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< Back to current issue of Immigration Daily <Back to current issue of Immigrant's Weekly
[Congressional Record: November 1, 2000 (House)]
[Page H11774-H11779]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr01no00-103]
REPUBLICAN AGENDA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized
for 60 minutes.
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the House tonight.
Many of the Members are curious as to what is going to happen. The
House and Congress have a responsibility to pass measures to fund our
Government. I do want to say that the two previous speakers on the
minority side, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) and the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), are not usually part of the
problem; they are usually part of the solution. They are conservative
and very moderate in their views and also very fiscally responsible,
and I applaud their efforts. I worked many times with the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), on the balanced budget amendment. I remember
coming as a freshman with a gleam in my eye, coming from the private
sector saying that we must balance the budget. He, in fact, was one of
the leaders on the other side calling for fiscal responsibility. So I
do not consider the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) or the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) part of the problem.
We do have disagreements on some of the reasons why we are here. The
reason why we are here is we have 435 folks. I always joke that my wife
and I almost not a day passes, although I love her dearly, been married
28 years and there is only two of us but there is not a day that the
two of us do not disagree on something. That does happen. As the
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) says, imagine serving in a place
where you have 435 class presidents and all of them think they are
right; not to mention that we have to deal with another body, the very
esteemed Senate that Bob Dole used to say one of the things he enjoyed
over there with the Senators is watching paint dry.
They sort of take their time in getting things done. That may be the
case here, and that was really what the Founding Fathers intended that
we do have someone that can look at problems with a longer term and
then the House, which is the people's house and immediately
responsible, we are all up for election every 2 years and responsive to
the people, but we are here because there are differences. Some of them
are glossed over by the media and not apparent, and many people in
America, my colleagues, are out there just trying to make a living, get
their kid through school and pay their bills and make certain that they
provide for their future and they do not pay a whole lot of attention
until hopefully an election comes up or some major issue, but there are
some differences. There are some things in the bill that are
unpalatable that are just not acceptable to us on this side.
I come from a State, Florida, that has suffered from illegal
immigration. In fact, I held a hearing in Fort Lauderdale yesterday and
after the hearing I met with Coast Guard officials; and they said, Mr.
Mica, we have some news for you and it is not too pleasant. They said
the numbers of illegal immigrants coming in to Florida off the coast
has dramatically increased. I said, where are they coming from? They
said, it is from all over, Chinese, coming in through the Caribbean and
the Florida waters, Haitians, Dominicans, South Americans in large
numbers. We have a number of countries in South America that are
undergoing severe crisis, Colombia. The situation in Panama has been
difficult since the United States left there. Ecuador, Venezuela has
been destabilized by some of its current government and other problems
throughout Latin America.
So I think that one of the provisions that has raised some great
concern is the President's insistence on granting amnesty to literally
millions of individuals. Now, I must also speak from the standpoint of
being the grandson of immigrants on both sides of my family, Italian
and Slovak immigrants who came here almost 100 years ago, worked in the
factories and worked real hard to raise families and did not have any
government programs; had to come here in good health; had to fend for
themselves and something has gone wrong if, in fact, we do agree to
granting amnesty at this time. What a message that would send to so
many people abroad. The United States does not pay any attention to its
laws. You can come in illegally and you will be granted amnesty and can
stay here. It is sad. We have also created sort of a haven and magnet.
One of the ladies that I talked to recently at home came up to me and
she said, Mr. Mica, I have a neighbor down the street and she is here.
She is not a citizen. And she said to me, Mr. Mica, I get less than
$500 a month in Social Security. I worked all my life. I am an
American. I was born here and the lady down the street is not a
citizen, not here in the same manner that others have come here. She
gets more payments than I do. She has all kind of benefits and health
care and other things that she did not have. Somehow the system has
skewed in the wrong direction. But for us to cave in at this point and
to go along with the President's demand to grant amnesty to millions of
people who are here illegally, it just sends the wrong message.
For those who came legally and worked and raised families, were
contributing citizens, one of the neat papers I have in my family's
little folio is the naturalization papers of my grandparents. I know
how much they treasured becoming citizens in a legal manner. Again, we
throw a lot of that out the window if we just cave and accept this.
What a wrong message we send. Here we are increasing the bipartisan and
immigration spending in these bills, but why bother if we ignore the
laws that set some parameters and some standards by which you become a
citizen in an orderly fashion? Let me say I am a strong proponent of
legal immigration.
{time} 1945
It has made this country great. It is diversity; it is bringing
people from all over the world together in a melting pot and allowing
people to be their best. To have the best opportunity is something I
would never want to diminish in any way. But this is wrong. It is a
wrong message. I am sorry we have a disagreement on this; but again, it
is something that I think lies below the surface, but also creates
opposition at this juncture.
There are other serious differences: school funding. Now, all of
these differences are not money, and I have to agree with the gentleman
who just spoke on the other side, we are spending in these bills more
than we would want. Some of us like myself and some of the others who
spoke again from the other side are fiscal conservatives, and we want
to stay within those limits that we worked for in 1997 to create a
balanced budget, to get our Nation's finances in order. Mr. Speaker,
one can do amazing things when one has their finances in order, whether
it is personal or Federal. It is not that complicated. We just had to
limit the amount of expenditures not exceeding the money coming in, the
revenues; and we balanced the budget in a short period of time. But we
have to stick to that formula.
Now, we are very fortunate. The economy has dramatically improved. We
have more money coming in. The estimates are somewhere around $240
billion. We do not know exactly how much we are going to spend of that
annual surplus. It may be $30 billion, $40 billion, I have heard
estimates as high as $60 billion, and some of us on both sides of the
aisle disagree with that.
But at some point we have to stop the expenditure of that surplus,
because then our promises and our pledges to balance the budget that we
made in 1997 are meaningless. So there are many people who do not want
to go home. They will stay here through the election; they will stay
here until the Potomac freezes over and we can put up the Christmas
lights and begin that celebration of the holiday, because they do not
want to spend us back into deficit. They do not want to spend the
surplus.
[[Page H11775]]
One of the things we have tried to do on our side is come up with a
90-10 formula, that we use 90 percent of the surplus to pay down the
national debt. I know one of the hardest things I have when I go home
is convincing folks that we have actually paid down a little bit of the
national debt. When I leave here, whenever I leave here, I think I am
going to look back and say that under my service, and under the service
of some of those who were fiscally responsible, we began paying down
that enormous debt, and it is not $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Even the
previous speakers alluded to the incredible debt we have of money that
has been taken out of Social Security, taken out of trust funds, taken
out of pension funds, unfunded liabilities. So it is much more. We have
just paid down a little tiny bit. But for those of us who feel it is
important to be here, to be responsible, to not yield any further on
spending, it is another reason to be here.
We do have differences. There are people who would spend it all;
there are people who have been here who have spent it all. There are
differences in Medicare and payments for HMOs.
I sat on the floor and heard the debate this week. One of the great
things about being here when we do not have a full legislative agenda
and running to hearings and all of that is one can actually listen to
more of the debate. I thought the HMO debate was quite interesting. I
have had folks write me and say, Mr. Mica, I want to address my
concerns to you, and one gentleman from Winter Springs, Florida, wrote
and said, Mr. Mica, I want to address you and the other dummies in
Congress. I thought he had a very good point, because he was trying to
illustrate that we are not paying attention to what is happening out
there with HMOs. He said, you are arguing about whether I can sue my
HMO. He said, Mr. Mica, my third HMO has gone under, out of business. I
am concerned I do not have an HMO that I could even sue. And that is
part of the problem, is that HMOs which were designed to give broad
health care at low cost with a minimum package of benefits have now
been forced to go under.
But the debate was interesting. Some from the other side say, we are
paying HMOs too much money. Part of the debate here also is how much in
this final bill that we do pay HMOs. We have HMOs that are closing,
they are closing for our seniors, they are closing in rural areas. They
are not closing because they are making too much money. Some folks on
the other side said, well, they are getting huge amounts of money.
Well, part of the debate here is over whether we pay them 1 percent or
somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 percent. I would venture to say that
if someone is going under, it is not because they are making too much
money. Some HMOs are for profit.
We also heard accusations that executives of HMOs were getting huge
fees, and that may be true in some cases. We also heard the gentlewoman
from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson), who came up and said, I hate to tell my
colleagues, but my HMOs in Mexico are all not-for-profit, run by
various churches, Catholic and other churches, so they are not getting
too much money in her State. They need the funds to survive and to
provide health care.
Mr. Speaker, we cannot have people forced out of nursing homes. There
have been record bankruptcies in nursing homes in this country. We
cannot have people forced in rural areas not to have health care
provided.
Now, it would be nice, in one of the motions to instruct, to require
HMOs to provide service forever and ever, but that does not happen. It
does not happen in the real world. HMOs, whether they are not-for-
profit or for-profit, if they do not meet the bottom line, they will
fold. So we have a responsibility to make certain that these health
care service providers, whether it is home health assistance, which is
so important; whether it is hospitals, nursing homes. Again, not-for-
profit or for-profit, HMOs do require our attention.
There has been agreement on almost all the points, although I know
there is a disagreement on the lawsuit point, but I can tell my
colleagues that as chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service for 4
years in the Congress, I oversaw the largest health care plan in the
country, the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. It serves 4.2
million Federal retirees and employees. I will tell my colleagues, I
watched that program, and partly under my tenure, the President came up
with a so-called Patients' Bill of Rights, or patients' protection
proposal. We conducted hearings on that, and I lined the folks up and
said, well, what is the patients' protections going to do? What medical
benefit is there going to be to it? No one could testify to a medical
benefit. This particular proposal did not have a lawsuit element in it.
But each of them testified that there is no specific medical benefit.
What we saw happen is that the President, by Executive Order, which
he does so often, instituted that on the Federal Employees Health
Benefit Plans. There were almost 400 to choose from before he imposed
these new regulations and requirements and paper work and reporting on
them, and that has dropped dramatically the last I heard, 60 or 70 had
dropped out, because again, when we impose more regulations, more costs
to deliver the health care, some of these marginal providers will not
be able to perform. What was interesting too is we saw dramatic
increases, almost double digit, when the private sector was having 4,
5, 6 percent Federal employees, including Members of Congress have been
getting close to double digit increases.
So the more regulation we put on health care, the more restrictions
we impose, and we do need some reform of HMOs. The law has not kept up
with the delivery of service. But we have to understand, the more we
require of them and the more paperwork and the more reporting, the more
the cost is.
We are going the wrong way in looking at suits. Talk to anyone in the
medical profession today. It is no longer a question of getting
compensation where someone has been negligent. It is almost a case now
of extortion, where suits are being filed. They never even make it to
court. If we do not think that adds into our health care costs, whether
it is drugs or hospitals or any health care provider, every health care
provider is conducting what they call defensive medicine. You go in for
a hang nail and they are going to run 20 tests on you, because if
something goes wrong, they are liable to be sued. But we are headed in
the wrong direction there.
Prescription drugs is a similar issue. I do not know if my colleagues
have noticed the lack of some vaccines on the market. I held hearings
on the question of some of the immunization vaccines; and immunization
vaccines, I am told, can be produced for $1 or less per vaccination.
But what has happened is, first of all, very few people, I think we are
down to one or two manufacturers, who will even produce vaccines. The
cost of the vaccine, the substance, may be $1, but the insurance on the
vaccine and the other costs may, in fact, be $18 to $20, if we can find
someone who will insure you, and if someone will produce it in the
United States.
That is why drugs are cheaper in Mexico. We do not have the
protections, we do not have the liability, and if we talk to those
involved in drug manufacturing even in Europe; in Europe, I asked the
drug manufacturers when I met with them how much R&D they do, and they
said zero, zip. We do not want to discourage R&D; we should be
supporting R&D. By research and development, we can bring the costs
down, and that is something we should be looking at.
By limiting some of the exposure on these suits, we can also bring
the costs down. If you have someone who has lost a loved one or a limb
or someone who has been negligent, they should be properly compensated
for that negligence, but the whole system is out of kilter; and that is
part of the problem.
But part of the reason we are here is to make certain that our
nursing homes are provided adequate compensation, that they are not
closing down, and that our HMOs are adequately compensated. We cannot
continue to limit their reimbursement to 1 or 2 percent, when even
inflation is higher than that rate or their cost is higher. It will not
work. They will go out of business. We can play these games, but we
cannot force people to provide health care if the bottom line is not
met.
[[Page H11776]]
So those are some of the reasons that we are here tonight. There are
differences. I am hoping they can be settled. I do not enjoy being
here; I would much rather be with my family.
One of the other issues, and I am going to really talk about two
issues here, Mr. Speaker, and I want to talk a minute about something I
heard yesterday morning. I turned on the television and in his
bombastic manner, Vice President Gore, he was saying he was going to
save Social Security. I sort of broke into chuckles, having come to the
Congress in 1993, I sort of thought, I guess yesterday was Halloween
and here was the Vice President saying he is going to save Social
Security. It just struck me as very humorous. Because when I came here,
as Vice President, I never heard him ever offer a solution to Social
Security. In fact, he is one of the people who was in the other body,
the United States Senate in the Congress, when year after year they
raided Social Security. We have to remember, in 1993, when he became
Vice President of the United States, they submitted, the Clinton-Gore
administration submitted a budget to this Congress; I came here as a
freshman, and that budget had in it a $200 billion-plus deficit that
they presented to us.
{time} 2000
Now, that deficit alone was bad enough because that is $200 billion,
but on top of that, they were taking all the money out of the social
security trust fund.
So here is the person who is now saying he is going to save it
proposing a budget that had a $200 billion deficit, and raiding all the
money in social security. Not only had they raided it in 1993, they
raided it in every year I believe he served in the United States
Congress.
So for him yesterday on Halloween to get up and say he was going to
save social security, and I am sorry I have to chuckle, I just could
not keep a straight face. Here he had proposed a budget again that was
running us further into debt, $200 billion just for that year, and on
top of that taking the money out of the trust fund, and had done that
year after year after year. So suddenly he has become the savior of
social security.
What is sad about that budget too is if we looked at that budget, and
we have copies of the budget that was presented by the Clinton-Gore
administration in 1993, this year in 1999 it would have projected a
close to $200 billion deficit this year. That was with, in 1993, the
largest tax increase passed in the history of Congress being part of
their package and remedy.
So they increased taxes. The deficit was running $200 billion plus, a
$200 billion plus projected deficit, even with that tax increase they
proposed to us. The records are there. I am not exaggerating this in
any way.
It does concern me that the people who raided the trust funds, and if
it was just social security, that would not be excusable, but they took
from the highway trust fund. They diverted money from the
infrastructure of the country. When we fill up our tank and pay
gasoline tax to the Federal government, now it is 18.4 cents, they were
taking money out of the highway trust fund dedicated for infrastructure
and spending it on other programs. They were taking money out of
aviation trust funds.
As chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, I was absolutely
appalled, stunned. When I came from the private sector as a
businessperson to take over chairing the Subcommittee on Civil Service
and I looked at Federal employees' pension funds, there are about 38
Federal employees' pension funds, it is absolutely incredible that
about 33, I believe, of the 35 had zero dollars in them.
They did the same thing to social security that they did to these
pension funds, Federal employees' pension funds. They put in
nonnegotiable certificates of indebtedness of the United States, paying
the lowest possible interest rate, but there is no hard cash in all but
a couple of these funds. The few that have some hard cash in them, it
is a minuscule amount.
The gentlemen that were speaking before me talked about unfunded
liabilities for social security. If we start adding in unfunded
liabilities for these pension funds, we are talking probably in the
neighborhood of a $19 trillion-plus deficit. There are trillions of
unfunded liabilities. So here again, the folks that were taking out,
the tax and spenders were taking out of these funds money that should
have been set aside.
This raises a very important issue. I really admire the courage of
our Republican nominee, George W. Bush, because it is a very tricky
issue. Seniors become very concerned when they hear anything about
reforming social security. Everyone knows we have a problem.
I borrowed these charts from the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith),
who comes to the floor very often and does a great job on explaining
the problem with social security.
But for a presidential candidate to stand up and say, we have to do
something about this, and propose some reforms, I think is very
significant. He is not brushing over this issue. It is an issue that
needs addressing.
Members can see from this chart that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Smith) provided, we have a short-term surplus right now if we continue
with a good economy and all of that, and we are good stewards, we keep
the money in the trust fund, we do not raid the trust fund. But if we
get down here to somewhere around 2011, it begins to go south. This is
the problem we have to face.
Now, some of the solutions that are being proposed are not realistic.
Governor Bush is in the private sector. I came from the private sector.
There are only several things that one can do.
First of all, we can either increase the contribution, the payroll
tax for social security. We have done that. If Members have not looked
at their paycheck lately, and the gentleman from Michigan again brings
out a great chart, it even caught my eye, but 78 percent of the workers
in this country pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes.
This is part of the problem. We have gone from a 2 percent charge for
social security back in 1940 to 12.4 percent, so people are paying as
much as $9,448 in the year 2000. We cannot tax our way into making this
solvent. It just will never keep up to get us out of this red hole.
The other part of the problem is, and this is, again, one of the
charts of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) which I will borrow
tonight, it just shows we have 38 workers, I believe, in 1940, or at
the time we started social security a little bit before that, I
believe, and in 2000 we have six, and we go down to just four here in
2025. So we have fewer workers contributing, even paying. That makes
the equation even worse.
Another factor is, just like the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica),
who is getting older by the hour serving in Congress, particularly in
these long sessions, the population is growing older. We are living
longer. People used to retire and they died earlier. Now, through
medicine and again many health improvements, people are living longer.
So we have fewer people contributing, we have people living longer, and
we are starting to max out on our tax base.
So this is the coming problem. Governor Bush has said very simply, we
have to get, first of all, some pressure and some relief. No one wants
to touch the benefits of anyone now. The only way we could really
change this equation without either increasing taxes, now, there is
another source of taxes that would be Federal taxes to put in to
subsidize this, but again, it would be a very awesome responsibility.
So today we have to start planning for retirees for tomorrow, young
people. They are not going to get that, first, when we have no money.
There was no hard money in the funds. And again, the folks who I
chuckled about who are here to save social security were taking any
hard money out, putting in these nonnegotiable certificates of
indebtedness of the United States.
What were they paying in return? They are paying on average 1.9
percent. Even a senior citizen who does not know much about finances
would be very reluctant to put their savings account in a bank that
paid a 1.9 percent return.
I know we want also security for our social security dollars, or any
trust funds or pension funds. That is important, that they be secure.
But even with government-backed securities, we could double and triple
the return. Even by giving people a small option to
[[Page H11777]]
take part of their money in an account with their name on it, they
could get a better return. There is no way we can solve this problem
without owning up to the problem. There is no way we can solve it
without reforming it.
Now, no one will change any of the existing benefits. In fact, we can
grow the benefits if there is a better return from the funds, and
again, on only secured investments. We are not talking about penny
stocks or investment in speculative issues, we are talking about backed
by the security, full faith and credit of the United States of America.
But a few dollars of these funds could turn this situation around. It
is the only way we can turn it around. We are starting to max out again
on what we can tax folks for.
We have this expanding population of elderly. I read a report from
the University of Florida, my alma mater, their school of medicine. By
mid century, we will have 2.5 million centenarians, I believe that is
the term, people who are 100 years old, 2.5 million.
It also said in the article that when Willard Scott started
announcing the birthdays, I guess it was in 1980, they got in about 400
requests maybe in the year in 1980. Now they are coming in by the
thousands. The population of elderly is dramatically growing.
So we have to be honest, we have to own up. We cannot scare senior
citizens. All Republicans have elderly relatives, parents, and many of
them, my family has many who have relied on social security, who have
worked hard and did not have any pensions, and rely on it. My mother
did, and other family members. So we would not want to do anything that
would reduce benefits or endanger the fund.
But I am so glad to have someone who comes from the business sector
look at this, as Governor Bush has done, and said, we have to make a
change.
It is interesting, if Members travel around the world to Third World
countries or other countries who have had failed social security
systems, they are making some of the same changes that are proposed. So
we do not want to be behind the Third World countries, we want to push
off the inevitable disaster that we can face here in not preparing for
retirement security for our young people today and those who are older.
One of the other provisions that we have had in the tax bill that the
President vetoed, we had actually two provisions, that was to increase
IRAs from $2,000 to $5,000. It was a good provision. It allows people
to save money for themselves. Not everybody can save that amount of
money.
One of the other provisions we had in there was to allow people over
50 to double some of their contributions, because people who are 50 are
going to need to retire early.
I regret that the President vetoed those measures. We thought we had
an agreement. That is another reason why we are here, because it is
unfortunate, but I think the President put politics in front of people.
We cannot do that, we really cannot. I know it is sort of a last gasp
here to focus attention on his presidency. But people, I think, have
tired of that method of bickering, of a lack of agreement.
We thought we had a gentleman's or a gentlewoman's agreement on some
of these issues, and now at the last minute to cloud them, to
politicize them, to put the political fortunes ahead of the people's
fortunes I think is really unfortunate. I am dismayed by it. I think we
will all be happy when this era is behind us. People do not send us
here to bicker and fight, they send us here to solve their problems.
This is a problem that we face, a very serious problem.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to talk tonight about something that I have
talked about for probably some 40 or 50 special orders, something that
is extremely important. I chair the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice,
Drug Policy, and Human Resources. I inherited 18 or 19 months ago from
the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now the Speaker of
the House, the responsibility to oversee our national drug policy.
The gentleman from Illinois during his tenure and service in this
subcommittee's responsibility made a great attempt and some tremendous
progress in restarting our war on drugs. Quite frankly, I have heard
many people say that the war on drugs is a failure. I cite that the war
on drugs basically closed down with the beginning of the Clinton-Gore
administration in 1993.
The Clinton-Gore administration took some very specific steps that
got us into a situation that we are trying to bail out of right now
with drug abuse at record numbers, with drug deaths at record levels. I
inherited that responsibility. I take it very seriously.
Even when I was a Member of the House in 1993 to 1995, when the
Democrats controlled the White House, the House, and the United States
Senate, I requested hearings on the House side. There was one oversight
hearing in 2 years conducted.
{time} 2015
It was shameful that they would dismantle a serious war on drugs that
had been developed by the Reagan-Bush administration and had made such
tremendous progress and declining drug use in this country, but they
made some very serious mistakes and they have had some serious
consequences.
When you close down a war on drugs, you pay the price, and we are now
paying the price. It is an expensive price. As our subcommittee learned
in the last month, drug-induced deaths in the United States now exceed
homicides for the first time. I believe these are the 1998 figures. I
do not have 1999, but I think the situation that we will get from last
year is even worse.
More people are dying from drug overdoses and drug-related deaths
than by homicides. It is a problem that has been swept under the table.
A problem that has been compounded by some horrible policy decisions of
the Clinton-Gore administration.
This chart illustrates where we have come from, 11,700 deaths to
16,926 deaths. I have not doctored these figures. They are provided by
the administration. They are, in fact, a record of failure, a record of
illegal narcotics becoming a national epidemic, a national scandal and
very little being done.
I do want to say that we have made an attempt as a new majority to
try to put back together Humpty Dumpty, try to put together a serious
war on drugs. One of the things, of course, that is lacking is a
national leadership on the issue, which we saw under President Reagan,
who made this an issue, which we saw under President Bush.
They started initiatives, the source country programs, to stop drugs
at their source, the most cost-effective way to keep the flood and tide
of illegal narcotics coming in. If that is not a responsibility to
protect our shores from deadly death and destruction of illegal
narcotics, I do not know what is a Federal responsibility.
But they dismantled those programs, slashing the international and
source country programs by more than 50 percent, by slashing the
interdiction programs, by taking the military out, by cutting the Coast
Guard budget and the antinarcotics effort.
A report that was released to me in the early part of this year by
the General Accounting Office said that anti-drug smuggling efforts
flights, surveillance flights, had been cut some 68 percent from 1993
to 1999 by the administration. Maritime interdiction had been reduced
by 62 percent, and those actions have some very serious consequences,
and that is a tide of hard drugs, drugs that are pure and deadly,
unlike anything we have seen in the past.
One of the problems that we have is again the administration closing
down the war on drugs.
I did not say this, the Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, he said in 1996,
in September of 1996, the U.S. took its eye off the drug war, and this
is the results as of 1996. Unfortunately, the story gets even worse.
This is what Barry McCaffrey said. Of course, this is the consequences
of, first of all, coming in and firing everyone but 20 of the 120 folks
in the drug czar's office. That was cutting the size of government.
Then hiring Jocelyn Elders as the chief health officer who just said
maybe, or comments of the President, which he was quoted as having said
if I had it to do over again, I would inhale.
These things have a direct effect. Young people pick this up, and we
see the results. We also saw the results of their closing down some of
these antinarcotics efforts.
This is not my quote; this is the DEA official, when I was with the
DEA just
[[Page H11778]]
a few years ago, I was spending half of my time figuring out ways to
eliminate or downsize agency operations, while the drug cartels were
expanding theirs. And this is Phil Jordan, a high-level DEA official.
He said that in 1998. Again, reflecting on the closedown on the war of
drugs, not what I am saying, what DEA officials said.
Mr. Speaker, since this may be my last special order for some time, I
want to make sure we get all of this in here. Again, these charts and
information were provided, some of it, by the administration. This is
by our Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human
Resources. We know where the problem has been, where cocaine and heroin
have been coming from, and they have been coming from South America,
primarily Colombia and also Peru and Bolivia that we do not see on
here, up until the Clinton administration, they were transited and
actually the dealerships and cartels were located in Colombia, and then
came up through Mexico into the United States.
Mr. Speaker, to deal with this, in the Reagan administration, at
Panama, and this is Panama here, I have this little sticker, this is
where we headquartered our forward-operating locations, FOLs they call
them, to go after drug traffickers, at least as far as surveillance,
getting the information to the countries, the countries would either go
after the traffickers, shoot them down or whatever.
The first thing that the Clinton administration did was stop these
flights and also sharing the information, which even the Democrats went
crazy over. Then the next step that the administration took was to
decertify Colombia without what they call a national interest waiver,
that was to allow Colombia to get aid to fight narcotics.
So they blocked aid to Colombia in a policy decision of the Clinton-
Gore administration. From 1993 to present, Colombia has become and
almost produced absolutely no native poppies or heroin, it came from
zero in 1993 in this chart, producing 75 percent of the heroin coming
in to the United States, and I guess it is now world production. That
again is through some direct policy decisions.
Incidentally, the Panama-forward surveillance operations which were
closed down while the administration unfortunately bungled the
negotiations to let our antinarcotics surveillance missions continue
there, we are now building in Aruba; Curacao; El Salvador; and Manta,
Ecuador; and three more operating locations which will not be available
until 2002. So we have dramatically reduced our ability to conduct
surveillance operations.
Again, that is why we see this flow of incredible flow of heroin
coming in to the United States. A whole series of bungling by the
Clinton-Gore administration, made Colombia the number one producer of
heroin from zero when they took office, and that would not be bad
enough, but we have had to fund a $1.3 billion emergency package after
Barry McCaffrey declared last year that Colombia had become what he
said was a flipping nightmere.
We had to have an emergency package, which never got to our desk
until February, but we did pass it, got it through here, did a
responsible thing. I am not happy that we had to spend that much money,
but there are consequences to policy actions that are failure, and the
Clinton-Gore administration turned Colombia into a basket case and a
major producer of narcotics.
The same thing happened with cocaine, almost no cocaine was produced
there. Interestingly enough, Mr. Hastert, the former chair of this
subcommittee and current Speaker of the House, and I went down to Peru
and Bolivia. We worked with President Fujimori, with President Hugo
Banzart, and we have been able to cut almost 60 percent of the
production of cocaine with very little money.
The opposite is true where the Clinton-Gore administration blocked
assistance to Colombia back in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, could not even
get last year helicopters down there that had been appropriated by us
to go after some of this stuff. So we turned Colombia, through, again,
inept policy from just a transit country and minor producer into the
major producer of cocaine coming in incredible volumes.
Another failure of the administration is when you just say maybe or
you have the lack of leadership or appoint a health surgeon officer who
sends out just say maybe to our kids, this is the result. It is not a
doubling, but a dramatic increase in the amount of kids that have used
marijuana, students who have used marijuana in this country.
Today I saw in the paper, statistics that have been released that, in
fact, marijuana use among college students rose 22 percent between 1993
and 1999, according to the study this week released by Harvard School
of Public Health.
There are consequences to a lack of leadership and lack of policy.
And these are pretty specific. Now, a lot of people say marijuana is a
soft drug. Marijuana that is coming in, it is not soft. It will damage
young adults and adults. It is highly potent. It is not the stuff of
the 1960s and the 1970s. And everyone who has testified before our
subcommittee says it is a gateway drug, almost everyone who uses it
goes on to another drug. I might correct myself, not everyone, but a
large percentage, unfortunately, and almost all of those, and I should
correct myself there who have used harder drugs say that they, indeed,
have used marijuana to begin with.
The long-term prevalence of drug use, in the Reagan- Bush
administration, there was a 50 percent drop in drug use in the United
States, when you have a policy and a policy that deals with the supply,
deals with demand, deals with leadership, even going into Panama,
remember in 1989, President Bush went in to Panama with our troops and
took out Noriega, put his rear-end in jail in the United States for
drug trafficking and drug money laundering, that was leadership.
This is a successful war on drugs, a 50 percent decline.
This is the Clinton-Gore record. A little help was on the way here
from when we sort of restarted the efforts. So you see a slight change
in that, hopefully that will continue. But this is what their policy
did, a flood of drugs; and drug use dramatically increased, and you can
look at it. This is the heroin chart, again, supplied by the
administration, and also reputable sources, this one is from the
University of Michigan who does a study.
Look at the use, the prevalent use of marijuana dramatically under
the Bush administration, you see drops leveling out here.
And the trends in lifetime cocaine use, back in 1991, 1992, you see
the bottom, so to speak, this is 8th grade, 10th grade and 12th grade
in cocaine use. The administration also has the distinct record of
having the average heroin user age drop from 25 in 1993 to 17 today.
Again, the Clinton-Gore legacy that I do not think you will hear
about in any of these commercials or ads.
Now, we do require also, and as chairman of the Subcommittee on
Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, we do require that
we have a specific plan. This is the plan. We are trying. This plan is
supposed to have a goal of getting us down to a 3 percent drug use,
instead of a 3 percent drug use, the latest reports are going from 6.4,
6.20 to 7 percent.
This is a performance measure that we have asked, so instead of
heading towards this goal, we are reaching 7 percent of the population
who are now drug users. So this is their plan. This is the results. If
your children, you feel, are at risk, you should be very concerned
about these trends.
{time} 2030
You can look at this chart, too, and see what they did. They cut the
interdiction funds. They cut the international source country fund.
They put all the money into treatment, and we have just about doubled
the money on treatment. The Republicans have even added money in
treatment. We have added money in education. You do have to have a
balanced approach. But when you cut interdiction in international, you
have a surge of narcotics that you cannot keep up with. That is partly
what we have faced.
A lot of people say just keep putting more money in treatment. They
said that in Baltimore. In Baltimore they have gone from just a handful
of addicts to somewhere in one in eight in the population are now drug
addicts in Baltimore. They sloughed off on the
[[Page H11779]]
law. They had a liberal mayor. We have put tremendous amounts of money
into treatment. We will continue to do that for successful programs,
but you cannot treat yourself out of the problem. This is the Baltimore
record. Not only have they have had record numbers of homicides in that
locale in Baltimore, they have stayed in the 300 range consistently. We
see 1999 also 300, with some 60,000, 70,000 addicts.
Tough enforcement locales like Rudy Giuliani in New York have cut
dramatically the murder rate which was some 2,000 a year down to the
mid-600s; incredible changes of a 58 percent reduction in crime. This
man should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for what he did for one
of the largest cities in the world. It is just incredible what he has
done. All the seven major felony categories have had dramatic
decreases, an overall 58 percent reduction in those major felony
crimes. Murders, thousands of people are alive in New York because he
had a tough zero-tolerance policy. Thousands of people are dead in
Baltimore for a liberal policy, if you look at the record over these
years.
What is interesting is, Mr. Giuliani also did it with fewer incidents
of using firearms in going after folks, fewer complaints against his
officers; and he also increased the officers by some 20 percent. You
can go back and look at the complaints filed against the Koch
administration, the Dinkens administration. They were two and three
times what they were under Mr. Giuliani. In spite of the comments of
some of those who say to the contrary, those are the facts.
The Washington Times outlined just a few months ago what we are
facing now is we face heroin in record numbers, overdose deaths. Now we
are facing Ecstasy and cocaine in tremendous proportions.
Massachusetts, here is a headline from this week: ``Massachusetts Worst
in Drug Use Survey; some categories highest in the United States. Half
of the principals polled say drug use getting worse.'' Heroin in inner-
cities worse, and if we looked at the population of our most at-risk in
this country, according to 1999 National Household Survey on Drug
Abuse, drug use increased from 5.8 percent in 1993 to 8.2 percent in
1998 among young African Americans.
Our minorities are the hardest hit. You will not hear that in the
campaign commercials. Among Hispanics from 4.4 percent in 1993, the
beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, to 6.1 in 1998, even
worse I am sure in 1999. They do not want to release those figures
before the election. But our African Americans, our Hispanics are dying
at a disproportionate rate, jailed at a disproportionate rate, and
victimize the people of those communities by drug abuse. It is not a
pretty picture. It is not a legacy I would be proud of. I have done my
best to try to bring solutions, to restart the war that was sabotaged
by the Clinton-Gore administration.
The next President, whoever that is, must provide the leadership. The
Congress must put together a plan that includes education, prevention,
interdiction, use of military, whatever resources possible. We have
never lost this many people even in some of our battles that we are
losing to drug deaths in this country. No family in this Nation now is
spared from the destruction of life and well-being and happiness from
drug abuse.
With one final warning to my colleagues who may be listening at this
late hour, I will just put this chart up. This does show
methamphetamine. I talked about Ecstasy, but in closing here anyone who
is watching this, this is a normal brain and this is a brain that we
could put Ecstasy up here and show you the same thing, the brain scans
that have been provided to our subcommittee. Basically, it induces a
Parkinson's type destruction of brain tissue.
This is what methamphetamine will do to you, Ecstasy. People think
that these are harmless drugs and young people are dying and having
their brains damaged, their bodies damaged by use of this. This is what
these illegal narcotics and designer drugs will do to you today. They
are not harmless, and that is why we have laws to control them.
So people look at what this does to your brain. I hope Members will
convey this to their constituents, particularly the young people who we
are now seeing as the victims of so many of these drug tragedies
throughout the United States.
Mr. Speaker, again I appreciate your patience. I know that we have
further business to conduct, but I am not sure if I will have another
opportunity. I want to thank the staff who have endured my 50-some
Special Orders. I take this very seriously, and it is a serious problem
for the country. Again, we must address it in a bipartisan manner but
learn in fact from the past and do a much better job to bring the most
serious social problem our Nation has faced in a generation under
control.
____________________
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