Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to again point out that this is not something new. Interesting historical footnote: My first job here in Washington was Republican staff director of the Children Family Committee in Washington, and when the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], who had been involved in Illinois with human services issues like this, came and we worked together there, we were already focusing on alcohol abuse, on crack babies being abandoned in hospitals. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] who was a chief of staff here in Washington worked with a lot in drafting the original antidrug legislation through the 1980's in the U.S. Senate. This has been a longtime commitment, and we cannot back off as Americans. And what is so frustrating when we hear these stories like in Switzerland is do we not learn anything? When you were saying that behavior was in effect being rewarded, what one thing we have learned over and over in our country, and I say this as somebody who has a German background and partly Swiss and who always looked at the Swiss as an international model. To hear this type of thing is so disturbing. We have seen it with gangs. If you say you are going to get such and such, what you get is more kids joining gangs to get the things. If you give benefits to things, people come and abuse it more. You do not get them off. And I hope you will share more on some of those articles, but this is very disturbing that a country that has been held up as an example and held up in my family and our heritage and in our region and also in the whole world, I think this is really important that American companies help put the pressure on this, too, because it is a disturbing international trend, and I would hope that they can learn from some of our experiences here.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is inconceivable to me that they do not drug test pilots. That is literally flying blind. Sometimes ignorance is not bliss. In other words, it is like we do not want to know whether they are abusing drugs, and then if you see a society already having these trends, I would think it would be more of a reason to drug test, not less of a reason.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to associate myself with the chairman's remarks and to congratulate him on his leadership in the committee. Last fall when the National Security Committee was winding up a 2-year effort, there was some concern whether or not this was just a political effort. In fact, we had been working on this from the time we came in to control Congress because when we saw the facts of the results on the American streets and neighborhoods and families, we backed off of our commitment against drug interdiction, we were alarmed. We spent 2 years traveling across America, traveling down to foreign nations and confronting the leaders with the fact that most of those drugs were coming across the Mexican border, being produced in the coca leaves of Peru and Bolivia, processed in the labs of Colombia, and we confronted them. We confronted the television and the movie industry in Hollywood and said and challenged them with what they were producing and what impact they were having in our home communities. We went around the country in every region of the country looking and hearing stories, tragic stories of young children, of families being destroyed, of women being intimidated by husbands who had been beating them. As one poor lady said in Arizona, in John Shadegg's district, she said she hated to say this but she hoped that the drugs killed her husband before he killed her because he had been beating her and her daughter, she was hiding and moving from shelter to shelter because of what had happened with drugs, all of which started with marijuana. The myth that marijuana is not dangerous, all these people said, well, we started with marijuana, we heard from kids, oh, we thought marijuana was good, but then we wanted to get higher. We heard it from gangs, from women who were being beaten, from law enforcement officials, from school administrators. We heard it across the board. There was a clear linkage. There is a dispute as to whether this is a war or a cancer. It is in fact both. It is a war in the sense it is coming at us. People are making money, they are destroying and undermining the fabric of our country. It is also a cancer eating away at our soul internally, person by person, as we relax our standards and say well, we do not want to judge other people's behavior and so on. But that behavior has a direct impact on all of our lives. We had a case in Fort Wayne just recently where a high school student who was high on cocaine and alcohol flipped their vehicle, hit a senior citizen, then flipped over the median on the interstate and hit two more cars, two people dead, four people injured if I recall correctly. And it was a series we have had of multiple accidents with people on drugs. If I cannot drive on a road, if my wife cannot drive on a road without fearing that somebody is high on drugs or alcohol endangering our lives, what is freedom? If my son cannot go to school, if my daughter cannot go to college, if they are not safe when they go out on the roads at night, if they are not safe when they go shopping, if the gang wars that we have in our district, the least we have heard is 70 percent, the highest is 85 percent of all crime of every type is drug and alcohol-related. These are tragic statistics. We cannot say we are worried about crime but oh, not about marijuana. It is not a question of well, alcohol is legal. Quite frankly, if we had the statistics today and looked at alcohol, we would not legalize it. It is not a justification to legalize marijuana. Furthermore, if we are increasingly enforcing anything on zero tolerance in the schools, it is illegal for minors to have alcohol as well and we should not use that as an excuse to back off what is true. That is why it is so tragic about what has happened in Arizona and California with this false siren of medicinal use of marijuana. If there is a component in marijuana that can relieve pain, there are multiple other ways that you can do that without having the dangerous effects of marijuana. It was a false bill of goods sold by people with a vested interest in destroying our laws against drugs, and we need to stand up to that. I am also concerned as we watch what happened there and to hear of our chairman's efforts in Switzerland to speak out and the things he has brought here tonight and will continue to bring out, it is very disturbing to see heroin needles being distributed, the massive level of experimentation they have been doing. That the United Nations would be involved in any way in this calls into question a lot of the judgments that many of us have anyway about how the U.N. Health Organization works. The fact is that we have been through this. This is not new. My friend, John Shadegg, has this quote, I cannot remember the original person that had the quote, that history may not repeat itself but it rhymes, and that is often the problem that we are facing here. It may not be exactly the same thing but we can see these repetitive patterns. It is as if sometimes when you drive in on the interstate in the morning, if you see somebody who has run out of gas in a tunnel, you say, ``Boy, I feel sorry for that person,'' because maybe they do not know all the information. But when you do it a second time, when you start to see the repetitive patterns, you go, do you not ever learn from history? Are there not things that are triggers and say, ``We've been there, we've done that, we don't need to do that again''? You give heroin needles away, heroin abuse goes up. You have these different programs that are out there that supposedly are getting people off, and instead you are getting people more addicted and you are expanding it. We have to look to the past history of this and, that is, the things that work are a combination of different variables. One is, we have to keep the pressure on the interdiction. Even if we cannot stop all the drugs coming across the Mexican border, which we cannot, and even if we cannot stop all the drugs that are coming from Colombia to Mexico because the coasts are too long, we can put the pressure on and reverse a problem that has been happening in Fort Wayne and all over America and, that is, the price was dropping, the purity was increasing, and that was meaning the street price was easier for the kids to get, easier for adults to get, more risk to the society, and it was more potent drugs. By putting the pressure on, we not only force the pricing structure to change in this country and the purity structure and the watering down by making it more difficult for them to get their prices on the street, but we also put pressure as we heard in Peru and other places that they were starting to have the breakthroughs after the interdiction pressure went up, after President Fujimori instituted his shootdown policy if planes did not respond because the campesinos were finding that, hey, the dealers did not want to take a profit hit so they were paying them less. And all of a sudden alternative crops to coca leaves look more attractive if your pricing structure is different. So interdiction has to be a critical component. But so does education and prevention. We need to be looking just like we look at what interdiction programs are working and not working, we need to look at does this work, does this not work? What can we target in the middle schools, clearly the place where so many kids are at risk and how can we focus in on that? How can we do better prevention programs to get addicts off and focus on that? Because a lot of these things have such high recidivism rates, it is a question of how they are working but it does not mean we should not work at treatment. Furthermore, and we all know this, ultimately in a free society there is personal responsibility. Ultimately people have to take more and more responsibility for their own lives. Families need to be engaged. Churches need to be engaged. Individual teachers and others who can be an influence on kids where they may not have the family structure or have the means or anybody taking them to a church. As this country, we need to change this, because it is tearing us at the core like a cancer and it is a war coming at us more dangerous than any other war as the chairman clearly demonstrated in his statistics. We cannot say, ``Oh, I'm bored with this drug problem, I've heard this before, can't you talk about something else?'' It is not going to go away. It is going to be there. It is a constant battle because evil will be there. The struggles that everybody goes through, the temptation to try to cop out of your problems by getting high is a human temptation. But this is an insidious one. It is not a freedom of yourself to practice something. It is a danger that when you smoke pot, when you take heroin, when you take cocaine, when you get drunk, you endanger other people. I thank the chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to reinforce that point as we look at the heroin problem and what can become a rogue nation when one nation starts to legalize heroin and how it can move. I know you have been in Asia and I was in Thailand as well, and in the Golden Triangle area much of the heroin goes through. There is a concern, for example, in our agencies over there that as most likely normalization occurs with Vietnam, that the heroin could move down and move out of there. Would it not be ironic with some of our slowdown in working with Vietnam, that we are concerned about how tourism might bring drugs in, but if we see these types of things happening in countries like Switzerland, we have to look at our relationships of how it goes over and comes back. This is a critical international issue. Nigeria has turned into a rogue agency that I hear a lot about, and I appeal to a lot of my fellow Hoosiers. As I said, I am not Swiss bashing, I am part Swiss. Mostly German, part Swiss. In my district, Bern, for example, where I annually go for Swiss days, we have a lot of Anabaptists who are predominantly of Swiss and German background. Here is something that you can do. Contact these companies. Ciba- Geigy is a very big company. We need to keep the pressure on some of these big companies. None of us can be accused of not keeping the pressure on here in America. We have an international stake in this, too. I commend the gentleman and want to reinforce contacting these different companies. In Indiana, ABB is a direct company with involvement in Indiana. We just need to keep the pressure on. They are not necessarily hostile at this point, but we need to move on it.

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, we have an important vote coming up today on decertification of Mexico, and this is not a battle over whether we are friends or not friends. Like it or not in Mexico and like it or not in America, we are going to have to work together like close friends have to work together, and part of working together is trying to address joint problems. There is a feeling sometimes that we are trying, as Big Brother, to force our will on Mexico without reducing our own demand. We are working aggressively to reduce our demand. In America we have drug dogs in our schools, we are building more prisons then we ever dreamed we needed to, we have upped our treatment and our prevention budgets by 50 percent. But the reason we are doing this is an example front-page headline in Ft. Wayne last week: ``I-69 Crash Linked To Cocaine And Pot.'' A youngster on cocaine and marijuana flipped his car, landed on a pickup driven by another young person, which then landed on a car driven by another person, which forced it into another vehicle and veered into the median, which then hit a pile up into a sixth vehicle. Because we are being flooded with cocaine coming in from Mexico we have to take strong steps.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is important in the decertification process that we not only look toward the future but, indeed, that whole process has to look somewhat toward the past as well, not only on what Mexico has been doing but acknowledging in the Hastert amendment some things that we did not do. We cut back our interdiction funding, we cut back our source country funding, so we acknowledge that we have made some mistakes in our country, too. But the evidence and the facts are staring us straight in the face. If indeed we are going to have a decertification process, if the drugs coming into our country increase, if up to 90 percent of the police forces in Tijuana and Baja California are corrupt, so corrupt that we have pulled our DEA back; if we have questions about the top leadership of the country, I mean one of the things even that the administration passed out said that the defense department and the national police in Mexico cooperated more together last year. Yes, they moved a guy who was on the payroll of the cartel from the defense department over to the drug czar, and they cooperated in giving the information to the drug dealers. I personally believe that President Zedillo and his top staff are committed to changing their Nation. He understands the terrorist threat of the narcotraffickers there. But we have to make this decision today based on the facts that are in front of us, and the facts that are in front of us say a 90-day delay is helpful, they have more time to do that; we are not putting the sanctions in effect with the decertification in the Hastert amendment. I support that in the sense of giving them additional time. When I met with President Zedillo, along with the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert] and Senator Coverdell, he expressed his concern about his son being approached by drug dealers in Mexico and what was happening to his country. I am concerned about my sons being approached at school as well. I am concerned about my daughter in college. We cannot, in Fort Wayne, IN or anywhere else in this country, we cannot get enough drug dogs, we cannot get enough prisons, we cannot do enough in prevention programs and treatment programs if the supply keeps pouring in the way it is. We have to work in partnership with our friends in the south. We need maritime agreements, we need DEA agreements, we need extradition agreements, and then they do not have to fear decertification.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it appears that once again the President has broken his promise to the American people. As you may recall, President Clinton once promised us the most ethical administration in history. When He signed the Lobbying Disclosure Act during the last Congress, the President also spoke of a renewed tradition in Washington that would mirror President Jackson's famous words, ``Equal opportunity for all; special privileges for none.'' Further, he said that he would abide by the law and uphold section 21(b) of this Act. As you know, section 21(b) forbids anyone who had ever represented another country in trade negotiations with the United States to serve as the U.S. Trade Representative or Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. Well, yesterday the House was faced with its first test of section 21(b) as we considered the President's request for a waiver of the section for Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky--someone who has represented Canada in trade negotiations with our country in the past--as the United States Trade Representative. This Chamber followed the Senate in approving the waiver. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to oppose this measure at the time. Here are the President's own words on his so-called commitment to section 21(b) of the Lobbying Disclosure Act: Because as a policy matter I agree with the goal of ensuring the undivided loyalty of our representatives in trade negotiations, I intend, as a matter of practice, to act in accordance with this provision. While I do not question Ambassador Barshefsky's ability to serve as the U.S. Trade Representative, and I understand her to be very capable and well-suited for this position, this matter is not about that. The President's appointment of Ambassador Barshefsky shows that he has chosen yet again not to uphold his promise to the American people. Mr. Speaker, waiving the law when it is convenient for him is certainly not the way for the President to win the American people's trust or to build a tradition of ``no special privileges.'' Once again, the President's actions do not match his rhetoric.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I want to first say, as the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf] said, that I believe there is a role for international family planning, and as we look around the world we can see that need. I strongly have concerns about the fungibility and the maneuverability of funds not only directly but indirectly from fund- raising concerns on abortion, and I have a deep heartfelt concern that American dollars should not be used to kill innocent little children around the world. But also this bill is based on a false premise, and those Members and the general public who are still trying to make up their minds on this bill should realize that Congress has been very generous to international population programs. Let us get some of the facts straight. The amount the administration already has to spend in fiscal year 1997 in international population programs, even if this resolution does not pass, is over $400 million. Not $1 million, not $10 million, not $100 million, not $200 million, over $400 million. This is about 25 percent of the entire U.S. budget for developmental assistance to poor countries around the world. It is substantially more than the $300 million we spend on child survival programs which pay for vaccinations and medicines and save hundreds of thousands of children from dying from easily treatable diseases. The money we spend on international population control is about twice as much as the $200 million we spend on assistance for narcotics control. It is about 4 times the amount we spend for microcredit programs, which empower poor people, mostly women, by allowing them to start small businesses. In this $400 million for population control is literally hundreds of times more than we contribute to other urgent needs such as the U.N. Fund for Torture Victims. Yet the administration still tries to make us think that population programs are underfunded. They do this by constantly pointing to the fact that under the funding compromise adopted last year, only about $92 million of the fiscal year 1997 population funding can be spent in this fiscal year beginning in July. But they refuse to talk about the additional $284 million in the carryover funds from fiscal year 1996 which is still available in fiscal year 1997, and they somehow forget to mention the additional $43 million Congress has appropriated for contributions to the U.N. Population Fund. Mr. Chairman, this is a total of $420 million. If we reject this resolution, the total stays at $420 million. Population programs will still have one of their best years in history. Not only is a no vote on the Clinton resolution the right vote for those who respect life, it is also the only vote consistent with fiscal responsibility and a balance of priorities and how we approach international funding.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to ask the gentleman from Wisconsin, to draw out a point here, and that is that people who have followed this debate understand this, and I assume that it has been touched on and we have talked around it here, but the reason there is a surplus is because there are more people paying in now, but we are headed to a point down the road here where there is not going to be enough money and we will have a big shortfall.

Mr. SOUDER. In addition, and this is really good straight talk about the budget because these issues get so confusing, and from time to time we need to have some of this kind of stuff because part of the goal of politicians often is to confuse matters, to obscure what is underneath, and I think this has been very good straight talk because in addition to the interest rate, because to some degree we have had a somewhat stable interest rate even with this deficit which has confused matters. But there is another way to do it too, and that is to sell off your country because of your trade imbalances because we have partly disguised and kept interest rates down by bringing in foreign money through trade imbalances and then we start selling in the Midwest and Indiana and Wisconsin. These are huge issues about companies being taken over, about farm land being taken over because we have not been in order and responsible in our own country and refuse to deal with our deficit. We have become foreign dependent, which is not where we want to be as a nation. So it not only entails our interest rate, it entails a lot of other issues that are relative to the budget and very disconcerting. And you raised a very important point now twice that people need to understand that we have been through this with CBO and OMB and we spent a lot of time in meetings discussing this. But when they take a pessimistic or attempt to in the CBO scoring of the growth rate, knowing that somewhere along the line there is going to be a recession and that they do not project that because they average, I think, a 1.9. We update these things three times a year, I think it is, and in that process every time the growth rate comes in better we spend the money. We do not even keep the seed corn for a recession in this 2002 plan-- really is not realistic because last year we spent more money when the growth rate was higher, so what do we do in a year when the growth rate is lower? Now compound that over time and what you are in effect saying is we have had a good boom period, we have this huge thing hanging over our head in the Social Security trust fund, we have a national debt that is tremendous even without future obligations like Social Security, we are worried how we are going to pay Medicare, we are worried how we are going to pay the veterans, we are worried how we are going to pay railroad retirement, how we are going to meet our Government employees things. So what do we do when we finally have a good growth period and we finally have some money? We spend it. If they would have been using the money that we gained in this past year, if not to retire the debt, which I believe they should have been doing, then it should have been in the Social Security or get the Social Security off. It is not as hard as people say, but it is harder if every time you want to run for office you want to promise a new program and you have a new idea to spend money out of Washington rather than paying the debts that are accumulating and the future obligations that are accumulating over your head. It is that for campaign season you need a new program, because unless you have a new program you are afraid you will not get reelected, and it is one of the tough things we are dealing with here in Washington because our promises are outrunning our funding.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thought this was the Green Bay Packers special order.

Mr. SOUDER. Last year we even had a debate here on the House floor because there was a proposal that in the private pension programs from business, to lower the percent of, I think it was 145 percent down to 125 percent. Some of us had grave reservations about that. Yet here with zero percent, here we had this huge ruckus on this floor about whether businesses could lower the percent beyond 100 that is in reserve. In our own program we have zero.

Mr. SOUDER. The Pack is back, and I appreciate your cheerleading for that. When we were over in Israel, you had this special Green Bay Packers flag you brought over there. You wanted to get a picture with the Prime Minister with it. You have been a Packer enthusiast for so long, it is great to see them back.

Mr. SOUDER. Many of the themes that we have in community involvement and individual involvement to see a small size city owned by many people and the commitment to that in this day and age of transient commitments and that type of thing is very refreshing. But I also wanted to support your efforts on the Social Security off budget bill that you have introduced and continue to work with. If I could make a couple of points reiterating the points that you have made. That is, I have heard you make a number of these, even though I missed some of this presentation, so I assume there is some overlap but I want to say amen to what you have been doing and taking leadership, along with Congressman David McIntosh of Indiana. And that is that a lot of this is a question of integrity. And a lot of the reason many of us came to Washington is we were unhappy with the way things were being done. We still have many attorneys here, some of us are not attorneys, and quite proud of that fact. It is a good blend to have in it. You were in the housing business, I was in the retail business, and if we take something that is supposed to be a pension fund, we have to have it funded at more than 100 percent in a bank account or we go to jail. Now, Congress has conveniently exempted themselves from that type of coverage or we would be in prison, because you have a specific amount coming out for FICA. It is called a trust fund. We have passed separate bills calling it a trust fund to act like it is there, but it is not. We spend it on other things. That is a question of integrity. Now, many people stand up here, including our distinguished President last night, and challenged us about Social Security and this question. But one thing that happens in Washington, I am not saying him or anybody in particular, but talk is real cheap. You can go like this pretty easily. The question is, What are the actions? What are you actually doing? You are standing down there in the well. You have introduced this bill in the last Congress. It is not something you just invented as a tactical maneuver for the balanced budget debate. You presented a budget to this Congress that I and 88 others voted for that had Social Security off budget, proving that it can be done. We did not just talk, we acted. A number of us voted against our party's budget last year because we were concerned that the additional spending was being spent. Excuse me, when they had additional revenue coming in, instead of putting it on the deficit, they spent it. So we voted against that budget. We have been consistent in trying to hold against that. We also got ourselves in a little trouble by coming down with a 1.9- percent amendment to actually reduce the spending. Many of the people who are now saying, oh, let us take this $65 billion this year and take it off budget. Where were they? Now, some of them were there from the other party as well as our party, but many of them who have been talking about this, where were they on these tough decisions? We have been there. You have been a leader with this. We are trying to do this. This is not something new we invented. This is not even new to us. I used to work for U.S. Senator Dan Coats. He introduced in 1980 in this body a bill to take Social Security off budget. This has been our party's initiative. We need to be in the forefront of this. This is fundamental principle. I commend your leadership. There is no money there. Some people say, oh well, this does not replace all the funds and there are different ways we can do this. There is a new movie, this Jerry McGuire movie says, ``Show me the money. Where is it at?'' There is no money there. Whether you are just coming into the system, whether you are a baby boomer, or a young person who views UFO's as twice more likely than that there will be money there in Social Security, this is a giant scam that most American people are working out. Maybe we cannot get the whole thing this year, but we want at least to get some steps, and we are down here pleading with our leadership, with the other body, to say we have an opportunity. The President challenged us last night, many of the other party's leadership is challenging it. Hey, let us go do it. When they have a good idea, let us not argue over partisanship, let us say, hey, great idea, let us take Social Security off budget. We have been talking about this for years. Amen. Let us get it done. So I commend your leadership, and we can continue to talk here and work with this, but I will yield back here and see if you want me to join at another point.

Mr. SOUDER. I think it would be very good for people who came in part way through.

Mr. SOUDER. There are other things compounding this as well, and correct me and add to this if you have additional information, and that is that people are living longer than originally projected in Social Security. Furthermore, the longer you live, and Congressman Coburn, as a doctor, knows this, there are more things that go wrong that are very expensive. It is one thing to replace your heart once, multiple times, other organs, but we have incorporated other programs inside Social Security. And so those who just say we can handle this on a cash basis are a little naive. Other people say, well, if you just bump the age of retirement a couple more years, that would fix it. But look at this assumption they have. That assumes there is no change in the age that people are dying. If you bump the retirement age by 2 years but through health advances they die 4 years later, we are actually facing a bigger shortfall than we currently have. A lot of the things that are trying to be put out to explain away this problem are actually good arguments that it could be much worse than it actually is.

Mr. SOUDER. I am not sure at what point, perhaps the gentleman would know this more, but as I have heard, there is a point out here where the FICA tax alone could be around 43 percent, depending on where the shortfall is. This is not just a small matter, it is a budget-busting matter that we have been able to disguise this and lulled into this because of the number of people working versus the people in the retirement system. But a day of reckoning is coming. The longer we wait, the tougher the reckoning. Not only do individuals pay into this but a lot of people may not be aware that their employer is matching it. If you are self-employed, you know you have to pay both halves, and that one of the things I personally think we ought to be doing as a country and individual employers ought to be doing is showing what an individual's check would be if that match was not going in there. So we are not only spending the amount you are putting in, we are spending the amount that the employer is putting in. This devastating tax would cripple our economic system. Some people say, oh, there would be politically an uproar if we tried to change benefits and not do it. Quite frankly the baby boomers, I was born in 1950, we are going to be the biggest voting block when we are there and we do not intend to starve and the people who would have to pay our way are our kids and they are not going to intend to pay all of this if the Government defaults. The bottom line is we will probably bankrupt the country unless we do this because we will be a huge voting block, much bigger than the current senior citizens. It is a devastating outlook if we do not have the courage to face up to the integrity of the problem now.

Mr. SOUDER. As the gentleman alluded to, it is a very pro-family policy to try to be honest about this, because most families in America have both parents working. Many of us, including me, have a child in college. You are trying to meet all the demands of your kids for this and you are working your head off and you do not know how in the world you are going to set aside much and we just kind of assume that when we get to retirement age, Social Security is going to be there even if we have some savings of our own, which many families do not have the luxury of doing, particularly the poorer the family the more dependent they are on this. The FICA tax comes out, no matter what income you are at, we take out the Social Security, and those people who are struggling and barely making it and drowning day to day and trying to figure out how to pay their car bill, insurance bill and health insurance and their housing costs and all this type of thing are watching it get drained into a system so it can be used as part of a general government program. How is that pro-family? What is pro-family is to provide what it is supposed to be, is a security net for when you are older so you can try to use your current income, the rest of it, on living and trying to get above water. We are going to be in a state of shock, those about to come into the system. Based on the gentleman's numbers, it could be as early as those in the late 50's, certainly those of us who are boomers, in the mid 40's and down, we are going to be in a state of shock if somebody says, ``Well, you're only going to have half of it there.'' Then pretty soon somebody says, ``None of it there.'' You are going to say, ``You mean I've worked all my life, and we scraped by and watched these dollars be taken out, and I gave up certain things and now it isn't there?'' What does the word trust fund mean?

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, in the context of a Congress and a society searching for the truth and meaning, integrity and consistency, it is a privilege for me to offer congratulations to an institution in Indiana's Fourth Congressional District that is dedicated to that and much more. September 20, 1996, marked the beginning of a year-long centennial celebration at Huntington College in Huntington, IN. This small, Christian liberal college is committed to one purpose, to equip men and women to make a Christian impact upon our world. Founded in 1879 by the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, the college worldview was central to the curriculum and its people. The motto on the college's marquee is ``* * * Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free * * *'' The wisdom of the Biblical passage is also at the heart of our Nation. Many distinguished people have been associated with Huntington College during its 100-year history. I hope the people who should have been mentioned here, and were not, will forgive me. There are many faculty, staff, administrators, students, alumni, and friends who have helped the college through good times and bad. But I would like to mention just a couple of people with whom you might be familiar. Former Congressman J. Edward Roush is an alumnus member of the board of trustees. Former Vice President Dan Quayle is a former adjunct faculty member. Dr. Eugene Habecker, president of the American Bible Society, is a former president of Huntington College. The list could go on, but the last two people I want to mention in association with Huntington College come from humble beginnings as did Huntington College. Orville Merillat, a humble, God-fearing man, used his carpentry skills to begin what has been called America's premier cabinet company, Merillat Industries. His generosity has helped make Huntington College the dynamic institution it is today and his contributions to Christian endeavors around the world has been tremendous. Finally there is ``baby Hope,'' Guerline Espoire Cloutier, a young child discovered in Haiti by Huntington College students working on a missions trip during January 1996. She was afflicted by hydrocephalus. One of the coordinators of the trip, a parent of an HC student, and a family practice physician, offered to help. That child now has a second chance to live. Her example is so significant because Huntington College exists because the example of another baby born into jumble circumstances central to the Huntington College ideal, Jesus Christ. Congratulations to Huntington College on its first 100 years.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I first want to make a brief comment on Medicare. I get tired, night after night, hearing us being accused of cutting Medicare. I know the President alleges that this year, and I know many Americans have probably seen the tape or heard that Mrs. Clinton last year, when the President proposed a smaller increase than we said, explained very carefully that it was an increase and not a cut, and President Clinton before we took power carefully explained that it was an increase and not a cut, and, quite frankly, two or three Clintons is not bad, and I think that the Democratic Party should listen to two of the three Clintons who said it was not a cut, rather than coming up and giving misinformation to the American people. But I came here tonight to talk about the drug issue. A lot of people think this just came up at the last minute here in the campaign. I serve on the Government Reform Subcommittee on Internal Security and Foreign Affairs where we deal with the drug issue regularly, and our subcommittee chairman, Bill Zeliff, started right after we took over Congress in focusing on this issue and deserves tremendous credit for his persistence in keeping us in front of Congress and America and working with--when he started working with then-Senator Dole in New Hampshire over a year ago--to show him what had happened and what we had learned from our hearings. We thought we were going to have one or two hearings on the drug issue. We started with Nancy Reagan and Bill Bennett and heard some of the devastation and were shocked at the cutbacks that this administration did, and as we got in and had hearings with then-drug czar Lee Brown and had multiple hearings with the current drug czar, General McCaffrey, we have had multiple hearings with the Coalition for Partnership for Drug-free America. We met multiple times with the director of the DEA, Mr. Constantine. We have met with all branches. It became more and more clear that this was not a little issue, this was a huge issue. Sometimes here in Washington it takes us awhile to realize what the people back home know already, and that is kids are getting shot in the streets, there are gangs all over not only our major cities, but in small towns throughout. In northeast Indiana, in my home area, in Bluffton, in Auburn and Huntington, the gangs have spread out into the small towns and dealing drugs, and we have drug battles going on. It was Congress and Washington that was slow. It is not that this is some kind of a political effort at the last minute. We are responding to what American people saw. A number of us went down to Central and South America and met with the leaders of those nations in Bolivia and Peru and Columbia and Mexico and Panama, and delivered very strong messages and are trying to work with source country eradication and interdiction. We also held regional hearings in the Northeast and the Midwest, two in California. We have an upcoming one in Arizona, and going down to the border there, and over in Florida. We have been all over this Nation. It also is not a last minute political issue, it is an issue that the American people are screaming for attention, and we have been slow in responding. I also want to comment briefly on two hearings that we did this past weekend in California. One in particular I want to talk about is one we did in Hollywood looking at the movie industry, and also one last week on the music industry. I am not going to get heavily into that, but I want to make two points. One is we are very concerned that the message is being sent out in our music and our movies. Let me give two examples. After I was challenged by the leader of the recording industry of America to produce some names, and I am not a big rock music fan, but the staff provided some names, she said in the newspaper that ``Heroin Girl'' was an antidrug message. I went out and bought it. The group Everclear whose very name basically stands for some sort of white lightning or something; there is another song on there called ``Chemical Smile''. If you--the song ``Heroin Girl'', it is at best marginal as an antidrug message. But as we heard in Hollywood, the plain fact, that and movies like ``Trainspotting'', while to adults may look like they have a subtle antidrug message, that when you are looking at music and movies with the glorification of death, of black clothing and skulls and so on, even presenting something with a slightly negative image like the song ``Heroin Girl'' does, slightly is, in fact, advancing the cause of drugs and adding to the kind of perverse romance. In other words what they said: When you talk about drugs either direction on heroin, you advance many young people using heroin. I want to say also why this administration I believe wants to forget about the past. I am tired of hearing that, well, we should focus on what is next, not talk about the last few years. Quite frankly, if I had their past, I would want to forget about it too. The plain truth of the matter is interdiction funds went down, supply went up, and prices went down. The acceptability of drugs in the schools went up in our teenagers. It is very clear what happened. The President diverted funds from all operations around the country from drug interdiction and more drugs came into America. He sent messages. We had a witness at the Hollywood hearing, a psychologist who is a consultant to the movie industry, who said that when adults say to their children, look, everybody did drugs when I was a kid, do not do it now, you are sending a double message, particularly when the President of the United States laughs it off. Kids look at it and say, when I get to be an old fuddy-duddy, I will not do it either. Every kid did it, even you did it, Dad, and unless you stand up, you are going to be held accountable, and I am glad to have President Clinton on board at this point, but we cannot bring back the lives that have been lost the last few years because of past neglect.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, on April 22, 1996, I respectfully requested that when the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure met to consider the Water Resources Development Act, that the Huntington Reservoir in Huntington County, IN be renamed in honor of a distinguished citizen and former Indiana Congressman, Dr. J. Edward Roush of Huntington, IN. This provision has eventually become section 505 of the bill before us today. Dr. Roush's entire life has been dedicated to the advancement of the interests of the Hoosier State and our great country. His service began early in his life, when he fought for 4 years in World War II. At the conclusion of that cataclysmic conflict, Dr. Roush was elected to the Indiana General Assembly, where he served from 1949-1950. In 1950 he was once again called to duty to defend his country, this time serving 2 years in the Korean war. He returned to Huntington after his second military tour to practice law, and became the prosecuting attorney of Huntington County. He served in this capacity from 1955-1959. Dr. Roush's sights were set higher. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1958, and served the people of Northeastern Indiana until 1969. In 1970, he was reelected as a Representative of our district, and served until 1976. Mr. Roush's initiatives on behalf of his constituents are too numerous to mention. Among his many contributions, Dr. Roush established the 5th district scholarship program, which brought high school students from each of the schools in his congressional district to Washington for seminars on the governmental process, was instrumental in establishing the 911 emergency telephone hotline, and he inaugurated an institute on the legislative process for high school government teachers and an annual legislative seminar for women. From 1977 to 1979, Dr. Roush was appointed by President Carter to serve as Director of the Office of Regional and Intergovernmental Operations of the Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, he has served as both a member and chairman on the board of directors of the Huntington College, as a member of the board of directors of the Merry Lea Environmental Center in Albion, IN, as a member of various veterans' organizations, and as a member of the Indiana Society of Washington. Mr. Speaker, such dedication deserves recognition. Dr. Roush's service to what is now the Fourth District of Indiana should be memorialized for generations to come. Changing the name of Huntington Reservoir to Roush Lake would ensure that Dr. Roush is duly recognized for his many contributions as a statesman. I urge my colleagues to support this provision of H.R 3816.

Mr. SOUDER

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I am a little confused as to what we are debating because we mostly seem to be having a bash Republican session here as opposed to debating the substance. In other words, the House appointed conferees. I think the chairman in the House and the majority in the House are willing to move ahead. I have differences with what the House did. I actually agree with much of what the Senate is trying to do because I believe, and I get tired of having my motives attacked, I believe that in actuality that the increase in the minimum wage will hurt those who least can afford to be hurt. I know in inner-city Fort Wayne we have been trying to get a grocery store to relocate back there. We lost all the major downtown grocery stores. This will increase their wage rates basically 20 percent. They already made a market decision that they could not put it there and we are making the market decision more difficult. In the small town that I grew up and other small towns, the increases in the minimum wage are helping to take very marginal businesses under. We are seeing the Wal-Martization of America because suburbs can afford, through economic growth, to afford a lot of this. We need to look at creative ways, particularly for small businesses to deal with it. Basically I believe that what we are debating here is not the substance of the minimum wage. We voted and I lost. What we are debating is how to resolve this procedure, how to move the conferees through, how to do it. We are not really resisting the point of trying to get the conference done. The Senators have been holding up the conference. We want to see it move. As a freshman who has voted on this issue, who is willing to argue this issue, who unlike others have stood up and talked and tried to explain why I voted my vote, I do not retreat from my vote. I realize we have had this argument before. I just wish that some of rhetoric would be toned down, that the motives attacks would be toned down, and we could move ahead with this process rather than continue what I believe has become malicious bashing of our side.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I believe every business that can pay more should absolutely pay more. There are many small businesses that are closed that used to pay less, and they cannot make it. That is really what I am talking about. I would have liked to have seen some sort of adjustments to code to help low-income people who are just starting out, particularly young mothers who are often divorced or single and trying to make it. I would like to look at it. This is not the way.