of a disarray, at least in somewhat retreat; and the FARC is somewhat divided. They still control a significant percentage of the country, but it is less than it was, and we are making progress. You cannot plant alternative crops if you believe you are going to be killed by FARC and then killed by the paramilitaries. First you have some to order. We are providing people with the chance and getting some order. If we continue at that rate, we can establish one of the oldest democracies in the Americas back to a free people. This is not a civil war. Four percent of the people, that is almost not much more than the percentage in prisons in the United States, support the FARC or any of this. The people are overwhelmingly on the side of this government. This is the most popular government in modern history in Colombia. The facts are so clear my colleagues do not need to take my word for it. I will instead let the editorial board of The Washington Post, hardly the most conservative group of commentators, tell my colleagues why now is not the time to lessen our support for this critical program to keep stability in our hemisphere and control the flow of hard drugs onto every American street. On July 13, The Post editorialized as follows: ``Some members of Congress and human rights groups protested that the attempt to bolster the Colombian army with equipment and training while sponsoring the aerial spraying of coca fields would embroil the United States in a Vietnam-like quagmire. The critics were wrong. Colombian coca and poppy production has been reduced substantially: according to a United Nations study, the acreage has dropped by 38 percent in 3 years.'' The Washington Post editorial continued: ``With the traffickers and their guerrilla allies on the defensive, violence is down, too. Homicides have fallen by a quarter and kidnappings by a third this year compared with last year. Colombia's economy is growing, and its President, Alvaro Uribe, leads the strongest and most popular government the country has had in decades. Though Plan Colombia still hasn't achieved many of its goals, there can be little question that the $2.7 billion invested by the United States so far has gotten results.'' Again, those were not the gentleman from Indiana's (Mr. Souder) arguments, but the conclusion of The Washington Post editorial board. It is now beyond serious dispute that Plan Colombia is working, that it is beginning to have a serious impact, and that it is at a critical point. No program is perfect, but the choice now is a clear one. Do we continue to make progress towards finishing the job, or do we withdraw and quit? There are many hard decisions in this body, but continuing a program that is now obviously succeeding against long and hard odds should not be one of them. We also continue to have a moral obligation to the people of Colombia to help them solve deep problems of political, legal, and social order that are caused in significant part by Americans. In Cartagena earlier this month, I visited with Colombian soldiers who had been viciously attacked by narcoterrorist guerillas. They had lost limbs and yet stayed firm and resolute; some had lost lives, despite the fact that the groups who attacked them were funded in significant part by the drug habits of Americans. From my hometown and the hometowns of the members of this country, I also visited the Nelson Mandela Village for people who have been displaced and terrorized in these hometowns; and in talking to these people, they want to go back home. They do not want to be terrorized. We are near the point in about half of those areas of stabilizing, and they have moved and are at the point of moving back. How can we cut this program now when it is finally working? Even a small cut could be devastating to Colombia.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is not about what it purports to be about. It is bad amendment for so many reasons that I can barely touch on. First, let me clarify that the FOP, the Fraternal Order of Police, exactly knows what amendment we are talking about. In fact, in their letter, echoed also by a letter we received from the National Narcotics Officers' Association Coalition says specifically this: ``Federal investigations of marijuana producers also serve to disrupt larger drug trafficking organizations, particularly in the State of California where marijuana is sometimes traded for precursor chemicals, for methamphetamines, and in the State of Washington, which is a significant gateway for high-potency marijuana that can sell for the same price as heroin'' on many of our Nation's streets. These officers in California and Washington, these States, opposed the referendums. They warned the people about what was going to happen and what they see happening in many places in these States. Let me reiterate a couple of basic points. It does not help sick people. First, this amendment is not about helping sick people. There are no generally recognized health benefits to smoking marijuana. We heard a false reference earlier to the Institutes of Medicine report where in it its verdicts said marijuana is not modern medicine. They issued a warning particularly against smoking marijuana in that report which, admittedly, was mixed, but did not endorse medicinal marijuana. The FDA has not considered or approved marijuana for this use. Its active ingredient, THC, is available in an improved pill form for those who want to use it. In fact, as people have said, there are many dangerous products that have ingredients in them that can be helpful, but that does not mean that the carrier of it, such as marijuana, is in fact medicinal. It is something inside that. In fact, I, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources recently met with officials from The Netherlands and in their Office of Medical Cannabis, even that nation, which is generally recognized for its extremely liberal drug policies, specifically has rejected the use of smoked marijuana for so-called ``medicinal purposes,'' which these State referendums do not do. The American Lung Association has said that marijuana contains 50 to 70 percent more of some cancer-causing tobacco smoke. This is very dangerous. Furthermore, in a recent article by the Deputy Director of ONDCP, Andrea Barthwell called The Haze of Misinformation Clouds the Issue of Medicinal Marijuana, she eloquently wrote, ``Before the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1907, Americans were exposed to a host of patent medicine cure-alls, everything from vegetable folk remedies to dangerous mixtures with morphine. The major component of most `cures' was alcohol, which probably explained why people said they felt better.'' What we are hearing now is the same kind of classic peddling on the street of remedies that, in fact, are not remedies, when there are legal remedies to address the same question. The compounds in marijuana plants may have some medicinal marijuana but that is not marijuana and can be gotten elsewhere. Secondly, it makes no legal or governmental sense. In fact, it is fairly embarrassing we have this amendment on the floor. This amendment is premised on two extremely curious principles, first, that the Justice Department should not enforce a clear Federal law on the books; and as acknowledged by the sponsor of amendment and other supporters, the Supreme Court has ruled that States cannot usurp Federal law. If the sponsor of the amendment believes that Federal law should permit the medicinal use for marijuana, he ought to go through the legislative process and change the law. But the Justice Department, the DEA, and Members of Congress, I might add, have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States which requires enforcement of the laws of the United States; and it is an incredibly dangerous precedent to retreat from that. Second, to ask Federal law enforcement to look the other way in some States, but not others is unfair and probably unconstitutional selective enforcement of a law. This amendment would only apply in certain States. So someone in Washington State would be exempt from enforcement of Federal marijuana laws if they claim it is for medicinal purposes, but someone in Indiana would not. What kind of law is this? In fact, we fought a Civil War over this. It is called nullification. States do not have the right. How would the minority feel, those who are advocating this, if civil rights laws could be overturned at the Federal level, and we said we were not going to enforce Federal rights because State can nullify a Federal law? If you want to change a Federal law, have the courage to change the Federal law. Do not try to nullify a Federal law. It makes no police sense. In the States listed in the bill, the Federal Government is the only entity now doing effective marijuana enforcement. This bill would end that enforcement, even though the States in question are some of the most active drug States, and there are clear ties between marijuana traffic and ties in harder drugs, as well as marijuana traffic and other violent crime. In the State of Washington, for example, streams of high-potency marijuana are selling for more in Indiana and New York and Boston than cocaine and heroin because its HTC content is not what we saw in the 1960s, 2 to 4 percent, but in the 18 to 30 percent range. That is extremely dangerous to individuals. This amendment would in effect prohibit DEA from enforcing marijuana laws if it claimed it was for medicinal purposes. For that reason, State and local law enforcement officers have opposed this amendment, including the National Narcotic Officers and the FOP, Fraternal Order of Police. Lastly, State medical marijuana laws are a sham. Finally, we have seen these laws do not operate as intended. A State audit in Oregon found that many of those who obtained so-called medicinal marijuana have not provided documentation of their claims. A survey of many HIV patients who claimed to use marijuana for medical purposes found that 57 percent smoked marijuana for mental, rather than physical, reasons and that a third admitted outright that they had smoked marijuana for recreational purposes. Even in California, the State is trying to revoke the license of a physician who has written 7,500 marijuana recommendations for patients without conducting any medical exams. Lastly, we heard that this was citizen-led. What a joke. What we have are people who historically, including some Members of this body, who favor drug legalization in general support this as medicinal marijuana. In fact, what they back more is legalization of marijuana, and this has not been a citizen-led effort. A man named George Soros has poured millions of dollars into these referendums and the citizen groups have predominantly opposed them against an overwhelming number of ads masquerading behind a few herding individuals who have been given false promise by the modern-day medical hustlers, just like they did in the 1900s. This is embarrassing from a legal standpoint and embarrassing from a body that should be upholding the laws of the United States and to be fighting the terrorism on our streets where people are dying and here we are trying to give them cover for this pro-drug movement by acting like it is medicine. It is not medicine. If my colleagues believe it is medicine, get it out of the main and into the people who need it. Do not hide behind marijuana and make it more available so more kids can die in my district and in my colleagues' districts as well.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, it is awful when your parents get older and have different struggles and we need to look and we have found drugs to give them to try to address this question. That is not what this debate is about. The gentleman from California and I have been friends for many years. We grew up in the same conservative youth organization, Young Americans for Freedom. We had these same disagreements when we were in YAF a long time ago on legalization of marijuana. We had a very close vote in the national organization. It was an organization founded by William F. Buckley. Richard Brookhiser came up through that same organization. What we called, and I was a more traditionalist conservative, the libertarians believed at that time, and in many cases still do, as we heard from the most consistent libertarian in the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul), that drug laws are wrong and that States can nullify Federal laws. I do not agree with that. I believe there are times when the elected representatives of the American people can make national policy and that is what we are debating right now. Does the Federal Government have a right to make a law by elected citizens all across the United States that will be upheld because they believe it protects the citizens of the United States in the best way? Many States conceivably could pass different laws on civil rights to nullify some of the things we do here and other laws. We cannot operate that way. We heard earlier today that people said on the other side that we should support the first responders and our police forces. They are unanimous across the country as a whole saying that they are against any weakening of the marijuana laws with the signals they are sending. This is a fundamental debate about what direction we are going in national drug law. This is a backdoor way to move in. It is not about compassion. We need to look for additional ways if Marinol does not solve it all, but it does and in the new, improved ways it actually appears to deal with vomiting. People can promise all types of different things. We can feel the pain, but we should not change laws that are working. And if we want to change those laws on the national drug policy, you should come and change the national drug laws. It would be a travesty if this House in effect nullifies Federal law. This is not just nullifying Federal law. The case was brought to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that the Attorney General and DEA have an obligation to enforce Federal law. I believe that the courts too often have usurped State authority and taken the 10th amendment the wrong direction. This is not about that. This is about when Congress passed a law under the Constitution that said in interstate commerce, which narcotics move across interstate commerce, which was not a liberal interpretation of that clause but a strict interpretation of that clause from a conservative perspective, all except the more anarcho-libertarians, as we used to call them, believe that in drug laws the Federal Government historically has had the right to enforce a Federal law. The conservative movement is not divided. We have a few of the libertarian fringe who I respect for their opinions but strongly disagree just as we did when we were kids; now we are grownups, and we still have the same disagreement.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) for withdrawing their amendment. I was planning to oppose the amendment and speak on the floor. I think as they work with the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) to work out compromise language, it is a step in the right direction. It is very important that we do this in a systematic way. I have supported the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) and continue to believe that contracting out is one method to make government more effective. I believe contracting out has worked well, including in the Park Service. Some parks are 50 percent contracted out already. The question is, do we move full steam ahead, kind of willy-nilly bidding, or do we do this in a logical, orderly way? Some of these areas are in very remote areas. Contracting will work or not work in some of the urban areas. There are many variations in the Park Service and other institutions. Generally speaking, I believe it is important to put on the record that parks already contract out. The Forest Service already contracts out. We need to have an analysis on where they are on that. It is not whether Members are for or against the original amendment. It is not for or against contracting out. It is more what the chairman was trying to address. Let us do this in a logical way. I hope the conference compromise works to address that, but I am concerned that just to do it the way the administration was going ahead with the National Park Service would have done grave damage to the most effective institution and an institution which already had been following mandates on contracting out at a time when they are under tremendous budget pressures, when we in Congress keep adding units to the Park Service, keep adding heritage areas to the Park Service, and while we have increased funding, have not increased funding at a rapid enough rate. We have homeland security pressures on the parks, narcotics pressure, and at the same time the money is not keeping up. This would have had a tremendous demoralizing effect on the entire National Park Service had we not taken this effort to work it out. At the same time, I think it is important to acknowledge that there will be contracting out, there has been contracting out, and we just need to do it in an effective way.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2330 and of the people of Burma. The people of Burma toil everyday under the cruel and heavy yoke of military dictatorship. The military rulers of Burma stifle dissent, persecute minorities, and thwart every attempt at democracy. Recently, the democratically elected and legal leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, was viciously attacked by agents of the military dictatorship while on her way to meet supporters of democracy. Following the attack, she was re-imprisoned by the military tyrants of Burma. Visitation has been limited and there is no sign that she will be released from prison any time soon. The military junta in Burma continues to persecute minority groups. Burma has more than 600,000 internally displaced people. Furthermore, over 100,000 people are living in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. The Karen, Karenni, and Shan people have borne the brunt of this persecution. Where Burma was once a country of peaceful coexistence, it has, under this brutal regime, become a place of strife and discord. Now more than ever, the democratic forces at work in Burma need the support of the United States of America. H.R. 2330 is a step in the right direction. This bill, which I am proud to co-sponsor, will impose sanctions on the evil regime currently in control of Burma. The bill will prohibit any article from being imported into the United States that is produced, mined, manufactured, grown, or assembled in Burma. In 2002, Burma exported over $356 million worth of products to the United States. This included apparel, teak wood, precious stones, and seafood. H.R. 2330 will put an end to these exports and send a message to the illegal government of Burma. H.R. 2330 also directs the Secretary of the Treasury to freeze the assets of the military junta. While the country is mired in poverty, the ruling elite are looting the country for their own benefit. This legislation will keep the junta from accessing their ill-gotten gains. Furthermore, the bill will prohibit the leaders of this Burmese nightmare from entering the United States. Support for this bill will make it clear to those Burmese despots that their military dictatorship, which maintains power through force and terror, is unacceptable. This bill will make it clear that the United States of America supports freedom and democracy in Burma. We support the National League for Democracy. And we support Burma's democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma was once a prosperous country but the military has ground the country into poverty. Burma is rich in resources but the military despots have squandered these riches for their own gain. Burma's peoples once lived side by side with one another but the military has seen fit to mistreat some groups and drive them from their homes. This must end. The United States must help to foster democracy in Burma. I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 2330 and to work for democracy in Burma.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois, and as he knows, as a long-time close personal friend of the Speaker, from the State Legislature in Illinois, and since we have been to Congress that our Speaker has been a leader on this issue, and he asked us to do this Special Order tonight. He asked us to go last weekend down to Colombia and has stood firm in making sure that this initiative was funded, make sure that we stayed focused on the narcotics issue. And it is our appreciation for his leadership in addition to each of us trying to take responsibility and work to help solve these problems that are big. Whether it is the streets of Joliet, Illinois, or the streets of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and throughout the rural parts of his district and the rural parts of my district, we see that drug problem, along with alcohol, as being the number one problem of crime and breakup of families, the reason people lose jobs. It is a problem that is not only a world problem, but it is a problem back home where the people are talking about it at their dinner tables, they are talking about it with their kids hopefully, but they are certainly talking about the byproducts of illegal narcotics. So I thank him also for his leadership. What I would like to do is lay a little bit further out how we got into the Andean Initiative and the Colombian problem, how some of it has evolved over the years here in Congress and with our funding, some of the primary questions that have been coming up often in the news media, but with my colleagues here in Congress and address some of the myths that have been plaguing us in these debates. First, let me describe a little bit what our Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee was working with. When the Republicans took over Congress in 1995 and reformulated the committee that I now chair to focus on drug policy so we had one committee that pulled together oversight from what was 23 different committees looking at the narcotics problem, as we looked at this, we saw certain basic things that needed to be addressed. One was eradication. Two was interdiction. If we failed to eradicate it, we had to try to intercept it before it got to our borders. If it got inside the United States, we needed to do law enforcement, which explains the DEA, local police forces, State police. Then if we could tackle the problem at either end through prevention or treatment, we could try to reduce the demand side, too. So there were five prongs: Eradication, interdiction, enforcement, along with prevention and treatment. And in that part it became apparent that the Andean region and the Colombian region was most in danger because of the drug habits of the United States and particularly Western Europe. Myth number one is that there is a civil war going on in Colombia. There is not a civil war going on in Colombia. The FARC as well as the ELN, and even counting the paramilitaries, we are talking about a percent of the population that is, quite frankly, less, far less, than the prison population in the United States. What we are basically talking about are terrorists and criminals who have not been captured. Some of them early on may have started with the revolutionary idea that they wanted power and did not want to get it through a democratic process. We have already heard from my colleagues that this is the oldest Latin American democracy, that has had many stable elections. They have had a history of some violence for numerous geographical reasons and others, but so have we in the United States. So have we in other parts of Western Europe. But a few dissidents that are a tiny minority of a country do not constitute a civil war. It is a rebellion of people who want to take the law into their own hands. Over time, as we had the ELN which used kidnapping as its main route, we saw the FARC, which was the largest of the groups, decide to finance themselves by providing first protection and then actually running the growing operations after some of the big cartels were broken up; the Medellin and the Cali cartels, for example. Then we saw communities try to form a contract with so-called paramilitaries. Sometimes they were former members of the military. Sometimes they dressed like military and they were really kind of like Pinkerton detectives on steroids, that people wanted to protect themselves, so they hired them. Pretty soon that group got corrupted as well by narcotics, at least much of them, whatever their original intention was, to protect themselves from others because they could not establish order in the community, and the government was not strong enough to do so or whatever. Now we have three groups, still a tiny percentage, maybe numbering 40,000 in a country of 28 million, a tiny percentage of the country. It does not constitute a civil war. Their motives are not civil war. Their motives are to make money on narcotics. Some of them now would like to buy peace and get power without having to go through a democracy, but President Pastrana, who more than bent over backwards, who turned every cheek times three to try to negotiate with them and wound up with what? Nothing. He had the right motives. I and others backed him in that effort to try to do that as we tried to rebuild and organize the Colombian military and the Colombian national police. But the bottom line is they did not want to come to the peace table. They are not interested in peace. They are terrorists, they are interested in selling narcotics, protecting narcotics and terrorizing villages. We were sold to the United States Congress that Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative was going to be a joint effort, and while I have talked about the United States using the narcotics, the truth is we only consume about 50 to 60 percent of the cocaine production coming out of Colombia. Europe is consuming huge quantities of that, but also Canada, the region itself, and others, and Asia, because that is where they are getting their cocaine, and this should not all be the United States' problem. But some of the European countries and other countries who in the beginning promised huge amounts of dollars to help Colombia have not followed through. Their argument was they did not want to spend money on the military and law enforcement violations. Okay. Let us accept that premise, which I do not think it was a very good premise, but let us accept that premise. Now as we are making progress in Colombia, and as villages are finally getting stabilized where people are again ready to be a judge or to be a mayor, where is Europe? Where are the alternative development dollars that they said were coming? Where is the help with setting up those law enforcement systems? If the United States has been willing to bear, along with Colombia, 100 percent of the burden even though 50 percent of the problem is not ours, and none of this basically is Colombia's, these groups would not be armed if it was not for drug abusers in the United States, and Western Europe, and Japan, and Canada and other places using cocaine and heroin. We stimulated and funded the terrorism that is occurring in Colombia, the thousands of deaths, the police who are getting massacred, the individuals who are getting massacred. They are getting massacred with our money. It is our problem, not Colombia's problem. They need the help with it. Their people are using this. Their people are growing it. But they met our market demand. We have an obligation to help put order back and to help them reestablish their country. The United States is helping Colombia, and Colombia has taken tremendous efforts, particularly under President Uribe, to go after the eradication, to go after the law enforcement, to get some stability in these areas. We need partners around the world now to follow through on their commitments, because if we cannot provide alternative development, if we cannot provide jobs, if we cannot make decent schools, if we cannot get a legal system that works with local police and mayors, we will go back to chaos with our money, because we have been the drug abusers and we need allies around the world. Let me step back again and illustrate. Earlier I talked about the funnel, and let me in particular here show one of the problems that we face in the United States before I get into some specifics. My subcommittee has been holding hearings on the borders in the north and south border. We just did a hearing in El Paso. We spent 3 days here in this region of Texas. We did a hearing over here in Sells. We have had a hearing over here at San Isidro. We did a hearing and visited multiple times in Nogales and the area of Douglas, Arizona. Let me guarantee the Members something. If the American people are saying it is not working, and we are not getting it stopped in Colombia, let me assure the American people something. We cannot get control of that border, and this is the easiest border to control in the south. We have virtually no control over the water coming in from the Caribbean. We have had to pull our boats in for homeland security, but once they are coming in water and going up the coast, it has been very difficult in the Caribbean region. It is even worse in the Pacific. As they come in with little boats up the California coast and out into that water, it has been very difficult to intercept. We have 1 million plus illegal immigrants making it across the border every year in the south border, 1 million. That is a huge number. Some of them are running small amounts. Most of them are not. But it shows how porous the border is. We have thousands of Border Patrol. We are doing everything we can to control that and will continue to try to close it, but as we start to close the border, let me tell the Members about a hearing we had here in the Tohono O'odham Reservation. That day while we were having a hearing, one person was interdicted. It is a town of maybe 2,500 on an Indian reserve, the Tohono O'odham. Their police did one seizure of 200 pounds, one seizure of 300 pounds, one seizure of 500 pounds, and one of 400 pounds; a total of 1,500 pounds in 1 day. Then seven SUVs went through later in the day, of which one got through, but they managed to catch a number of them. They found a hole in this zone. A National Park Ranger was killed in the Organ Pipe National Monument, and as we squeezed other parts of the border, they moved to that hole. This is important because the previous 3 months they had 1,500 pounds, the previous year they had 1,500 pounds, and in that day between 9 and 2 o'clock, they got 1,500 pounds even though we had Federal people around. There is so much stuff moving across, we cannot even intercept it all, even though we keep boosting the number of Border Patrol people. We will continue to make the efforts because when that comes in, the two biggest cocaine busts in my district's history, or it appears to be two of the biggest, if not the two biggest, occurred last 3 weeks in Fort Wayne, Indiana. One of them came from Texas, and I believe the other through Arizona, and it was Colombian. Now, as that moves through, it is not a theoretical exercise we are talking about here. When you are driving down the road at night and you do not know whether somebody is whacked out on coke or whether they have injected themselves with heroin or are high on this high-grade marijuana, that has nothing to do with the historic marijuana that you hear about from the sixties and the news media jokes about. That is not what we are talking about in marijuana. We are talking about THC content; in my hometown a lot of the marijuana is selling for more than coke and heroin. This stuff is potent. Think about it. When you get behind the wheel, whether you want to legalize drugs and whether you think we should back off from the drug war, do you feel safe? Does your family feel safe, knowing that the more that pours across there, the cheaper it is, the more of it there is, the more you could be killed driving home or there could be a robbery at the bank where you get caught in the shoot-out, or watching neighborhoods in your communities get sucked under, or people operating a bus or truck or equipment as they are building, using this drug? Harmless crime? Harmless drug? Baloney. This is the biggest threat to the United States, 30,000 people dying because of illegal narcotics. We talk a lot, and I am on the Committee on Homeland Security, but the numbers we are looking at on an annual basis dwarf what we have seen yet. Yes, one nuclear weapon and we could all be destroyed; but the fact is, while we are talking about that, we are watching people get killed every night. Tonight, in every city of the United States, somebody is going to be impacted. Maybe shot in some cities; in other cities it will be a dad or mom who use their money for drugs when they should have been supporting their family, or not being with their kids or abusing their kids or spouse abuse or not making their child support payments because they used it on illegal narcotics. Those are the real problems with that, and we are not going to be able to control, no matter how hard we try, enough of our borders; but we will improve that, but we have to get it at the source. Now, let me deal with a couple of other questions. We heard a little bit from my colleagues about is it working? Let me start out with, first off, how do you define ``working''? I constantly hear Members saying, well, there is still drugs. Well, should we stand up when we deal with spouse abuse and say, you know, we funded spouse abuse last year and there is still spouse abuse. In fact, we funded spouse abuse programs for the last 10 years, and there is still spouse abuse. In fact, we have tried to deal with spouse abuse ever since the American Republic was started, and there is still spouse abuse, so we should give up? On child abuse, when we come down here on Labor-HHS later this week and talk about funding for child abuse, could you imagine if somebody stood up and said, well, you know, we have been fighting child abuse the last few years. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades here, and there is still child abuse here in America. Of course there is. There will always be drug abuse. The root problem in my opinion is sin. It may be different variations and different people have different problems; but every day, somebody is newly exposed to the temptations of narcotics, and no matter how much we try to prevent it, and treatment is after the fact, and treatment is very important and I am pretty much on most treatment bills that are moving through Congress, but the truth is, that is treating the wounded. We cannot just treat the wounded; we have to get into prevention. But there is a funny thing about prevention. You can convince people they should stay off drugs, and then they break up with their girlfriend and go to a party and all of a sudden they forgot everything they learned in the drug prevention program. They lose their job. Somebody packages something more potent or they are smoking cigarettes or having a beer and somebody says you want a little bit bigger high? And all of a sudden, at the very least, they are psychologically addicted, if not physically addicted. New people are exposed by the minute and by the hour. It is not something that you can ever fully eliminate. But we can control it. And we have made successes. Even though we had a surge between 1992 and 1994, of which we are only making a little progress, the truth was that its peak was at 1994. Let me briefly mention another method. ``Just Say No'' does not work. Under Just Say No under the Reagan administration, we had 8 straight years of decline that carried through the first 2 to 3 years of the Bush administration, 11 years of decline. In that 11 years of decline, it went down so far that even in the surge up in 1991 to 1994, in the last year of the Bush administration and the first two of the Clinton administration, where now we would have to have a 50 percent reduction to get back to Reagan, even that peak in the United States was less than the peak in 1980 before Just Say No. So it is a myth that Just Say No did not work. It worked, because it was not Just Say No. That was one part. We did treatment, we did interdiction, we did eradication where necessary, but we fought and we had a consensus of how to fight it. When we lost the consensus, the problem ``upped'' again. Now we have had a couple of years of success. But now they are better funded. So among the things we are hearing about Colombia is, for example, everybody violates human rights. It is simply not true. There are degrees of violations of human rights, that human rights are not respected much at all by the FARC and the ELN. Kids are kidnapped, they use 14-year-olds in their military, they terrorize people. They do not respect human rights at all. There have been problems with the paramilitaries, and the question is, are they too tied to the military? The answer is we have worked hard in this government. Uribe's government is committed to trying, for once and for all, to prosecute them all. When you go and talk to the counternarcotics brigades of the Defense Department, off to the side what they will tell you is literally when there is a firefight with the terrorists, they have to have an attorney there. They cannot move the bodies so they can identify and make sure they were not shot in the back, and they do things we do not do. We are holding Colombia to a different standard even than the United States. Now, that is because we are putting money in. They have had a historic problem with human rights and there is an accountability with it. But it is just wrong for anybody on this floor or anywhere in the world to imply that there has not been tremendous progress, that we have not vetted these brigades better than we have ever in the past, and there is not accountability, and that when you go to a Colombian military camp, their prisons will have a number of people in it who are being held for possible violations, something that is stricter than any other process we are doing; and it is important they have that, because if the American people are going to put the money in, they want to know we are doing human rights. But we have been making progress and have made dramatic progress on human rights, and those who want to criticize the Colombian military and the government, I have asked people in my district too, sometimes they are criticizing what we do and sending our money down to violence. Why do they not criticize the FARC? Why do they not criticize the FARC? Why do they not criticize the ELN? Why is it always the government or the paramilitaries? The FARC are the ones who started it, who have violations. I am not defending any human rights, but let us at least acknowledge that they are the primary perpetrators of human rights violations, that there is still violence, therefore the program has not worked because there is still violence in Colombia. Yes, there is still violence. You know what? There is going to be violence for quite a while. They have got a lot of dollars from the American Government to work with. They can buy weapons. And one proof we are successful is they are getting more violent. When we were down there, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Boozman), and I this last weekend, we went to a hospital. There we talked to a bunch of young soldiers, basically 22- to 24-year-olds. One of the solider's eyes was gone and his leg was gone; and he was in pretty bad shape, generally. A number of them were dead; he was in better shape than them. They died because they were trying to eradicate the drugs Americans wanted to buy and Europeans wanted to buy. It was not predominantly Colombians who want to buy it. It was our money. They were attacked from both sides. A number of them said it was the worst firefight they had ever been in. It was homemade bombs, screws coming at them, going into their eyes and their bodies. It was terrorist-type bombs, not traditional. Now, they have traditional weapons too. For the first time we are seeing it looks like some arms-for-drugs shipments coming in from some of the arms negotiating sales places in Eastern Europe and some of the Mafia-type around it, not the traditional definition of the word, that are shipping arms in there. We are going to see more sophisticated weapons. This myth that if we suddenly legalize this, that there would not be this conflict, oh, yeah. They are making $3 billion a year; and if we say we are going to legalize something, forget a second that I do not want to be driving down the highway worried about whether somebody is whacked out on drugs. Let us say it was not that. But they are going to suddenly give up? Are you going to legalize cocaine and heroin? Are you going to legalize whatever the next thing is? Of course not. They are not going to give up their market. They are going to continue to step people up to more potent drugs. They are making money on this. They are making buckets, trucks and boatloads of money on this, and they are not suddenly going to say, oh, they legalized marijuana, I think we will quit. We will just retire. I mean, give me a break. There is going to be violence because there is tremendous money; and to the degree we try to cut off the source of their money, they are going to continue to become more violent. Another question that comes with this is, yes, but you have not stabilized any villages. I have heard my colleagues on the floor testify that they have been to villages where there still is not order. We all know that. When you have a place in a country where people, judges are getting shot, mayors are getting shot, we have a president of Colombia whose father was assassinated, we have a vice president of Colombia who himself was kidnapped for 9 months, they know what it means. Quite frankly, I was sitting there in the presidential palace along with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) with the delegation for the inauguration of President Uribe, and we heard this big boom, and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) said I never heard a one-gun salute. They blew off part of the corner of the presidential palace. They were trying to aim with their howitzer, blew up a housing complex, killed many innocent people, shot to the left, shot to the right. They did not care that there were thousands of troops around. They were shooting from a mile and a quarter away with sophisticated equipment. This is a tough battle, and they do not care who they hit. Even President Chavez, who you would think would have some connections, was in the building they were shooting at. It is an equal-opportunity terrorist. They will hit anybody if they are trying to threaten their money. And we have to understand that this is not something you can just sit down and have a nice negotiation, maybe we can give them some trinkets and they will give us some trinkets and everybody will pat each other on the back and say, yeah, I will give up my $3 billion business. We have to establish order in those communities. The plan under Plan Colombia, quite frankly, is taking a little longer than we thought, because they have chosen to fight, because another myth is that it is a balloon: if you squeeze Colombia, it is going to go back to Peru and Bolivia. The truth is that that is hard. We have made progress in those countries. Some seem to be coming back a little bit, but it is nothing like it was, and they are trapped. In Colombia, if you look at this map, much of the progress is being made a long the Putumayo. If we squeeze in from the south, and this is a big coca region, the heroin is in the higher elevations. Those mountains, by the way, are up to 18,000 feet. I thought the topography here was important, because you can see most of the people are on this side of the mountain range. That side is the Amazon basin. They kidnap and harass people and terrorize people on this side, but most of the growing is over there. And as we start to put the pressure on, they move more out in the jungle. This is not an easy task. When you fly over, you cannot see the stuff. And the coca fields are at least big. The heroin poppy, you cannot see it. Furthermore, I have heard people say, well, they are spraying legitimate crops. Walk on the ground. They are smart. They can make more in coca than they can make in palm heart; and unless you convince them that you are going to provide stability and protection for them and there is going to be an alternative crop, they just grow it underneath. We are spraying where there is evidence that there is coca or heroin poppy; but as they move further in the jungle, you are farther and farther from any air base, you are farther and farther from re-fueling places, you are farther and farther from any roads. If you have a helicopter crash, guess what? They go in and capture your pilots, which they have right now with three Americans. The farther out we go, they are going to get there. But the farther out they go, guess what? They are longer in the air and we can see them longer. They have more risk that we are going to interdict. It is not true that we do not make progress by moving them. It just is that we are not going to eliminate the problem by moving it. We reduce the problem, we manage it. To the degree we reduce the amount of cocaine coming into the United States, we change the price and purity questions. They do not package it with marijuana as easily. It is watered down. It does not have the same potency. Addicts are not as difficult. You make step-by-step progress; you do not make huge progress. Now, back to the villages. They have been able to establish a reasonable amount of order in about half the villages. The goal was to establish it in more than that. Now what are some practical implications of that? Let me first show you something here. On the spraying of poppy crops, there is a discussion of why is this so hard to spray. First off, you have to hit it several times. Heroin poppy is one of the cases. They can replant it, so you need to do it multiple times a year. But, do you know what? They try to shoot down those planes. This have taken more hits in the last couple weeks than they had in a long time, because they realize the more heroin poppy that we eradicate and the more coca we eradicate, the more they can predict where the planes are going to go for eradication, because there are fewer fields to eradicate. So they can take their armaments and focus better on where we are coming. Another thing is that you have to have ground protection. My first trip there in 1996 and 1997 when we were doing some of this, I went out to one, I think it was in the Guaviare area, but I talked to some pilots whose concern was this: one of their partners had been killed because they would string up line that you could not see and their plane went through and it crossed their neck as they tried to eradicate. So now you have groups of soldiers on the ground trying to protect the planes to eradicate. A couple of other illustrations. You can see here when you are flying the plane over, you have people in the fields on all sides. In different countries we use different things. In Bolivia and Peru, some were ground eradication, some were air eradication, but in that effort, every place you went, whether you are going after labs or field eradication, you have to be protected. As I have gone into the field and seen some of this, you have to be protected. I want to illustrate one other point as to why this becomes important. There are somewhere in the vicinity of over 200,000 displaced people in Colombia. These people in these rural villages, as they are out in the villages, what started often is that the FARC will come in, they will say, grow coca. They can make a lot of money, they will bring the planes to it, and they will provide protection and forcibly push them into coca. Then the paramilitaries would come through their villages and say, you put up somebody from the FARC, you are cooperating with the FARC; we are going to kill you; we are going to terrorize you. Then the FARC would come back in town and say, you cooperated with the paramilitaries; we are going to kill you. And these poor villages just decide: I am not staying here. I do not care if my family has had a farm here for 100 years. I do not care if my family has had a business here. I do not want to get myself and my family killed. We visited the Nelson Mandela village just outside of Cartagena. Mr. Speaker, 35,000 people live in basic shacks with these kinds of streets. Right now Indiana is flooding a lot, and it looks a little like this, but underneath there is actual, real streets. Here, it just turns into mud. AID has tried to develop some alternative development in this area. I had two, I do not think it was these two young girls, but two young girls came up to me and wanted to talk to a Congressman. I had drifted off from the group. I quick got back after they talked to me. But they said, even in this camp, the FARC is hunting them down, as are the paramilitaries, if they believe they cooperated with the other side. They go right in to where we have an AID plan where it might be 100 miles or 200 miles away from the village and terrorize them. The person I was with, the photographer and I decided we were going to go back to the rest of the group because we had not banked on them being in the same camp that we were. But these kids deal with this every day. They cannot escape. They do not have the type of protection that a U.S. CODEL has, a congressional delegation, when we go in. They have to live with it. One young girl sang a song as opposed to just telling a story, sang a song about how she was in her home and the FARC came in and shot her husband right in front of her and her son, the little kids wandering around in this type of environment. Now, part of the solution to that is, bluntly put, we can only do so many tar-paper shacks around the world. What we have to do is get their villages safe to the degree we can establish order and security in their villages. They did not want to leave their farms. They did not want to leave their businesses. Yes, some of them did not have employment and came to the cities. In Rio and in Lima and Buenos Aires and all over the world, you see at the edges of the cities some of this. But Colombia has a middle class. It is not Guatemala. It is not Venezuela. They have a relatively stable middle class and democracy. The question is, how can we reestablish it? How do we do this? That is why we not only need at this point to finish off what we are doing in Plan Colombia and the Andean Initiative, we need to have the Europeans follow up with their commitment to help us now to get these people back to work and back to their villages if we can get those villages safe. Now, another part of this is I met an amazing man. His name was Rudolfo Gedeon. He is president of PETCO. But he is doing one of the initiatives that has been so successful in Bangladesh, and that is microloans. In this pattern in Bangladesh, they gave little loans to try to build little capitalism that moves into a little bit bigger capitalism, that moves into a little bit more, because in so many of these countries you have the very wealthy people and the very poor people. In Medellin they started, and now they are doing in the Cartagena areas, a number of these businessmen working with AID are starting these loan processes with AID. Some AID capital, but the real success here is having local people be the monitors. Their loans, $1.5 million, 8,000 loans over the last year; average loan, $200, some a little bit bigger, some are $60. But do my colleagues know what? Ninety-eight percent, two percent default rate. No bank anywhere has that, except in Bangladesh and a couple of these microloans, because they are the people themselves monitoring them. Now, how does this relate to the broader question? In this village AID has a project where they are teaching some people metal working, some people how to sew, how to bake, how to make crafts. So they teach them that. Where do they go? What are they supposed to do? Mr. Speaker, it is amazing: $80, $100 you can start to sew in your neighborhood. Pay that back, like a credit union, which is really kind of how this is functioning, because your neighbors are all part of this, and you are watching each other, and there is accountability. Then you can get justified for maybe a $400 loan, then an $800 loan. You crawl, you take baby steps, you walk, but that is how you build a middle class. But to do that, you have to have order. Some people do not understand, you can not give somebody $400 or $10,000 or $50,000 to start a business if they think their family is going to be murdered or kidnapped the next week. Somehow, we have to establish order. We have to establish credible government units that are not involved in human rights violations, which this government is committed to do. Some people say, well, I cannot make as much growing soybeans as I can selling coca or growing coca. I cannot make as much in palm heart. Do my colleagues know what? The kids on American street corners cannot make as much at McDonald's as they can being a lookout either, but that does not mean we are going to pay them $400 an hour if they give up being a lookout. There are things that are not legal to do and that are destructive, and there are things that are legal. We need to work to give people a living wage, where they can work to support their family with their income, and we need to help the Government of Colombia, which has been undermined. For example, they were the eighth largest supplier of oil in the world. There has been so much oil spilled in attacking that pipeline that it would be 8 Exxon Valdezes pouring into the north part of Colombia. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). The State of Africa

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, tonight's Special Order is going to be on Colombia in particular and the Andean Initiative on Narcotics. I appreciate the gentlewoman's assistance over the years and having gone on a Codel with us down in the Caribbean last summer when we worked on the narcotics issue, and while we may have nuances of differences on the African question, Members are aware we cannot have superficial involvement in any area of the world anymore; and Africa is, indeed, a key area. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, and myself as chairman of the Subcommittee on Drug Policy and the co-chair the Speaker's Drug Task Force and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) just returned yesterday from Colombia, and I would at this time yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman).