Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, one of my concerns when I read this article and in listening to the gentleman go through this is that we on the Committee on Government Reform, we have heard some of this type of thing before, that the constant trying to limit investigations, trying to cut it off, it is a very disturbing pattern that this administration seems to have when they are investigating things that are very uncomfortable regarding their policy. It is not clear who and where this decision was being made by. We do not know whether it is coming out of the White House or whether at the top of the Justice Department; much like in the Indian casinos investigation, whether it was in the data bank or whether it was in the missing files. But it is amazing how we constantly hear people inside the Justice Department saying that top officials were impeding their investigation rather than seeking the truth. What is really disturbing here is that it is not as though as I recall it was just the year before this, that their drug czar was implicated and eventually had to come down. It was not like these were kind of off-the-wall charges that had never happened before in the Mexican government. The gentleman from Florida has been establishing through this New York Times article that, while this person is a very driven person, he has established that he has some track record. This is a disturbing pattern we are seeing. In fact, the gentleman read one statement a little bit ago that was also disturbing, because we often hear at the grassroots level, ``why do you get the little guys and not the bigger guys?'' The gentleman read a statement from this article that said that they were being limited by the Justice Department because, if the cash that they were having to do to move up the line was less than that they could actually close on at given point, which means that, by principle, we are defining we are only going to go for midrange if we cannot keep levering the deal as we move up. There are some fundamental questions here even as to how we approach this and do we really have the goal in our Justice Department to go after the top officials even when we have a strong tip. I think that, to some degree, this gets confusing as we move with it, but this is really disturbing, and I hope the gentleman from Florida will continue reading this into the Record and people will get copies of this because this is a fundamental at the heart of our policy right now in Mexico.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, because what the gentleman just read here sounds eerily close to what happened in Colombia, only here we even have more direct involvement with the leaders in the government. We have the drug enforcement chief, eventually who was proven guilty, who was actually renting an apartment from the head of the Juarez cartel while he was getting information from our government. The allegation is that the defense minister who was involved in helping bring down that cartel may be, we do not know this but this article is suggesting that we failed to pursue this, may be involved with the competing cartel just like the Cali cartel in Colombia helped bring down the Medellin cartel in Colombia because they wanted to put a rival out. We have been hearing steadily on this floor and other bodies that the fact one way we can tell Mexico is cooperating is they helped bring down their drug czar. But what if, and we did not investigate this, they brought down their drug czar because another faction was a part in helping a different cartel? I am not saying that is happening, but that is a really disturbing charge, because we would be played, for lack of a better word, as suckers in Congress if in fact we use as an argument for not doing decertification something which actually was a setup for a more powerful cartel.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to point out in looking at this article that ``early last year'' means this is around the time we were about to certify Mexico as cooperating, and I think that is really important. The gentleman called my attention to this article. This is not something that is historic; this is something that was happening while on the floor of this Congress. We had Members down here saying they were cooperating, and that is important, I think, in the context of what the gentleman is reading here. This was going on while we are here saying, oh, things are going fine. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with the gentleman to find the truth. We do not know where the truth lies, but when we make foreign policy decisions on Mexico and China, we do not want to hear about coverups, we want to hear we are actually pursuing every lead to make sure we are doing things in the best national interests of the United States and not just trying to up our trade dollars making decisions otherwise. I hope all this is false. I hope the top leaders of the Mexican government are completely clean. We need to work with them to eliminate our drug problem, but we have to know what the truth is.

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California. But what about having science by sex? What about English proficiency and social economic for reading? Because, in fact, the subcategories, that would be useful information and really is information that is useful in English proficiency if we do not know the differences by whether they are a current migrant or whether they, in other words, we start to multiply the variations in what is already there. All of this is important data. Are we going to data the districts to death? Furthermore, in addition in this subsection 4(a)(A) it says that there has to be assessment instruments in performance objectives for every subgroup that is disaggregated. So that means, for example, if we have female and male Macedonian American students by income, unless they come in the current migrant status, then we would have to have them in a different subgroup, and then we say this is giving schools flexibility for this itty-bitty, tiny flexibility that we are seeking here. This is a massive potential even without my proposed additional information. This is a potential massive paperwork problem, and I urge that we reject this amendment, but we in effect gut Ed-Flex.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Kildee-Miller amendment. But I wanted to say at the very beginning that I have known both of those gentlemen for many years as a staffer and as a Member and while we may have disagreements as to how to implement education policy, never in my career as a staffer or a Member have I ever seen Members more committed to the interest of kids than the two authors of this amendment. I disagree with how they do that, and I think that sometimes they want to do what is best not only for their own kids, but other kids, but their heart is right, and it is important when we are debating things to understand those fundamental principles that one can disagree and still want to have what is best for education. This is not just about process. This is about what is the best way to educate the kids in America, and is it best through the Federal Government or moving it closer to the parents? But I want to go through this amendment in particular. In the third clause it says the assessment information is disaggregated by race, and ethnicity, sex, English proficiency status, migrant status and social economic status for the State, each local education agency in each school unless it does not meet the statistical reliable information level. Now it is important here, as we have been arguing whether this is flexible or inflexible, but let us just think about all these different standards: race, ethnicity, sex, English proficiency, migrant status and social economic status. Now I understand the value of accountability, and I understand about the value of having information. But here we are not block granting everything; it is only within the limits of small changes within certain programs. After all, this is a bill backed by every Governor and by the President of the United States. In Indiana terms, it is an itty-bitty flexibility. It is not a flexibility like this or a big light. It is a little tiny flexibility, and there becomes a question of proportionality here because there is lots of information that we would like to have that would be useful. I, for example, would like to have family composition information. I think it would be helpful to know how kids are doing in two-parent families, single-parent families. We all know that children of divorce, particularly in those first periods, have a decline in educational standards. Why not have a report to see what the kids are doing there? How about mobility? Nobody has ever visited an urban school where they are having trouble with their test scores, or even suburban schools, but particularly highlighted in urban schools where kids are moving between these different schools. Often they will move four times in a given year. Maybe we should have data tracking kids by whether they moved in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or 2 years, and we might find that that data has more meaning than a lot of the particular breakouts here. Now furthermore, the President's proposed policies on social promotion and school uniforms where maybe we ought to have data on that to see whether, if they put school uniforms in school, stop social promotion, to see whether the President's initiatives are, in fact, working, and maybe that ought to be part of it, so enough that we ought to be passing a bill, we ought to have measurement standards. Now the problem here is, is that in addition to this, let us look at the actual terms. Ethnicity is a difficult statement here. How many breakouts are we going to have? I have the largest concentration of Macedonian Americans in my district. Does this mean that we have to break it out by Macedonian Americans if there is a statistical reliable subgroup, and how many years in the U.S.? I assume that that has a technical meaning with larger subgroups, but the principle is still there, and we argue that all the time in the census right now of forms and even how to do ethnicity and background. What about by subject matter? One Member from the other side of the aisle came down to the floor and said that he would like to know how math kids are doing by race.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. SOUDER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, what I would like to point out is, is that while that may be true in a Title I massive grant, the smaller the flexibility becomes, it becomes a proportionality question, and, furthermore, I would suggest that if we want to do this much detail, that is why we run for local school boards, not become Members of the United States Congress.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have been here wanting to speak on this amendment. While the other side would like to impugn the motives of many of us, which I do not appreciate, the fact is that this is the start of a process this afternoon that I believe undergirds the whole problem with the amendment process with this bill. That is that the purpose of this is an Ed-Flex bill. The purpose of this is to give flexibility to the local level. I remember one time when I was in court for a traffic ticket, I was talking to one man at the beginning, and he said to me, would you help me fill out my form? He could not write his name, nor could he write his address out. All he could do was put the x. I helped with that. I personally believe that one of the fundamental problems we have in this country is writing. If somebody cannot write, they are not going to be able to do the math and science. I remember in working, I was doing economic development with a number of people who were getting laid off from a company who had not done the basic reading. If people cannot read, they cannot do math and science. I do not know anybody in my district, any schoolchildren, any principal, any superintendent, who does not believe that math and science is not one of the critical, if not the most critical, depending upon the school, problems facing that school. In fact, in northeast Indiana or anywhere in the country, if we are going to compete not only within our country but within our State or internationally, we are going to have to improve the math and science programs. The question is, if the Member from New Jersey or anyone else feels that his district has a problem in math and science, then perhaps the amendment should be oriented towards micromanaging his district, rather than my district. Part of the whole underlying purpose of this bill is to say that we do not know what is best for each individual school, for each individual State, and how to do this. I have a concern about the underlying amendment of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers). I do not really see the purpose of his amendment let alone the second-degree amendment to his. This is hardly a pure Ed- Flex bill. The fact is, in clause after clause, we force them to submit all sorts of plans to the Federal Government. The Department of Education has to clear it. They are accountable for the performance of the students who are affected by such waivers. That is what the Department of Education has to do. Then the State has to show in print that they are accountable for the performance of the students who are affected by such waivers. Then the local education agency has to show that they have accounted for the students who are affected by such waivers. For crying out loud, we are micromanaging them to death. Then the second we get a bill that the President is going to sign, that all the governors back, we have amendment after amendment printed in the Record today to try to micromanage them. Math and science is wonderful. The people in Indiana can figure out how to do math and science without this Congress telling them, oh, in addition to giving them waivers, we are going to have this report and this report and this report because we do not trust them. We think we can figure out that math and science is important, but back in the local school, they who spend all the time teaching cannot figure out that math and science is one of the most important things. Maybe in some schools they have a literacy problem or computer problem or this type of thing in addition to math and science, because I think the people in education of this country know fully well the importance of math and science and do not need the United States Congress to micromanage their budgets.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), the bipartisan group, and Members, including myself, that have brought this bill forward. I think it is an important first step, and I hope that those who come to the floor and say they are for Ed-Flex do not support the efforts to, in fact, repeal Ed-Flex through the amendment process. We do not want to have a process where we say, oh, this is a great idea; we are going to, at least in this limited way, give people more flexibility, and then spend the rest of the day trying to figure out how not to give them flexibility. We need to talk straight to the American people. This is a bipartisan bill. The President has already said he is going to sign it. There are people in both parties. We should be able to do something like this in a bipartisan way, in a limited way, to give people local flexibility without then trying to tie their hands and say, on the one hand, we believe in flexibility but, on the other hand, we do not really trust them. So I think the important thing to watch this afternoon is who really believes in flexibility and who really trusts their local efforts and will trust their local administrators to do this, and who, in fact, starts to think that the Federal Government knows best.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. First, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say ``amen'' to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gekas) and would like to remind people who sometimes do not remember historical points and therefore are prone to repeat them is, as one of the so-called firebrands of the Class of 1994, I supported Mr. Gekas and other similar legislation from the beginning, as we did before the government shutdown. The fact is that it was not the House that shut down the government, it will not be the House that shuts down the government, and it should not be, which is why we need to pass this legislation. We have been for this all the way along. Others would like to make it look like unless they get their way in the appropriation bills that we are the bad guys, but that is different from the truth, and it is put up or shut up time. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gekas) has had this bill for year after year. Where are the cosponsors who like to whine about the threat of a government shutdown? Why are they not backing his bill? But I came down here today to talk about the drug issue. In the last few days, the President has certified Mexico as a cooperating partner in the war against drugs, and I would like to comment particularly on that subject. Although in the Committee on Education and the Workforce we are continuing to work with the Drug-free Schools Act, Safe and Drug-free Schools Act, we are continuing to work with treatment programs and many other areas, right now the focus is and should be on interdiction, because there is only so much schools can do in Indiana and around the country if they are flooded with this huge supply of high-grade cocaine, heroin, marijuana that has been coming in mostly through the Mexican border and increasingly through the Mexican border and is produced predominantly in three countries in the world: Peru, Bolivia and Columbia. Mr. Speaker, we need to understand that we, while we can argue whether this is a cancer or a war, it is, in fact, both because there is a war going on in South America. Two countries have made tremendous progress: Peru and Bolivia. It shows that we can actually reduce the coca bean grown, reduce the cocaine being processed and reduce the cocaine being shipped. In Columbia, there is a battle on the ground; and, in Mexico, it is a little bit bigger question because it is clear that some of the people, or most, as far as we can tell, of the people in their government are attempting to cooperate with us. It is not clear that we have had such cooperation in the past, and many of the proposals are relatively new on the table. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) of the Subcommittee on Drug Policy on the Committee on Government Reform took a CODEL to Central and South America that just arrived back a little over a week ago, and we spent 3 days in Mexico, and I would like to put into the Record a list of different things that Mexico has actually been doing in the past year: PGR--Procuraduria General de la Republica, February 19, 1999 Overall Reform of Mexico's Law Enforcement Legal System-- Key Points--Legal, Institutional Reorganization, and Human Resources. constitutional reforms Articles 16 and 19: Increased balance in order to present proof of the ``probable cause'' of the crime and obtain arrest warrants, and orders of formal incarceration (submission to criminal proceeding). Article 22: Forfeiture of organized crime proceeds in not concluded criminal proceedings (e.g., death of the offender). The intention is to avoid the simulation in the transfer of the assets to third parties. Article 123 paragraph B fraction XIII: Police bodies depuration, dismissed police officers will not be able to demand reinstallment, and they would only be compensated. federal act for the control of precursor chemicals--dec. 26, 1997, official gazette To prevent and locate the diversion of chemical precursors, and it regulates the chemical substances related to in the 1988 Vienna Convention against Illicit Drug Trafficking. Fast mechanism in order to add the regulated chemical substances list. Data Base: Increased coordination between agencies and PGR. Imports and exports exchange of information with other nations. proposed federal act for the administration of seized, forfeited and abandoned assets Objective basis for the proper administration of the proceeds of crime. Strengthening of the legal basis for the use of the proceeds seized by the Federal Public Prosecutor in the fight against crime. Sharing of proceeds with State, Local and Foreign governments. Final destiny of the seized proceeds in favor of the Federal Judicial Branch and the Attorney General's Office. Establishment of Deputy Attorney General Offices for Criminal Procedures A, B y C (Territorial distribution of the cases), Special Prosecutor's Office for the Attention of Health Related Crimes (Drug trafficking), Special Unit on Organized Crime, Special Unit against Money Laundering, and Reliability Control Center. dismissal of bad elements Imposition of 1,973 sanctions (Dec. 2, 1996 to Feb. 17, 1999), 438 dismissed, 294 disqualified, and 157 dismissed/ disqualified. Criminal charges against 317 former public servants. training Participation of DEA, and FBI. National Police of Spain, National Police of France, Canadian Royal Mounted Police, and Police of Israel. new fringe benefits for the personnel involved in the fight against drug trafficking Civil Service regulations, major medical expenses insurance (``Premier''), Life insurance (major risk--100 thousand to 400 thousand dollars), additional salary to compensate risks, and bonuses for relevant actions. binational seminar on Mexico-US legal training It is focused on the knowledge of legal provisions and investigation techniques in both countries. Its objective is to provide participants with a wider and clearer comprehension of the legal systems, the structures and means of law enforcement in Mexico and the US. reliability control center It was established on May 2, 1997, performs evaluations (vetting) for the detection of the reliability of the personnel. Applies the following evaluations: Medical, toxicological, psychological, family background and financial situation, and polygraph or lie detector. reliability control center The evaluations are applied to newly recruited public servants, and All individuals working in FEADS, UEDO, and

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot today and we will hear a lot more in the future about who is saving social security, but there is a key fact we should keep in mind. That is, for 40 years the Democrats held control of this House. The number of times they worked to save social security was somewhere around zero. The important thing here is not whether we talk, but whether we do. Today in the Committee on Education and the Workforce we are considering a bill called Ed-Flex, to give local and State governments more flexibility, and allowing school boards more flexibility in education. Similar bills are being considered on the Senate floor. We are actually doing something about what other people talk about. It is a bipartisan effort. The gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), and others from both sides of the aisle are reaching forth. Will the Democratic Party join with us in trying to give flexibility? I will refer to two articles, which I will insert into the Congressional Record along with these remarks. One is from Steve Gordon, president of the East Allen County School Board, saying, States should fight Federal meddling in the schools. We don't need a national school board in Washington. We need to give more flexibility to local school boards and States. Another is a letter to the editor praising Concordia High School in my district, which is the largest Lutheran high school in the country, for their drug testing programs. At the local level people are doing things, not just talking. The letters referred to are as follows: [From the Ft. Wayne News Sentinel, Feb. 22, 1999] State Should Fight Federal Meddling in Schools With the start of the new legislative year, one issue that always comes up is education. Of course, the president, governor and every legislator have this issue near the top of their agendas. The president used his State of the Union speech to address aspects of education, and I would like to respond. He recommends bringing public education more under the authority of the federal government. He also makes some points that should be common-sense to most Americans, but to him are more of a revelation that only the federal government should implement. His first point was to end social promotion. Children should not graduate with a diploma they can't read. Who could possibly oppose this? Already schools--at the local level-- are endeavoring to ensure reading skills are mastered at the earliest grade levels. His second point was to close low-performing schools. Will the federal government decide this issue? By what standard? Indiana already examines each public school's performance and intervenes when necessary to help those schools to meet their specific needs. We don't need the federal government to transcend the state authority already in place. His third point suggested that teachers only teach subjects they are trained in. This is another local issue--one manipulated by contracts, state licensing rules and course offerings requested by students. What we at the local level need is greater flexibility in putting qualified teachers into the classroom. Indiana should modify the licensing procedure to allow people to teach who are qualified in the material but do not necessarily have a major in education. An example is: Schools are in great need of vocational program teachers. People who have vocational skills but may not meet licensing requirements could pass their experience on to students. For example, people just out of the military or retirees could fill this need. His fourth point was to allow parents to choose which public school to send their child to based on school ``report cards.'' Indiana already requires each district to publish information about schools' performance. Charter schools have been a state issue and should remain so. One aspect of charters that makes them unique is the avoidance of many current state Department of Education regulations. I suggest that if some schools can do this, all public schools should be allowed to avoid these rules. His fifth point was to ``implement sensible discipline policies.'' Not long ago, the president pushed through the mandatory one-year expulsion for any student who comes to school with a handgun. Every state had to make this into law. Indiana already had a law forbidding handguns to be within 1,000 feet of a school. Why was it necessary to federalize this issue? I would like to make some suggestions in contrast to the president's agenda. First, give real tax relief to families. When families have both parents working out of necessity, they have less time for their children. A parent waiting for the child to arrive at home is better than after-school programs. Families are paying approximately 40 percent of their income to taxes. One parent is effectively working just to pay the government. Children need their parents--not another government program! Second, do not generalize when talking about education. Every school has unique problems--and many have unique successes. Create opportunities for all schools to succeed in the areas that they want and need. Rather than add more bureaucracy, remove what currently exists. Free the public schools up so that they can compete equally with private schools. It is tempting--and easy--for legislators to get their hands into the means of education. Be more concerned about the results and leave the means implementation to the local school districts. They can better assess their specific needs and respond to them directly. Third, let the local districts decide how to spend money. The recent ``100,000 teachers'' legislation is a perfect example. Considering the amount of money appropriated, it will never meet the need to hire that amount of teachers. It creates an obligation to the school districts to make up a difference that they may not have. Finally, I would ask that education remain a local issue and that the state resist any further federal intervention. There are problems in public education, but they can be much better resolved at the local and state level. Washington doesn't need to involve itself any further. I realize I do not have the influence on law-makers that the president or governor may have. But I am only a school board member. I want to do what is in the best interests of students in this district. I ask parents who support these ideas to contact their representatives and tell them how they feel.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, today I am re-introducing the ``Giving Incentive and Volunteer Encouragement Act'', the GIVE Act, to provide an increased incentive for charitable giving. The vast majority of Americans agree that charitable organizations and the nonprofit sector are more efficient and effective in the use of donations than the federal government is with additional tax revenue. The goal is to decrease the cost of giving and allow more Americans to give more generously to those charities they feel are making the greatest impact in the lives of their neighbors and communities. In addition to increasing the power of charitable donations, the bill increases flexibility, once again provides lower income taxpayers the opportunity to deduct charitable deductions, and the bill would eliminate the cap on charitable giving which hinders additional giving by those most able to give. Specifically, the legislation would: Allow individuals to deduct 120% of the value of their charitable donations.--This will encourage additional giving to private organizations and increase the total amount of charitable giving. Experts agree that the key factors in determining the amount of charitable giving are income and price. This provision will increase charitable giving by decreasing the effective cost to the giver. Allow non-itemizers who give more than $1,000 to charity (or $2,000 filing jointly) to deduct their donations.--There's simply no reason why the government should encourage philanthropy only among the better- off. Before the 1986 tax bill, all taxpayers were able to deduct their charitable donations, not just those who make enough to itemize deductions. Restoring this provision to the tax code will empower everyone, not merely people of means, to give back to their community through charitable donations. Exclude charitable giving from the overall limitation on itemized deductions.--By reducing allowable deductions to 3% of the taxpayer's income over $100,000, the 1990 tax bill placed unnecessary hurdles in front of those taxpayers most able to give. A person in need doesn't care what his benefactor's tax bracket is, and neither should the government. Extend the deadline for making charitable donations until April 15.-- Most taxpayers take note of allowable deductions only when they fill out their tax returns. They often realize, in retrospect, that they could have given more to charity in the previous year. Current law already allows deductions for contributions to IRA's up until filing time. By extending similar treatment to charitable contributions, we can (1) assist taxpayers' planning, (2) increase the incentive for taxpayers facing penalties for underwithholding, and (3) help advertise the value of the charitable giving tax incentive. We can also encourage those whose giving is curtailed at the end of the year by the holiday cash crunch. I am grateful for my twenty colleagues which have joined me as original cosponsors and invite other members to join me by cosponsoring this important incentive for increased charitable giving and to allow more Americans the privilege of contributing greater to charity. We must continue to encourage the tremendous charitable efforts which enrich our communities and improve our society while providing significant tax relief for American taxpayers.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I, too, want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) as well as our bipartisan help from the gentleman from California (Mr. Martinez), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Klink) and others on the other side of the aisle who have helped to finally bring this remedy hopefully to closure this year. For the record, I want to say I am not just a bystander in this. Not only do I represent the 3rd, 7th and 10th largest old order communities in the country, and by old order I mean that they do not have tops on their buggies and they are not allowed to marry the Amish in many of these other gentlemen's districts who have tops on their buggies and are much, therefore, more liberal Congressmen and members. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with voting. Out of the 20,000 Amish in my district, I think approximately 150 voted. Three in my hometown of Grabill went out to vote and then got kicked out of church for going out because they wanted to vote for me and they had to work that through in their church. My great grandfather in 1846 was one of the first Amish settlers in Allen County. He left the Amish faith around the turn of the century, but I still have many cousins and many, many friends in the Amish community and I grew up in a small town surrounded by an old order Amish community and went to school with many of them. So I have been very involved with this issue even though the original points of contention with the Department of Labor came up in Pennsylvania and most of the Amish who were at the meetings that we had with the Department of Labor were from Pennsylvania, a few from Holmes County, Ohio, and very few from Indiana and mostly up from the district of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) because the Amish in my district do not take part in any governmental activities and therefore are completely vulnerable and helpless when the government comes in and tries to alter their life-style. For 18 months we have negotiated with the Department of Labor. We have negotiated through several rounds through our committee. I am frustrated how long this has taken. This is a tad ridiculous, quite frankly. At the same time, I am glad we are to this point, and I am glad we are finally making progress. We have heard particulars in this bill, that in fact this is an endangerment. It is not a question of whether the Amish are old enough to smoke or old enough to do many things, because they are certainly old enough to sweep a floor. This is not a matter of working the woodworking equipment. It is a matter of doing the tangential jobs. We, as my colleagues have heard, put restrictions that limit that endangerment. Furthermore, as we see the pressures in our communities in Indiana, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, where there are Amish communities, we have a fundamental question we have to answer in this country: Can you practice religious freedom within the confines of what we expect in public health and safety? As they cannot divide their farms any further, they have turned to other crafts like woodworking, and if they cannot practice woodworking, and if they cannot practice their religious faith, they will leave our country or have to change their religion, and that is not what America was based on. I would argue that many of the arguments that have been put forth through the past few years are absurd. I have seen in print that there could be forklifts running over these kids. They do not have forklifts in Amish factories because they do not have electricity. I just heard a reference to robber barons. As my colleagues know, the Amish parents are not robber barons, and we have to be very careful about confusing past labor disputes with one of the most innocent, helpless and vulnerable segments of our society. I do not understand how anybody could oppose these poor, low-income people, who are at the mercy of everybody else, having their ability to work with their children in their factories. So, in their woodworking, whether it is furniture or whether it is pallets or whatever they do, so that they can continue their way of life, they are not the people with the gang problems, they are not the people with drug problems, they are not the people with the social problems we see elsewhere. So why would we come barreling into their community and try to change their lifestyle when they should be a model for the rest of us, not somebody who we try to destroy their culture?

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

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 221, the bill just passed.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, in addition, when the gentleman earlier focused on cocaine and talked about the shift of cocaine to Colombia, and the gentleman presumably gets into some of this here, too, but we have seen a shift in heroin, because we were getting it from the Golden Triangle, in Asia, and other places. We have now seen this move to Mexican brown in some part of our country. So while it looks like, and one of the things that we are hearing is that, oh, this Colombian problem is huge and disguising some of the problems in relationship to Mexico, the fact is that, simultaneously, because of a shift from Turkey and Southeast Asia, we have two places that have become the pivotal points.

Mr. SOUDER. I would like to conclude, Madam Speaker. We are about out of time here. If the gentleman could put the one chart up there that had Colombia on it. And let me thank the gentleman for laying out systematically the background of the problems that we have and the immediate pressure that we have in front of us. Just yesterday, right before I did my 5-minute speech, they delivered a report on the Western Hemisphere Drug Alliance and the President of the United States. It is in yesterday's Congressional Record. Not only do they not have the dollars to continue the interdiction efforts, but in this document we are seeing more of what the Speaker, myself, and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) heard when we went down to the Summit of the Americas. We heard at that point that the proposal that the President is holding out is a counternarcotics multilateral evaluation mechanism in the hemisphere. Basically, what they want to eliminate is what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) first developed as a staffer for Senator Hawkins, the drug certification process. What we have seen in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, and others is that because of this annual review, not of whether or not they are good people, not of whether or not they are a good government, but whether we as the United States should use taxpayer dollars in the United States to invest in their countries, that we have a legitimate review on the part of our country of their policies, because it is our money that we are proposing to deal with, it is our trade policies that we are looking at, and they are trying to, in effect, water this down. We strongly believe that we do need to work with these countries. We applaud the administration's efforts to work on drug prevention and drug treatment programs around the world and to encourage these countries to engage. That is not the question here. Furthermore, this is not really a question of motives at this point. It is not like what was happening in Colombia, where we saw the narco dollars going directly into the campaign of then President Samper. What we have is a lack of results in Mexico. When we were down there the last few days we saw lots of plans. Over the next few days we will be looking at those and debating those and trying to see if we can work out something, because we believe that their leadership is, in fact, working towards solutions. What we need to see, however, are some results. The facts are that all of our intelligence was compromised. The facts are we do not have certain agents in certain parts of the country. We saw many of the things that the gentleman from Florida outlined. So we have a real dilemma in our face. How much do we want the trade dollars versus the ability to use that as a leverage? The fact is that as we used that as a leverage with Colombia, they engaged more aggressively. It enabled those people in Mexico, like those people in Colombia, who are fighting this problem, to have their hand strengthened relative to those who would undermine it. We are all for drug prevention. The drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, has done an amazing job of getting this administration back engaged. But there is drug prevention in education, drug prevention in treatment, drug prevention in law enforcement, and there is also drug prevention in elimination. Every coca leaf, every lab that we destroy is less drugs coming into Illinois, to Indiana, to Florida, wherever. That is one of the best ways to prevent it, is to keep it from getting there. Similarly with eradication. One last point here. That map is drawn in a way to show the Colombia- Mexico traffic. But there is actually not blue water between Mexico and Colombia. That is Central America. Next to Colombia is Panama, the Darien Peninsula, which used to be part of Colombia. As we are turning the canal over in less than a year and pulling our troops out, we are in danger of having our trade threatened through the canal. On the other side of Colombia it is not blue water either. It is Venezuela. Our number one oil supplier. I think it is roughly 18 percent. And Colombia is number two in by-products. We have had money intended for eradication and interdiction diverted to Bosnia. We have had it diverted into all sorts of humanitarian well-sounding goals. This is a compelling national interest. We can argue whether Kosovo is a compelling national interest, we can argue whether Bosnia is a compelling national interest, we can argue whether Somalia was a compelling national interest, we can argue whether Iraq is a compelling national interest, but this is a compelling national interest. It has drugs coming in to my hometown, my kids' schools. It is threatening our oil and energy. It is threatening our trade in Panama. This is a compelling national interest. Are we going to help these people fight? Are we going to get them the weapons they need? They are increasingly willing to carry the battle, which is in large part caused by our consumption. But when we went to move Black Hawk helicopters 4 years with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and my colleague with me here tonight, because they could not get to where they were starting to plant the poppy in the higher parts of the Andes, we would not give them the mechanisms to go get it. So now we are shocked that 40 percent of their country is inundated and controlled by terrorist groups. We have to give them the resources necessary or the danger is they are going to ask us to come in, like other countries throughout the world, to help fix these problems that are clearly in our national interest. So as we head into these certification processes, we are going to be bringing, in the education bill this year, drug-free school stuff; and we are going to work with education programs to try to figure out how to reach these kids. We will look at the prison population, as the President is talking about, because if we can get people who are heavily addicted off, that will benefit us in the drug war. But there is only so much the kids can do in our schools and the teachers and the school boards and the police departments when the price drops, when the purity soars, as it did in 1993 through 1995, as the gentleman pointed out. There is only so much they can do on the streets of Fort Wayne when that price is dropped down. It is both ends of supply and demand here that are responsible. We need to encourage and build up those governments' efforts and also hold them accountable when they are falling behind. The gentleman from Florida.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I and others tonight will be using most of this hour to talk about the drug issue and our battle against illegal narcotics in this country, but I wanted to take a few moments at the beginning here to kind of put some of the other issues in context. For the last hour we have heard from the Blue Dog coalition, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) put an offer on the table that I think we should consider in the weeks and months to come, and that is to use some of this special order time, perhaps each splitting some of our time, to have an honest discussion and frank discussion about how we can actually work through and address some of these Social Security tax cuts and those issues. But I wanted to make a few comments based off of what I have been listening to for the last hour in this debate. Mr. Speaker, that is, I think, there is still some, and first let me pay tribute to most of the Blue Dog Coalition. It has had a strong track record here of working towards a balanced budget. Sometimes I wonder if they are called the Blue Dogs because they have turned blue holding their breath waiting for the President and most of their party to agree with them. But the bulk, the truth, is that a number of them have joined with the Republicans indeed to have a bipartisan effort since 1995 to rein in what is now an at least annual surplus. It is, as was mentioned by my colleagues across the aisle, an artificial surplus. We really do not have a surplus because we have not accounted for the Social Security Trust Fund. Former Congressman Neumann, a fellow member of the class of 1994, put a budget in front of this Congress numerous times which many of us voted for that would have taken Social Security off and provided the tax cuts and lived within the balanced budget amendment, but if you make every current program protected and then argue against tax cuts, you are taking a bunch off the table. Now we have to be able to work through here because part of the reason we finally achieved an annual surplus is because for the first time we actually proved that the Reaganomics theory worked, and that combination is if you cut taxes but slow the growth of spending below the rate of the growth of the economy plus inflation, you, in fact, will at least wind up with annual surpluses. Now it is a legitimate question of at what point do we replace them out from the Social Security Trust Fund, and how fast, and how do we invest that. Does it go in the market? Does it go back to individuals to invest? Do we put it in certain types of bonds? And we need to work that through because now, because of the combination of controlling spending and the tax cuts that this Congress and the past Congress implemented, we have economic growth without at least targeted tax cuts. And let me make one other comment here. Sometimes the other side loves straw men. There was a proposal never formally proposed but a number of individuals were debating for 10 percent across the board. It has been stated in the media, and it is certainly the opinion of most of our conference, that that is not going to have enough votes to pass and, in fact, was never adopted by our conference nor put forth as a Republican position. That is a straw man. Perhaps it will be, but we have not had a vote on that yet. It is unlikely that that will be in the budget or a Republican position. We will probably, however, have some tax cuts. Without tax cuts such as capital gains cuts or other inheritance tax changes or investment tax changes, you will not have the economic growth to sustain the surpluses that keep Social Security going. If you do not have the economic growth in the high-paying jobs, we will not have the FICA taxes with which to do that. It is both sides of the coin have to work. How do we keep enough money in investment and in businesses and in individual's hands plus so we stimulate the growth plus control the spending so that there is enough money there when baby boomers like myself, and I am sorry to say, turning 49 this summer, I have no hope right now of seeing Social Security unless we can combine economic growth with spending. Earlier this afternoon we also heard from the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) on the Committee on Education and the Workforce of which I am a part. There is no question. Not only we are looking at Social Security in tax cuts as a primary problem for this country in sustaining economic growth but how to improve the quality of education. Because if we are going to compete internationally, if we are going to have good jobs in Indiana and Florida and in Texas and all over this country, we need to have the premier education system in the world. How much of that is the Federal role, State role or local role we are going to debate. I favor ed flex, giving more flexibility to the local levels, but through the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and the Committee on Education and the Workforce you are going to see innovative proposals coming out as we look at the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and for creative things there. You have also been hearing over this week and you will hear in the weeks to come about the devastating decline in our national defense, particularly our missile systems, and we are going to have to address that in our budget because we have been wandering around for good humanitarian purposes with our troops all over the world, but that puts a tremendous squeeze on our readiness in our military. Furthermore, we have not kept up with these terrorist groups, these rogue nations, whether it is Bin Laden, whether it is Iraq, whether it is who knows who with some kind of chemical, biological and nuclear weapon. It is not just the communists any more that we have to worry about with that threat to the United States, it is all sorts of terrorist groups. So we are going to be looking at national defense. But without a doubt at the grassroots level every single person in this country knows that back home they are facing rising crime and this pressure in crime. Yes, we have had decline in homicides in some cities and up in other cities, but when you are at home and you are on the street, you know that drug and alcohol abuse has put your family at risk, your kids at risk, you at risk driving down the highway, whether it is your kids at school, whether it is trying to go to the mall or go to the parking lot at a mall, regardless where you are in America, whether it is a rural area, whether it is a small town, whether it is a suburban area. Here on the Washington TV last night we are hearing about a rapist who is out there threatening numbers of people. In my hometown, in Ft. Wayne, we have had numerous articles in the last week on the drug and alcohol abuse related things. There is no question that this problem is everywhere. Let me share you with a few statistics: From 1993 to 1997 youth ages 12 to 17 that used illegal drugs has more than doubled 120 percent, and there has been a 27 percent increase between 1996 and 1997 alone. Now the key variable there was youth between 12 and 17, because the drop in crime and the drop in drug uses we are seeing is among older individuals, but we have a rising problem among our younger generation that has not gotten the message on usage. That is from the 1998 National Household Survey. In 1999, a study shows that over the past 10 years, fueled by illegal drugs and alcohol, the number of abused and neglected children has more than doubled, from 1.4 million in 1986 to more than 3 million in 1997. That is consistent in this study. We hear at every county from the prosecutors, from the sheriffs, that 70 to 85 percent; it varies by county; of all crime including child abuse, including spouse abuse, including neglect as well as traditional drug and alcohol related crimes are related to drug and alcohol. The 1997 Dawn Report said that between 1992 and 1997 drug related emergency room episodes nationwide increased 25 percent, and they increased 7 percent between 1996 and 1997. The 1998 National Household Survey said the overall number of past month heroin users increased 378 percent from 1993 to 1997, and we particularly had that heroin risk heightened in certain areas, including the chairman's area we will hear from in a minute in Florida. One other comment on heroin. When I was in Miami with the Coast Guard, they have machines now that can take your, and usually I do not have a 20, but actually I have a 20 and take your money through and test it to see if there are traces of drugs on this that can be up to 2 years old. They took a 20 from my billfold and, admittedly, even though I got this 20 from an ATM machine in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, it could have come from somewhere else. But they ran it through the machine to see if my $20 bill, and you need to know I have never even smoked or I have inhaled because other people smoke, but I have never even smoked a cigarette, yet alone marijuana, heroin or cocaine, but on my $20 bill from Ft. Wayne they not only found cocaine, they found heroin. Heroin has soared in every part of the country as a high risk drug. I see we have also been joined by the chairman of the Committee on International Relations and I will yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), our distinguished chairman, who has been not only since we have taken the majority a leader in international efforts through drug prevention, through interdiction and eradication but, before that, with the Republican leader on the Narcotics Special Committee and has been a crusader against illegal drugs for his whole career here in Washington, D.C. I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to again thank the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International Relations because he has frequently been down in these countries that he has complimented and seen firsthand the successful efforts or the progress being made in Peru and Bolivia. Without his help in Colombia, where people are fighting and dying, we would have lost that country and we are going to lose it unless we continue to help them. He has been at the forefront in particular in Colombia and in struggling with these other nations. There are good news stories, as well as more difficult ones. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), the distinguished subcommittee chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. Just recently he headed a CODEL, a congressional delegation, to Central and South America, and we want to review some of that. First, partly what we need to understand as Americans, with what the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) just talked about, what I alluded to, is we are facing on our streets some progress here and there but net as a country, particularly among young people, a terrible threat. To understand why we are focusing on the Indian countries and why we are looking at the problems in Mexico and other places, we have to understand what is happening to us first.