Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 267.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pappas), who has been a leader on this effort, who serves on the drug task force and who is the sponsor of this resolution.

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 267) expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the citizens of the United States must remain committed to combat the distribution, sale, and use of illegal drugs by the Nation's youth.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to myself. I wanted to clarify a couple of things that were said here earlier. One is, in fact, when the government cut back its interdiction effort, we saw the street prices on cocaine and crack drop and the epidemic swept across America. Another question is whether or not certain rights have been violated unintentionally or even intentionally. They should not be. We need to be careful of that. But, in fact, the little 2-year-old in Fort Wayne and the 5-year-old who were shot down in a drive-by shooting had their rights violated as well. We have to get control of this drug epidemic in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our schools.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that 7 minutes of my 20 minutes be controlled by the gentleman from California (Mr. Martinez).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be involved with this very important sense of the House resolution. Although this resolution is nonbinding in nature, it is important. It sends a wakeup call to Americans. By way of background, this resolution was introduced by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pappas), my friend and colleague, last fall. I commend his leadership in bringing this resolution to the floor today. H. Res. 267 enjoys the bipartisan support of 181 cosponsors, including most of the Republican members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, which reported out the resolution, as amended by the committee substitute, by voice vote on March 11. Additionally, this bill has been endorsed by a variety of interest groups: The Partnership for a Drug Free America; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Youth to Youth; American Society of Addiction Medicine; National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence; D.A.R.E. America; and the Elks Drug Awareness Program. Mr. Speaker, this simple resolution addresses a complex problem that plagues modern America: Illicit drug usage and trade. House Resolution 267 is clear and concise. It expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that the citizens of the United States must remain committed to combat the distribution, sale and use of illegal drugs by the Nation's youth. If we fail to convey this vital message, our children's minds and bodies will continue to be poisoned by drugs. Let me just say up front where I stand on the crisis of illicit drug use in America. I have addressed this body last week to explain my anti-drug amendment to the Higher Education bill and amendment to the underlying language offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon). In doing so, I challenged Congress to get serious about the epidemic of illicit drugs in this country. As I emphasized last week on this floor, we have a major drug crisis in this country and the question is are we serious about it or not? It is too easy for us to criticize Mexico and Colombia for their apparent endless supply of poisonous drugs to this country. We must continue to find effective and creative ways to fight the demand problem within our own borders. House Resolution 267 is a first step in sending a clear and concise message that we are serious about this crisis. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert into the Record some details of this crisis in particular, and not go into detail at this point. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be involved with this very important sense of the House resolution. Although this resolution is non-binding in nature, it is important--it sends a wake up call to Americans. By way of background, this resolution was introduced by my friend and colleague Mike Pappas last fall. I commend his leadership in bringing this resolution to the floor today. H. Res. 267 enjoys the bipartisan support of 181 cosponsors, including most of the Republican members of the Education and the Workforce Committee, which reported out the resolution, as amended by the Committee substitute, by voice vote on March 11th. Additionally, this bill has been endorsed by a variety of interest groups: the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Youth to Youth, American Society of Addiction Medicine, National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, D.A.R.E. America, and Elks Drug Awareness Program. Mr. Speaker, This simple resolution addresses a complex problem that plagues modern America--illicit drug usage and trade. H. Res. 267 is clear and concise--it expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that the citizens of the United States must remain committed to combat the distribution, sale, and use of illegal drugs by the Nation's youth. If we fail to convey this vital message, our children's minds and bodies will continue to be poisoned by drugs. Let me just say up front where I stand on the crisis of illicit drug use in America. I addressed this body last week to explain my anti-drug amendment to the Higher Ed bill. In doing so, I challenged Congress to get serious about the epidemic of illicit drugs in this country. As I emphasized last week on this floor, we have a major drug crisis in this country, and the question is--are we serious about it or not? It is too easy for us to criticize Mexico and Columbia for their apparent endless supply of poisonous drugs to this country. We must continue to find creative and effective ways to combat the demand problem within our own borders. H. Res. 267 is a first step in sending a clear and concise message that we are serious about this crisis. The evidence of the drug crisis is in, and it is quite compelling. Consider these telling statistics: Drug Availability & Use is on the Rise A majority of all high school seniors would say ``yes,'' they've used an illegal drug in their short lifetime. In 1992, 40.7% had ever used an illicit drug; by 1997, the number jumped to 54.3%. (Source: December 1997, ``Monitoring the Future Study'' a.k.a. the ``National High School Survey,'' University of Michigan's Survey Research Center) Marijuana use is up. In 1992, one-out-of-three high school seniors (32.6%) had tried the drug--a mere six years later in 1997, nearly half of all high school seniors (49.6%) had experimented with pot. (Source: same as above) The number of 4th-6th graders (9-to-12 year olds) experimenting with marijuana increased 71% from 334,000 in 1993 to 571,000 in 1997. (Source: April 13, 1998, ``Partnership Attitude Study,'' Partnership for a Drug-Free America) ``Children's exposure to marijuana doubled from 1993 to 1997.'' In 1993, 7% of kids said that they had close friends who ``use marijuana sometimes'' to 14% in 1997. (Source: same as above) 72% of people in the U.S. and 65% of people in Latin America favor U.S.-imposed sanctions on countries that don't do enough to combat drug production or trafficking. (Source: same as above) 34% see drug interdiction as a top priority foreign policy issue--more than illegal immigration (22%), the threat of terrorism (22%), and free trade (17%). (Source: February 26, 1998, ``America Assesses Drug Policy,'' Family Research Council) Mr. Speaker, that's what we're up against. As the evidence suggests, we can no longer allow the use and trade of illicit drugs to continue unchecked. It's time we send an unequivocal message to America that the House unequivocally opposes illicit drugs. If you are a drug user or pusher--beware. We are watching and we will find innovative ways to combat what you are doing. By the time the average teenager reaches age 18, 68% can buy marijuana within a day--nearly half within an hour. In fact, 42% find marijuana easier to buy than either beer or cigarettes. (Source: September 1997, ``Back to School 1997,'' Center for Addiction & Substance Abuse) By the time the average child reaches age 13, ONE-in-FOUR have attended a party in the last six months where marijuana was available. (Source: same as above) Fewer than one-in-three teenagers under 18 say they attend a drug-free school. (Source: same as above) A third of teenagers (33%) were offered drugs at school in 1997--a significant increase of 44% from 1993 (23%). For children 9-to-12 years old (4th-6th graders), almost three out of ten (28%) were offered drugs in 1997--a 47% increase since 1993 (19%). (Source: April 13, 1998, ``Partnership Attitude Study,'' Partnership for a Drug-Free America) The Untold Costs Drug abuse killed 14,218 Americans in 1995 at the cost of more than $67 billion. (November 10, 1997, ``What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs: 1988-1995,'' Office of National Drug Control Policy) If this casualty rate should continue, nearly 114,000 Americans--many of them our youth--will die from drug abuse and overdose on President Clinton's watch. These numbers do not take into account deaths from drug-related crime and violence, which the Drug Enforcement Agency estimates would easily top 20,000 Americans per year. By the time a child reaches age 13, ONE-in-TEN will say they know a schoolmate who has died because of drugs or alcohol. (Source: September 1997, ``Back to School 1997,'' Center for Addiction & Substance Abuse) American taxpayers footed a $150 billion bill for drug- related criminal and medical costs in 1997 alone. (November 10, 1997, ``What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs: 1988-1995,'' Office of National Drug Control Policy) That's more than what we spent in 1997's federal budget for programs to fund education, transportation improvements, agriculture, energy, space, and all foreign aid combined. Illegal drug users in the United States spent more than $57 billion on their street poisons in 1995 alone. American consumers could have more wisely used that money to purchase a four-year college education for one million kids; or 22 billion gallons of milk to feed babies; or, one year's worth of child care for 14 million children. (November 10, 1997, ``What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs: 1988-1995,'' Office of National Drug Control Policy) The Criminal Element 70% of all hard drugs and illegal narcotics found in the United States originally crossed the U.S./Mexican border. (CRS) More than 1.5 million people were arrested from drug offenses in 1996 alone. That's more than the number of residents living in Montana and North Dakota COMBINED. (November 10, 1997, ``What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs: 1988-1995,'' Office of National Drug Control Policy) Between 70%-90% of all persons incarcerated in state prisons are there for drug offenses. (November 10, 1997, ``What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs: 1988-1995,'' Office of National Drug Control Policy) Street cops, our foot soldiers in the War on Drugs, say that reducing drug abuse would have the greatest single impact on reducing violent crime. (Source: Fall 1997, ``Drug Facts for the Record,'' House Government Reform & Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs & Criminal Justice briefing paper citing a 1995 study conducted by the University of Maryland) Perceptions & Realities About Drugs Nearly 9 in 10 people (85%) believe solving our drug crisis is more urgent than less urgent. (Source: February 26, 1998, ``America Assesses Drug Policy,'' Family Research Council) 82% oppose drug legalization. (Source: same as above) Teenagers say drugs (35%) are their most important problem, far ahead of social pressures (19%), crime (12%), sexual issues (8%), academic pressures (8%), or family problems (3%). (Source: September 1997, ``Back to School 1997,'' Center for Addiction & Substance Abuse) 45% of parents believe their son or daughter may have friends who smoke pot. Yet 71% of teens say they have friends who use the drug. (Source: April 13, 1998, ``Partnership Attitude Study,'' Partnership for a Drug-Free America) Just 21% of parents acknowledged the possibility that their teen might have tried marijuana, significantly lower than the 44% of teens who say they've done so. (Source: same as above) Some 54% of parents say they talked with their teenagers about drugs at least four times in the last year, yet less than a quarter (24%) of those teens recalled those discussions. (Source: same as above) Less than one-third of teens (28%) named parents as a source of drug information, while another third (31%) said that in the past year their parents had never talked to them about drugs. (Source: same as above) A plurality of those surveyed in the U.S. (39%) say the primary objective of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America should be to decrease drug trafficking. (Source: April 16, 1998, ``A Meeting of Minds, From Peoria to Patagonia,'' The Wall Street Journal) Mr. Speaker, these facts that we have been hearing about on this floor for the past week are what we are up against. As the evidence suggests, we can no longer allow the use and trade of illicit drugs to continue unchecked. It is time we send an unequivocal message to America that the House opposes illicit drugs. Drug users and pushers, beware. We are watching and we will find innovative ways to combat what users and pushers are doing in every category of legislation that we are facing. Mr. Speaker, this resolution is a simple, yet important first step putting the United States Congress on record. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), who has been a leader in the antidrug effort. I would like to note also, Mr. Speaker, that I appreciate the support of the gentleman from California, the previous speaker, for this measure.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the majority leader for his efforts in this and leading the way to give opportunity to those who may not have it. As I have, basically, understood much of the debate today, I am sure there were some survivors on the Titanic who were glad that the minority Members were not making the decisions on whether to use the lifeboats, because the decision would have been, since everybody cannot be in the lifeboat, nobody should be in the lifeboat. I am glad that the Members of the minority party who have spoken out here are not in charge of IDEA, because apparently the rule would be if we cannot fully fund IDEA, nobody should get the money. The question here is should those who are reaching out get some opportunity. But the underlying fundamental question here, and I want to make it clear on the Record here, because I have taken some criticism because I supported the High Hopes initiative in the committee, because I think we need to reach out in multiple ways, in public schools, in private schools, in charter schools, every way possible to increase the opportunities for all minorities, whether they be Hispanic, African American, Asian, rural white. We need to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to succeed in America. One of the things that this bill does is it empowers parents and children to vote with their feet. We keep hearing the word ``lottery'' like it is some kind of a gambling thing when, in fact, it is not. Maybe only 2,000 will get in, but many more will want to get in. Those who do not get in will still have the incentive to push in their schools, because their schools, in order to keep them from applying, presumably will start to listen to parents, presumably will start to respond. In fact, if what the people want, because they are clearly spending more dollars in the public schools than they are in these private schools, if what the people want is discipline, if what the people want is better basic education, if what the people want is to get the things that they are getting out of the private schools, the public schools where they have choice start to respond. We have an excellent public school in Southeast Washington and Anacostia, the Thomas Jefferson School, that does not have the crime problems, where they have more excellence going on. And we need to encourage those public schools that are reaching out and doing that; and one way to do that is to give the parents the ability to say, ``If you do not respond to us, if you do not listen to us, we will vote with our feet.'' And that is what we are doing here is empowering the poor like the rich are.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is very simple. On page 237 it strikes lines 4 through 10 and inserts the following: Under rehabilitation, a student whose eligibility has been suspended under paragraph 1 may resume eligibility before the end of the period determined under such paragraph if the student satisfactorily completes a drug rehabilitation program that complies with such criteria as the Secretary shall prescribe for purposes of this paragraph and that includes two unannounced drug tests. The addition to the underlying bill is that it includes 2 unannounced drug tests. This amendment has no estimated drug spending, unless, of course, somebody would fail the drug test and then, while that is not our goal, it would actually save money. But our goal is to make sure that, actually, the students are clean when they come back. Now let me go through the history of how this got in the main bill and then discuss particularly my change which I hope will be considered a friendly amendment and can be supported. It is not general drug testing. It is not testing of anyone other than people who have been convicted of drug use and are now under this bill going through drug rehab and making sure they are actually clean. But I want to go through the actual epidemic that we are facing. We have a major crisis in this country, and the question is are we serious about it or not. And this bill has an important first step, and I would like to just refine this a little bit more. It is easy for us to criticize Mexico; it is easy for us to criticize Columbia. The question is, are we really committed in this country? The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 1997, states that crime data from 489 of the largest colleges and universities in this country indicate that drug arrests on college campuses jumped by close to 18 percent in 1995 when they have the data in the fourth consecutive year with a double digit increase. By comparison, all other crimes, including murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, vehicle theft and violations of weapons laws declined. So it is clear in our universities we have had drug use as an increasing problem. This 18 percent jump is even more troubling when you consider that those are the kids that get caught. According to this same article, researchers at the University of Michigan found that 33.5 percent of the college students surveyed in 1995 had used illegal drugs within that year up 2.1 percent from 1994 and up even further from an earlier survey. I have recently seen the survey study, and it included 17-year-olds who are just about to head to college. They are seniors in high school, and in there two-thirds said that they knew where they could get marijuana within a day, and 44 percent within an hour or less, that our schools are, in fact, not drug-free even in high school. Thirty-seven percent of the principles said they were drug-free; 46 percent of the teachers. But 76 percent of the students said that their school was not drug-free. They understand they are at risk when they were asked, 17- year-olds, what they thought their greatest problem was. Drugs were not seen as much of a problem, as their major problem, as all the other issues combined. Now this suggests that our children know they are at risk, and we need to take some steps to make sure they are not in danger. This amendment, to go through some of the history, has been in our bill before coming through the House, the full underlying amendment that came through committee before this adjustment, and my colleague and friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon) has been the pioneer and the leader with this. He is a great American, and I am going to miss him, and many others are. He has been a crusader for the values that made this country great. He had this in the Higher Ed Reauthorization bill in 1992. We lost it in conference, and we are coming back again with the underlying treatment amendment in the beginning, and let me explain what the underlying amendment does: One loses their taxpayer subsidized loan for 1 year for first offense, 2 years for their second offense and indefinitely for the third. If they sell drugs, they get suspended for 2 years for a first offense and indefinitely on a second offense. The point here is not to get people out of college. That is why we have the treatment program and then they come back in. We want to get people rehabbed so they can learn. But the problem here is we need to make sure not just that they are going through treatment programs and insurance companies can make a lot of money and treatment programs can make a lot of money, but that, in fact, people are cured. This can be done, quite frankly, faster than the suspension period. If they successfully complete a rehab program and they get through a drug test that is clean, they are back in school. I have no desire to eliminate anybody's opportunity to climb out of the situation they are in to advance their career, but the best way to do that is to make sure one is clean of drugs. And I believe that this amendment will actually make the underlying amendment that we had in committee even stronger and put teeth in that, and I hope that it can be supported by all sides. Because, once again, I want to say it is not a general testing amendment; it is only for people who have been convicted and lost their student loan.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the problem with the science that is being argued on the other side is that it is just not there. The fact is that at the very best, at the very best, there are mixed studies. It is clear that in Vancouver, that in spite of providing 2 million needles a year, they now have the highest incidence of AIDS and it is increasing. Vancouver has the highest heroin death rate in North America and is referred in The Washington Post as the ``drugs and crime capital of Canada.'' In Montreal we have seen the HIV-positive at twice the rate of addicts not in the program. Nearly 1,600 injection drug users found that those participating in the needle exchange programs had a 33 percent cumulative probability of HIV seroconversion compared to 13 percent of injection drug users who had not participated in the program. In the British medical journal ``The Lancet'' they said that injection drug users who participated in the Montreal needle exchange programs were two times more, not less, likely. The science at best is mixed here, and we need more research. But what is clear is that heroin is illegal, and we do not need the Government of the United States and the taxpayers of the United States to become needle traffickers in this country. Mr. Speaker, what kind of message are we trying to send when we are trying to work together on the drug war? Do we really want this to happen? A woman gets raped in the street by a heroin addict. What are we going to tell her when she finds out that the needle that enabled that addict to get heroin and then get him on the street to rape her came from her tax dollars and the tax dollars of America? When we have a heroin addict, a father, go home to his house and he beats his little child and the child, sobbing, asks his mom, ``How does daddy get this stuff?'' And the taxpayers are providing the needles for the heroin addict. What kind of debate are we having here? I know that there is a deep concern about HIV. But we cannot enable, we cannot become a Dr. Kevorkian because we think the cause is right to violate the law and enable people to violate the law, when that is also leading to death and murder and rape and pillaging and the abuse of children. Just because giving low-tar cigarettes to people who smoke would reduce the incidence of cancer does not mean that we should start distributing in our schools low-tar cigarettes. Hey, the kids are going to smoke anyway. Why do we not make it a little less risky for them? Why do we not make it so that the secondhand smoke does not damage the other kids as much, so let us give them free low-tar cigarettes to reduce the incidence. We cannot get rid of the problem anyway, so let us enable this bad habit to continue because maybe we can save a few people. And what about the violence in the streets, where little kids are gunning down other people on the streets with machine guns? If we made sure that they had safety locks on those, a few people where there are accidental deaths would be saved. We cannot get rid of those guns anyway. Why not get the government in the business of giving new guns to these kids, new machine guns with safety locks on them, because a few lives would be saved? We would be enabling the deaths to continue. We would be giving the sanction of the government for an illegal behavior and trafficking in guns in this case ourselves, but at least we would save a few lives. Mr. Speaker, we have to have a clear moral message coming out of this Congress that drugs are wrong.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Moses is looking straight on the Speaker's chair. We know, and our Founding Fathers knew, where our laws were derived from.

Mr. SOUDER. If the gentleman will yield, it is almost, well, it is not almost inconceivable, it is inconceivable when we have gangs, we have drug problems all over our country, we have teachers getting raped in the hallways, and we are concerned about stamping out anybody talking about Jesus Christ. In 1983 and '84, I cannot remember which year, when then Congressman Dan Coats, I was working on his district staff, was working on the equal access bill, we actually had a series of problems come up in the school district that my kids were in that helped provide some of the fodder that led to the passage of the equal access bill, including a series of rules that the administration did not mean for the parents to get ahold of, which included not allowing any religious affiliated instructors or teachers or ministers to go on school grounds during the day. The way this came about is one rural high school, the student who got in trouble at school asked to talk to his pastor. The pastor came into the school, and that led to a banning of pastors going into the school during the school day. The church that I grew up in had a children's home. Many of those people who worked as house parents were lay pastors. And the question is, could they go on to school grounds? No, they were banned under this rule. It was absurd. You could not use the school for after hours if you had any religious affiliations. This whole prayer question. A whole series of type of things led to many of these changes, supposedly covered by equal access. But we have backslid. I want to use one other personal example. For anybody who, by any stretch of the imagination, thinks that I am a liberal, this will get rid of that impression. I mean, there are issues where I disagree with the majority of my conservative friends, and tomorrow on the amendment of the gentleman from California (Mr. Frank Riggs) and other things on affirmative action, it is one area where I have a disagreement. But, for the most part, I am very conservative; and my roots are very conservative. I grew up in the Apostolic Christian Church of America. It is a very fundamentalist church. When we join that church, we do not have infant baptism. We believe in the age of accountability, and we commit our lives to Jesus Christ. When we do, we agree to accept certain guidelines of that church. When we accept those guidelines, we are expected to follow them. One of the guidelines is that we do not go to movies. That was a difficult thing, I think it was my junior year in high school, because the school decided to go to the Sound of Music. Now, the church rule was not PG films or G films, it was no movies. That meant that I had to go sit alone in a classroom while the rest of the kids went to see Sound of Music. I did not file an objection to stop everybody else in the school because I was isolated, because my religious beliefs were a minority and somehow I was going to be eternally damaged or even temporarily damaged because I was singled out, because other kids made fun of me because of my church, because I was extra conservative. I had to go sit alone. The small school that I grew up in has a lot of Amish around it. The Amish do not believe in taking public showers. Therefore, often they were excused from gym or had to sit there or did not shower if they had to go to the gym class. But the school did not cancel gym classes. And in this particular school 12 percent of the kids were Amish. Twelve percent was not considered a significant enough minority to change the behavior of the rest of the school around it. There needs to be a sensitivity. And I have to say I never ran into a teacher who mocked my religious beliefs. I ran into plenty who questioned my religious beliefs and were curious about them or told me they did not think they were very sound even biblically, but nobody mocked my beliefs. And, quite frankly, because I had to go through experiences much, quite frankly, like other minorities have gone through in different ways, I had to decide to give in or actually firm up my beliefs. In fact, to use a reverse example, the Communist party, in their indoctrination, used to send new recruits onto the street to try to spread their doctrine. And when they were attacked, they learned the beliefs better than if they did not have to defend them. I learned more about the principles, not all of which I agree with today; but, at the same time, I learned to understand even why rules were there that I did not agree with because I had to execute them and I had to execute them in a period where I was the only one or sometimes one of only three who held that position. I did not go to my senior prom because I did not dance. And I was senior class president, and I was supposed to speak at the senior prom. They had printed up the programs with my name in it. I told them I am not going to go. It was embarrassing, and it was difficult as a senior. It was difficult in many of these years to go through that personal discipline of being different than everybody else. But I did not ask everybody else to change because they were not like me. The problem we have in America right now is that, if there are a few people who do not like what the majority of the people like, they feel they have a right to stop them from their practice of religious freedom, which, quite frankly, is the fundamental belief that America was founded on; that we were going to have free exercise of religion; that we were going to be able to worship God as we saw fit; that in America we had a fundamental belief in this Congress, in this body, in the Christian holy trinity. Now, we have more diversity in America today, but it is still the preponderant belief. All our laws, as Francis Schaeffer said, are really echoes and remnants, if not direct outgrowth, of old testament law and of the Judeo-Christian tradition. If we lose that foundation as a country, we are lost. What we are trying to do, and what the gentleman has tried to do in his leadership with this religious liberty amendment, is to allow free practice. We could make a case that our Founding Fathers, with their State establishment of religion, which they did not ban, different States had State religions, intended it to go far more. They just did not want one national religion. They believed in aggressive promotion of religious values. We are not asking that anymore. In America, we are down to saying, can we not wear a T-shirt; can we not put a Bible on our desk; can we not talk to other people about our religious faiths? This is how far we have gone in America. This is the least we can do. Not the most we can do. It is the least we can do for our children in our schools is to allow them free exercise of religion. We are not trying to impose anything here. Now we have the reverse. The minority is imposing on the majority.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for his leadership and persistence on this issue in pushing us to get a House vote and to give us at least the opportunity to attempt to pass this constitutional amendment. I could not take any more of the examples. My outrage was rising. It is inconceivable that even a moment of silence is illegal because people might be thinking about prayer. The danger in our society, if we keep backing away from this moral premise, is if we ever do get a moment of silence, the kids will be thinking about stock market reports instead of a prayer. And is that really going to be better for America if we lose this idea that there is a power higher than us? I find it extremely offensive that in class, and I agree with the gentleman's allusion to this. It is not clear where the law exactly is on a lot of this. In fact, school districts have been intimidated for fear of lawsuits and, probably because of that, have gone farther than they need to go. But currently in America we are in a situation where a teacher probably could talk about Native American religions but, boy, she better be careful if she mentions Jesus Christ. A teacher could probably post on the wall, Desiderata was big back when we were in college, to God, whoever he may be but, boy, if they put the 23rd Psalm up there or the 10 Commandants, that might poison these poor little kids. It is one thing if they have a book of astrology or magic spells on a desk, but what if it is a Bible? Woe be to that teacher, because these kids might pick up something that has a moral base. Now if the kids in the hall want to talk to other kids about marijuana or how that works, or crack or how that works, as long as they are not selling drugs, they can talk about drugs all day. But if they want to talk to another child about eternal salvation, they will probably go down to that principal's office, may even, as a friend of my son's did, get expelled from school for raising the question. Not aggressively pushing it, for raising the question of eternal salvation because it could make somebody feel bad. You can wear a Black Sabbath T-shirt, a mockery of the Sabbath and all this kind of thing, but if you wear a religious T-shirt, you might be evangelizing. Not that all this crappy rock music stuff is evangelizing or the drug hints or the hats that you can find in many stores in the mall with the marijuana weed on it or other types of drugs, that is not evangelizing. But, boy, if you have any religion on your T-shirts or symbols that could make other kids feel slightly intimidated, you can be reprimanded. What are we coming to? I don't understand how we have gotten in this situation in the country. It is why so many people are despairing. It is why we have to take the extraordinary step that the Founding Fathers have given us to go to a constitutional amendment. Quite frankly, we can pass laws here in Congress, and the courts do not seem to care. If we just pass laws without amending the Constitution, we are totally at their mercy to continue this what I believe is nonsense in these rulings.

Mr. SOUDER. It is important to know these were not additions after the Republicans took over Congress in 1994. They have been here under Republicans, they have been here under Democrats, because we have a unified tradition in America that this is our cultural heritage, it is our spiritual heritage, it is the foundation our country is built on.

Mr. SOUDER. Perhaps my colleague had not heard, we cannot refer to him as Santa Claus. It is just Claus. ``Santa'' is, of course, ``saint'' in Spanish, so we really should not say that. And I am waiting for it to be called Patrick's Day rather than St. Patrick's Day. It has a little bit of religious overtones. We have to be so careful in our society anymore. Mr. Chairman, at the end of this particular special order, I would like to insert into the Record an article. It is actually a book review in this week's Weekly Standard magazine by Richard Neuhaus, one of the tremendous Christian writers in this country who wrote ``Religion in the Public Square.'' He has a review of John Noonan's new book ``The Luster of Our Country, the American Experience of Religious Freedom.'' I would like to insert this review into the Record at the end of this special order. He makes two points in this review that, in fact, one of the reasons some people want to suppress religious freedom and free exercise is that, in fact, it is a danger to the State; that there have been a number of efforts in this country rooted in religious freedom, the abolition of slavery, the war against polygamy, the prohibition of alcohol, and the civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King, that really forced changes in our political system. Furthermore, he points out in this book, he has whole chapters to four contrasting case studies. The French Revolution's affirmation and betrayal of the American idea of religious freedom; the American imposition of the idea on a defeated Japan; Russia's current and deeply flawed efforts to incorporate the idea; and the American influence in the Second Vatican Council's teaching on religious liberty. In other words, in societies where they have not followed our pattern of religious freedom, they have developed problems. And because we allowed it, religious freedom, in fact, drove the system and changed the system. One other thing that I would like to insert into the Record also following this article is a cover story in this week's U.S. News about James Dobson. This article is not directly on this subject but touches on some of the problems of this country that are occurring because of the lack of responsiveness. I know the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) has been in some of these meetings, as well as our friend, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Bob Schaffer) in the chair. We have some differences as to how to approach this, but what we understand is that Dr. James Dobson has been a spokesman and has been a mentor to many of us in his family issues and how he has done this, and he is speaking for a lot of our supporters and millions of people in America when he says that he is frustrated and he is frustrated with the types of thing that the gentleman from Oklahoma has been talking about tonight and I have been talking about when he says in here, and he is speaking for many people when he said that he cares about the moral tone of the Nation. ``I care about right and wrong. I have very deep convictions about absolute truth.'' And he says, had he stayed simply on family themes, he could have moved with ease through all denominations and in both political parties. But he has started to speak out because he is concerned about the general thrust and direction of our society that causes some heartburn in our party, causes some heartburn in Members of Congress, such as the gentleman from Oklahoma and myself. At the same time, we understand why this article says ``a righteous indignation,'' because that is what many people in America feel right now. They do not understand what in the world is wrong with the government. The examples that my colleague has given defy common sense.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Oklahoma is once again to be commended for his leadership on this issue. There is no doubt that the number one fundamental problem in this country is the breakdown of character, the breakdown of the value system, the principled foundations of this country and the resultant breakdown partly, directly, the two things go in tandem, of families as well. The number one outgrowth that we are seeing in this country is the problem of drug abuse: drugs of all types, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, tobacco, but in particular what we have been focusing on is this explosion among our youth of the narcotics, of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, crack, methamphetamines and other artificial stimulants. Tonight we are going to spend some time discussing this issue. It is a relatively historic night. Tomorrow we are going to have our first pieces of legislation, what will be a comprehensive multi-week, hopefully multi-month, year and up to three years extended start of a battle on drugs. We have done piecemeal legislation over the last few years but we have not had the concentrated effort that we will see starting as of tomorrow. We have a needles bill in front of us tomorrow to ban the use of giving free needles to heroin addicts with taxpayer dollars. We have in the higher education bill an amendment relating to taking back student loans if students abuse drugs while they are on a government subsidized loan requiring them to go into treatment programs, and I have a second amendment on drug testing. It is the start. We are also having announcement of a major initiative and Republican effort later this week. The number one person behind this is our Speaker. Speaker Newt Gingrich is committed to having an all-fronts war. I am going to yield now to my friend the gentleman from Florida who has been a leader in this. Many of us have been involved in this, not just now but for many years. Congressman Mica and myself both were staffers before we became Members of Congress. He was elected in the class before I was, but he was also on the hill before I was working over as Senate chief of staff. I also worked in the House and Senate before I got elected to Congress. Both of us have had experience in working with drug legislation before we were elected to Congress. This is not a new issue. These things go in tides. Right now we are at a high tide level again and we need to up our efforts. He is to be commended for his leadership. I now yield to the gentleman from Florida to fill us in on some of the battles that he has been watching, some of the background, and particularly a lot of what has happened in Orlando and Florida which has been at the epicenter of it, kind of backed off, and now you have another wave, which is exactly what is happening in this country.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida once again for his leadership and for his compassion and heart for those who have been abused, shot, lives wrecked and ruined by the terrible scourge of drugs in this country, and it has been a consistent, complete support. One of the things I want to do, too, is a supplement to what the gentleman from Florida has done, is to lay out a little bit what is happening here in the past and where we are headed and what we have been doing as we head into this major effort for the Members who are sitting in their office doing mail, for the dedicated C-Span junkies, to those who just will look through the Record later. Because some may say, where did the issue come from? Why all of a sudden is Speaker Newt Gingrich talking about drugs? Where did this pop in? Did they do some kind of poll? People are going to say, well, we have not seen what is all this action. I want to establish that there are a number of logical things that have led to the development of this big push you are going to see. Too often, we have approached the drug issue as we approached the Vietnam war, and that is we devote just enough resources to not quite win, and so we keep falling further and further behind in a war we can ill afford to lose. What has happened here is that the grassroots, every one of us, know, and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) detailed what we heard in central Florida. We are hearing from prosecutors, we are hearing from sheriffs, we are hearing from all sorts of law enforcement officials that 70 to 85 percent of all crime in every jurisdiction has some relationship to drug and alcohol. They are either stealing to fund a habit, they are high on the drugs or alcohol, and that leads to 70 to 85 percent of all crime. Child abuse, spouse abuse, not just robbery, rape, pillaging, automobile wrecks when it is reckless driving; all of these types of things have as its source one common problem. The average person knows this, the communities know this, but it has been very difficult to tackle this on a national level. General McCaffrey argues that it is a cancer; many of us argue that it is a war. It is both a cancer and a war. That means that we will work to eliminate it as much as possible, but quite frankly, as long as there is sin, we are likely to have some drug abuse there. It is a question of how we are going to control it. It is also a war. People are dying on the streets of America, people are dying around this world fighting this drug war. This is a dinner table issue. One of the criteria that the Speaker looks for when we are going to have a major focus is, is this what people talk about at their dinner table? Is this what parents are concerned about at night when their kids are not there? Is this what parents are concerned about in the schools? Is this something that actually resonates with the people as opposed to being kind of an inside-the-Beltway Washington concern or a concern of a special interest that is lobbying because they have lots of funds, or of some other reason in the ways we deal with legislation? This is what strikes at the hearts and homes of American people, and that is why he is leading. Mr. Speaker, it did not just come out of the blue. If we have been following this carefully, it has been kind of strange. Why did former Senator Bob Dole, our Presidential contender, talk about drugs during the campaign? It did not light a fire, it was not a hot media issue, but he was out there talking about it. So was the Speaker. People thought, this is kind of unusual. Why are they talking about drugs? Everybody in Washington is talking about the budget, and they are talking about taxes and so on. These people were talking about this early. One of the things is when we took over Congress, the figures that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) was looking at were highlighted by then Congressman Bill Zeliff, who headed our subcommittee, and he got the ear of our Presidential candidate, Bob Dole, and our Speaker and said, look, there is a huge problem here. We need to start concentrating on this. This is not something that we came up with last week; this is something that our committee, I am not sure whether we have had 30 or 40 hearings in the Committee on National Security and Justice Oversight Committee, which, in addition to having jurisdiction over the State and defense and the Justice Department, also has the drug czar legislation that moves through it and some very broad jurisdiction, and we have been concentrating on this. In addition, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), who is the senior Republican on the former Select Committee on Narcotics, has been focusing on the international issue. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) has been focusing on judiciary-related issues in his Subcommittee on Crime. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) has been a leader in community efforts. It is not as though we have been silent. It is that we have not gotten a lot of news media coverage. There is a difference. For example, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) and I are on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight where we have been doing the investigations into the kind of ``gate'' of the week of the administration, whether it is Filegate or Whitewatergate or whatever, Greg Livingstonegate I guess, whatever the variation is, and people say, is that all you guys do? We have done less on that than we have done on drugs. But drugs is not quite as sexy to put on the evening news as talking about some kind of finance scandal. It is not that I am concerned and humiliated about the influence of the Federal Government on possible illegal influence of foreign contributions and campaign finance, but the fact is we work on a lot of other issues, too, but they do not necessarily hit on the front page. We have had many oversight hearings; we have been in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan; we have been down in Florida multiple times and California multiple times and Arizona, up in New England; we have been around the country in Plano, Texas, where we had kids die of heroin overdoses in the district of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), just like they have done in Orlando. I have been to South America three times now in the last 3 years, where there is an actual war going on. We have been over in Asia and the Middle East trying to meet with foreign countries where the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs are coming in. We have had hearings on Hollywood and the movies and their impact on the culture. We have had hearings on the music industry and the impact on the culture and what we can do related to that. This is not something we invented yesterday. This is something we have been working on almost from the month we took over Congress. Everybody was focused on the Contract With America, but, in fact, Congressman Zeliff and this subcommittee were starting on the drug issue not very many days after we got here, and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) and I know that because both of us are on the subcommittee, and we were up and running. Furthermore, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) had been objecting for years that the Democratic leadership of that subcommittee had not been focusing on it, so when we got in control, we started to move on this issue. Now, what we heard in these hearings were from young people who talked, and I remember one at the Orlando hearing where a young man was there with his dad. It was a tough day for them because they were there together and going public, and his dad was fairly well-known. But he said how he started with marijuana and how he saw that his parents did not realize it, and then he started moving to harder drugs, and he started stealing, and his dad, as he said, really did not want to confront his son, did not really understand all of that, wishes now that he had been more involved. His son did not understand why his father did not get involved. They saw his grades dropping. It was very touching. Every young person we have heard from, whether it is in Texas, whether it is in California, whether it is in Florida, say, I started with marijuana, and then I moved to cocaine. I robbed to support my habit. My grades went down, my life was wrecked, and then I was spared. And we looked at this type of thing. We heard from one lady in Texas who talked about how her husband would get high on cocaine; how she and her daughter were hiding out because they knew he was going to kill them if the drug habit did not kill him first. She was living in terror, and what are we going to do about this? That is what we have heard about it. We have heard how the administration's budget cuts have had an inverse effect. When they cut the interdiction efforts, when they cut the source country efforts, what we saw was supply go up, driving price down, and for competitive purposes, the purity and the potency of the marijuana and cocaine and heroin we have on our street is far greater. It is not like the 1960s and 1970s. The marijuana is more like the hard drugs of those eras, and the hard drugs are fatal today. We had signals out of the administration, which the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) has delineated very well, that we have kids' use going up. Even though we see in some adult sectors cocaine usage and others going down, the terrible news is it is soaring among kids. I want to talk briefly about the international problem. The cocaine comes from basically three places in the world. We can chase it all over America and all over the world, but there is three countries, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, where the stuff comes from. And thanks to the policies in Bolivia and Peru, it has mostly now shifted to Colombia. Initially the coca leaves were grown in Peru and Bolivia, and then Peru and Colombia were doing the transfer in the making cocaine, and the Colombia was the cartels. And now most has gone to Colombia, and it is a narcoterrorism threatening the very democracy and the stability of the nation of Colombia.

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

Mr. SOUDER. A law, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. SOUDER. I would like to make some additional comments on Colombia. We were just down there again this past week as we went down to the Summit for Americas. I had an amendment that passed and was held in conference committee that three Blackhawk helicopters were supposed to be sent to Colombia. If this administration had followed the law, those Blackhawk helicopters would be down there and they would be able to get in the areas and eradicate the heroin. They cannot get up there with the Hueys. They do not get up to that altitude. Furthermore, there is a shooting war where people are dying in Colombia, while we stand here fiddling in Washington trying to decide what to do, while we have grounded because of mechanical failure every Huey helicopter that they have. They have nothing with which to fight. They have lost 40 percent of Colombia, the effective control of the rural countryside. For those who do not understand the significance of this, understand that we have troops in Haiti. We have troops in Bosnia. The national interest is a little unclear, even in the Middle East, where we are spending $1.5 billion about every nine months right now, where the gentleman from Florida and I just visited last fall and heard skepticism from our own armed forces leaders that we need to be at that level given the direct threat there. And even arguing that the Middle East has multiple reasons of our national interest, including our friendship with Israel, our friendships with the potentially threatened Arab States and the oil supply, let us look at Colombia. If it is supplying the cocaine and heroin to this country where people are dying in my hometown of Fort Wayne and throughout northeastern Indiana and all over America, the drugs alone is enough to have national interest be a priority there. But it is more than just that. Along the Panamanian border they have lost effective control of that. The drug dealers and control has spread into that section of Panama, the Darien area. We are about to abandon Panama. I am very concerned that not only are we going to pull out militarily, but that our efforts to get an antinarcotics center there could be kiboshed. That is extremely critical, as we just heard earlier from Congressman Mica about the shootdown policy. They need the AWACS. If we send those AWACS up to the United States and they have an hour-and-a-half transit time to get down there, we are going to dramatically reduce our airtime for surveillance, and we are going to have even more drugs at cheaper prices on our streets, threatening our kids and families. We need to make sure we have at least an antinarcotics center in Panama as we leave. Because Colombian narcotics drug lords are prepared to move in through Panama. On the other side they control about half the Venezuelan border where the jungle is. And control, in a guerrilla war they do not have to have forts and troops and lines. Particularly in the jungle they can move around. We have to have at least four times the effective troops and an operative military defending ground or we in effect lose control because they get to pick and choose where they want to fight. We have lost half the Venezuelan border. It is not the Middle East that is our number one supplier of oil, it is Venezuela. Seventeen percent of our oil comes from Venezuela. In oil by-products, Colombia is our number one supplier. Talk about energy threat, the energy threat is in Colombia. It is not in the Middle East. The Canal and the trade threat is in Panama, and we have all the drugs. And what is our response? We will not send them the three helicopters that we were requiring them to send by law, and they are saying, well, they need 20 helicopters. You know what, three is better than zero. If we need to send them three more, we would not be arguing, maybe six, if we had sent them the three last year, then we could get them the three more this year. Frankly, they need the Blackhawks and more Huey IIs. The alternative is American troops. Here we have a country, Colombia, where they are willing to fight and die partly because of our consumption here in America. Thousands and thousands of police officers, and we were just down there in Colombia and we visited a hospital, and we visited a number of Colombian national police who have been shot down trying to eradicate the cocaine so that it does not hit our streets. And what is our reaction? We will not give them the weapons with which to do it. Apparently we are not going to do it until we have to send troops down there. This hat belonged to Colonel Gallego, the head of the DANTE, the antinarcotics subforce of the Colombian National Police. General Serrano and Colonel Gallego signed this for me. If anybody saw ``Clear and Present Danger,'' it was a fictionalized account. The former ambassador who went with us on one of the trips, I asked him if it was an accurate movie and he said, ``Not completely. I died in the movie.'' It is a pretty accurate picture of the fight they are facing in Colombia. Colonel Gallego is the man who took down Pablo Escobar of the famous Medellin Cartel. He is known as the lab buster. He has a $3.5 million price on his head. General Serrano has an $8 million price on his head. They want him dead. These people, there is no blood on this hat, but there are thousands of police officers and military forces who have died in Colombia fighting our battle. I do not want to have American men and women. I want to help the people who are fighting the war so that they at least have a fighting chance to win and drive back the narcotics, the FARC and others. I do not know that they will, but we ought to at least give them the chance. We are the ones with our national security interest directly threatened here. I want to move on to a couple of other issues here in the last remaining minutes. I touched some on foreign policy, but I want to say that we are also approaching this comprehensively and domestically in treatment. It is clear that unless we can get the hard core addicts, and every hard core addict we get off, we have a dramatic reduction in the abuse of heroin and cocaine in particular. Now we also know that, let us just say, that treatment programs are very erratic in their effectiveness. There are different measures to use. Obviously there is going to be a high recidivism rate, and obviously if people at least abuse it less than before, that is some kind of progress. But there are a couple of basic principles here and we will be putting these in as we move through the treatment question. If we do not do drug testing, how do we know in fact if the treatment program worked? One of the basic principles is that we ought to have measurements in treatment programs and we ought to have monitoring. It is only the most kindhearted and compassionate thing we can do for an abuser, and that is hold them accountable for their behavior. Do not let them fall back in, particularly after we use taxpayers' dollars to try to get them out. Let us monitor and follow through. It is absurd to give out free needles to heroin addicts. They argue that, well, they will be clean. They will not get AIDS. They will just die of drug overdose. They will not die of AIDS and they will not spread it. This would be the equivalent of going into the American schools and saying these kids are going to smoke anyway, why not give them low-tar cigarettes paid for by taxpayer dollars? Why would we use taxpayers' dollars to sustain somebody in a habit that is going to kill them, destroy them, wreck their families? If they are a dad or a mom, it is abandonment of their children, and we are going to give them clean needles? It is absurd. We should have gone further than banning direct government money. We should have gotten the fungible money where it is transferred from one place to another. Furthermore, we should be looking into people like George Soras who is funding a lot of these programs and also funding the medicinal marijuana, the back-door legalization of marijuana. There are legitimate cases, but they are few and far between. Anybody who watched the special that focused on a lot of these kind of drug clubs for the medicinal uses of marijuana in California, it is appalling. Sit around and pass the pot. It is just like in the 1960s on the college campuses, only this time it is under legitimate government approval funded by George Soras and two friends in State after State. There are basically three people with one person at their head funding this, and we need to look into that question. We need to also look at prevention programs. A lot of the drug-free school money, while well-intentioned, has been frittered away. We need to find particularly effective programs for those most at risk. A lot of times it seems that these programs are mostly aimed at kids who are not really high risk. We have to figure out those kids who are most at risk and we need to try to get them off. I remember at one school where I went around the district and talked through these issues with high school kids at about 17 high schools in my congressional district in northeast Indiana, and one student came up and said that he had just gone clean the day before because his friend had gotten high and committed suicide. And he said, ``I don't want to do that.'' He said, ``I'm scared. I hope I can get off.'' And he said, ``I wish my friend was still here.'' When are we going to try to identify these high-risk kids and try to help them, as opposed to sometimes it seems we are more concerned about giving out little rulers or having a skit than actually tackling the very hard cases of the prevention. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) was a leader in passing legislation which we now have, in northeast Indiana almost every county now has a community-based group that is trying to pull the different organizations together. Sometimes schools feel like there are 23 different groups hitting them up to try to do anti-drug programs. We need community-wide organized efforts and we are trying to stimulate some of that through the Portman bill. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon) has an amendment that we have in the Higher Education Act that says that if students want a subsidized student loan, then they have an obligation to stay clean. If they do not stay clean for one year, the first time they are suspended from their student loan and they have to go into treatment. And I want to offer tomorrow an amendment that also says that drug testing be included to make sure they are clean for two years, then they can get reinstated. The second offense, they are off for two years. Definitely, three strikes and they are out. We do not want to have high-risk people not have the opportunity to get an education. Self-esteem and education are critical to keeping them off of drugs. But at the same time, taxpayers should not have to fund behavior that is contrary to the law. There needs to be a give-and-take with this, and we want to encourage people to get clean. The best thing we can do for them, the college education is a waste of money if they are on drugs. We have to get them clean. If they sold, it is a suspension of two years for first offense and indefinitely for second offense. So this will be up tomorrow. The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) who has been a leader in the needles issue, along with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) will be working with that. We will work aggressively on prevention and treatment. Let me reiterate, the difference that is seen here is a concentrated effort, not a dribbling of a bill here and a bill there. I am willing to criticize the Speaker when I have disagreements, and I want to make sure I praise him when I think he has taken the commendable leadership in this, as has the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) along with his cochairs, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) with the anti-drug task force. I think we are going to see a difference. Mr. Speaker, we need this administration to join with us. This needs to be a bipartisan effort. This cannot be divided and have a bunch of people on the other side posturing with this. This needs to be a joint effort, a drumbeat from every source saying this is unacceptable. As a goal we ought to say by the Year 2000 we are going to have a 50 percent reduction, and the President of the United States and others should join with us and say we are going to have a 50 percent reduction. A 50 percent reduction in two years sounds like a lot, but that would only take us to the place where we were when this President took office. Mr. Speaker, the least he could do is, when he leaves, get it back to the level of when he came. Then we can start to get rid of the drug abuse that we had which was already there when he got here. We need his help so that when he exits, we are at least back to the level that it was when he came. He owes that to the American people, and hopefully we can work together with that.