Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2829, Office of National Drug Control Policy

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2829, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - March 09, 2006)

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

Mr. Speaker, this structured rule under consideration provides 1 hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Government Reform.

It waives all points of order against consideration of the bill and provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary now printed in the bill shall be considered as an original bill for the purpose of amendment and shall be considered as read.

It waives all points of order against the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute and makes in order only those amendments printed in the Rules Committee report accompanying this resolution.

This rule provides that the amendments made in order may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read and shall be debatable for the time specified in the report, equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent. They shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole.

Finally, this rule waives all points of order against the amendments printed in the report, and provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and its underlying important legislation reauthorizing the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which was created in 1998 to be the primary shaper, coordinator and proponent of Federal efforts to end drug abuse in our communities across America.

By supporting this legislation to reauthorize the ONDCP's activities for the next 5 years, Congress will reaffirm its support for national programs to combat the consequences of drug abuse in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program known as HIDTA. It also makes the development and implementation of Federal drug policy more streamlined, efficient and accountable.

H.R. 2829 accomplishes this goal by implementing a number of meaningful reforms to ONDCP and to our national drug control strategy. It provides the director of the ONDCP with a rank equal to Cabinet secretaries. While not affecting the President's ability to undermine the makeup of his Cabinet, it will ensure that the director will be able to interact with other department heads as an equal peer as this person coordinates our national drug policies.

This legislation also reaffirms the role of the ONDCP director as the principal coordinator of national drug policy and enhances effectiveness and accountability in drug treatment by requiring a uniform system of drug treatment evaluation based on results. It also enhances the national antidrug abuse media campaign, preserves and strengthens the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program and places a greater emphasis on providing resources to critical emerging drug threats that face our country.

Mr. Speaker, we know that the war on drugs is an ongoing struggle, but one that is also where we are seeing improvement, real improvements with positive real-world effects for American families. As President Bush outlined in his State of the Union address, there has been a 19 percent decline in overall drug teen use over the last 5 years, which translates into about 700,000 fewer young people using drugs. I think that is significant. This did not happen by accident.

But despite the fact that illegal drug use for 8th, 10th and 12th graders has been trending down since 2001, American teens still engage in risky drug-related behavior far too frequently. Nationwide, each day approximately 7,500 children between the ages of 12 and 17 try alcohol for the first time and over 30 percent of high school students report having ridden in a car with a friend who has been drinking.

Even more alarmingly, each day about 3,500 teens try marijuana for the first time, 3,500 teens try marijuana for the first time every day, and one in four children have been offered drugs at school.

Most disturbing of all, 12 million Americans age 12 and older have tried what is called methamphetamines, known as meth, a drug known principally for its equally addictive and destructive qualities.

We all know that the battle to keep our kids drug-free starts at home. Over two-thirds of teens say that the greatest risk for them in using marijuana is upsetting their parents, and we know that children who are not regularly monitored by their parents are four times more likely to use illicit drugs.

Congress has an important role to play in the process of protecting our Nation's families and communities from the devastating effects of drug use and drug addiction. This legislation will allow the ONDCP to continue fighting on the domestic front in the war on drugs through comprehensive efforts like what we call the Major Cities Initiative, which targets drug abuse in large metropolitan areas that have the highest rates of current illicit drug use by developing inventories of Federal, State and local resources for prevention, treatment and law enforcement.

By passing this legislation, the ONDCP will also be empowered to continue its involvement in a number of education programs and outreach activities whose results are backed by sound scientific data which have dramatically helped to reduce drug addiction across America.

This legislation will also allow ONDCP to continue its fight on the international front of the war on drugs. America has gotten a little bit better in choking off the supply for drugs through fostering a closer working relationship with countries, including our neighbors to the south, including Mexico, where marijuana cultivation fell almost 25 percent between 2003 and 2004 and opium poppy cultivation dropped about 27 percent during that same time.

In Colombia, the coca crop has declined by more than one-third from its high point of expansion in 2001, a pattern that holds true for the other large Andean coca-growing countries of Peru and Bolivia.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, America can by no means declare victory in the war on drugs. Many challenges lie ahead in teaching our children to simply say no and abstain from using drugs, in protecting our communities from crime and domestic upheavals caused by drug use and in disrupting international markets that bring to and provide this country with illegal drugs.

But progress is being made in no small part due to the actions taken by this Congress, my colleagues who care very immensely and deeply about the children and families of our home districts, and due to this administration to continue the fight for our communities, our children, and our future.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on the restrictive rule and the underlying legislation reauthorizing the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

As our colleague from Texas has already noted, the rule makes in order 15 amendments to be offered by Members from both sides of the aisle. But what he did not mention is that the rule blocks 10 other amendments which were considered yesterday in the Rules Committee. It blocks them from being offered on the floor today.

Included in the 10 blocked amendments is a proposal offered by my good friend, Representative Bean, that would have required the Government Accounting Office to examine the unintended effects of hyperactive disorder drugs.

At a time when more and more children and adults are being diagnosed with some form of attention deficit disorder, this study could go a long way towards helping all of us better understand the problem. Yet my friends in the majority on the Rules Committee blocked this amendment from being considered. Perhaps it is because they do not want to address the issue, or perhaps it is because they are trying to defeat Representative Bean in November. Whatever the reason, the House will not have the opportunity to consider this important amendment today because the rule prohibits it.

The rule also does not permit Representative Waters from offering her amendment, which would have required the ONDCP to develop objectives for reducing drug overdoses and the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. Her commonsense amendment, too, is blocked from consideration under the rule. So while this rule is certainly more generous than most of those in the past, it is not by any stretch of the imagination open.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to dwell on the specifics of this legislation, which we all agree is important and necessary. I do, however, wish to speak briefly about the issues facing our communities, mine specifically, due to drug abuse and our failed efforts to rehabilitate abusers.

A little history, first. In 1971, President Nixon declared the so-called modern-day ``war on drugs.''

He characterized drug abuse as ``America's Public Enemy No. 1.'' He argued that drug addiction is a public problem. Since then, since 1971, Congress has attempted to pass laws, or passed laws, that cracked down on drug usage and harshly punished those who used these addictive poisons.

Though our intentions have largely been sincere, we have yet to institute policies that reflect a comprehensive understanding of this continuing problem. In America's black communities, minimum sentencing guidelines instituted by Congress and State legislatures for drug offenders and for other nonviolent crimes have had a lasting effect that will linger for generations to come.

Consider this: under current Federal law, the mandatory minimum sentence for being caught with 1 ounce of crack cocaine, a drug that the statistics show is more likely to be used by blacks than anyone else in our country, that mandatory minimum is longer than the mandatory minimum sentence for being caught with the exact same amount of powder cocaine, a drug that the statistics have shown is more likely to be used by whites than anyone else.

Even more, mandatory sentencing guidelines prohibit judges from using reasonable discretion to rehabilitate and not incarcerate the persons that are abusers. As a direct result of these draconian and discriminatory laws, black men in America are nearly 10 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug use than white males, notwithstanding the fact that they had the same amount; it was just nuanced as crack or powder cocaine.

Tens of thousands of black children are growing up in America in single-parent households, often plagued by poverty. Sure, drug usage is certainly a component of that problem. But the senseless mandatory locking up of first-time nonviolent drug offenders has done more to tear black and white families apart in America than almost anything else.

Drug prevention programs, such as those authorized in the underlying legislation, are important, as is the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The 1990 designation of south Florida as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area has been very useful in directing Federal resources into our region to stop or attempt to stop the flow of drugs into the State and country.

I supported efforts under different programs, different administrations, Republican and Democratic, when I was a Federal judge two decades ago. I continue to support them today.

Nevertheless, I refuse to accept that our drug policies have had the positive effect that so many in this body claim. Drugs are still easily accessible on our streets and in our schools, and our drug laws are senseless, outdated, and in dire need of revision.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to a day when the Members of this body will be willing to have a meaningful debate about the successes and the failures of Federal drug policies and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. Only then will we fully recognize how big a failure our policies have been and take the necessary, indeed the appropriate, steps, to rehabilitate, not write off drug abusers.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, back in 1997 when I was elected to Congress, I was aware of the drug issue as it related to not only my district but, in general, to Texas and the country. And I became engaged in working with a group of Members who were intensely interested in understanding, developing a process, a policy, and a regular format for discussing drug use in America, those people who would bring drugs into the country, understanding how we stopped it, how we rehabilitated people, how we worked with law enforcement, how we dealt with the entire issue of policy from top to bottom.

One of those leaders at that time who continues to be one today will be our next speaker. He is a gentleman who intensely cares about the issue. He has traveled internationally, South America, around the world, to become an expert on not only drugs but also those things that surround drugs.

As we know, terrorism and terrorists make money off the money that comes from users in the United States of America. And so I am pleased to have at this time the gentleman who is the vice-chairman of the Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Subcommittee for Government Reform and the main author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder).

(Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule. In background with this, I would like to make a couple of comments about ONDCP and the drug issues before commenting on the amendments in particular.

We are, right now, over in the Government Reform Committee passing the 2006 Congressional Drug Control Budget and Policy Assessment. If you want to go to the Government Reform Web site, look under our subcommittee, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Services, which I chair, ranking member ELIJAH CUMMINGS and I have put together a unanimous report that I believe will be adopted unanimously through the full committee as well, that outlines, Department by Department, the budgets and our concerns with the national drug control policy.

There are five major concerns in this overall budget policy assessment that you will see reflected both in the underlying bill today in ONDCP and the amendments that are coming to the floor.

First is the appalling lack of a methamphetamine strategy coming out of ONDCP and this administration. Individual agencies such as DEA have worked on methamphetamines, but there is an appalling lack of national strategy you will see in amendment after amendment today on the floor, fully supported by myself and Congressman Cummings.

And we worked helping draft many of these amendments. The frustration is incredible in this body and in the Senate, and that is reflected in today's debate and in this report; also interdiction assets, the frustration at an OMB-driven clause in the Homeland Security Department that would have separated narcotics from terrorism. Narcotics are the number one cause of terrorism deaths in America.

On September 11, 2001, 3,500 people died because of terrorism. That fall, 7,500 people died with narcotics abuse and the terrorism associated with that in the United States.

The next year, 30,000 people died in 2002. In 2003, 30,000 people died. In 2004, 30,000 people died. Already 7,500 people, approximately, have died in the United States. 105,000 people have died related to drug terrorism and abuse in America since 9/11.

We need to understand that while we have to watch for the major terrorist attacks in America, we are fighting terrorism in family homes, on the streets, and in neighborhoods on a daily basis in every suburban area, every rural area, and every urban center of the United States.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy, the so-called drug czar's office, was a creation of Congress. Senator Biden started it in the Senate. It was not something that the administration willingly did.

The administration today says they do not like this bill. Why do they not like this bill? They opposed it in my committee, but it passed unanimously. They opposed it in the Government Reform Committee. It passed unanimously. It was accepted by the joint referrals, and it went to the Judiciary Committee.

They came up with four proposals they did not like in it. It turned out that three, unbeknownst to them, and quite frankly showing some of our frustration with the drug czar's office, they did not even realize that three of the four amendments that they were objecting to were asked for by the Judiciary Committee, and now they were asking the Judiciary Committee to challenge that.

Of course, Chairman Sensenbrenner did not take the amendments and knock them out; they were his in the Judiciary Committee. The fourth was the Dawson Community Act that was added to protect witnesses that was added by ELIJAH CUMMINGS, the ranking Democrat of my subcommittee, and had been supported earlier by the administration. Then they wanted to knock it out.

Right up until the Rules Committee, they were still trying to demote the drug czar from a Cabinet-level equivalency position. How can he give advice, and how can he review the budgets, as this act requires of the State Department, of the Defense Department, of the Department of Homeland Security if he does not have Cabinet status? It makes no sense.

They are continually trying to undermine the attempts that we have had here. Over the past few years we have worked together in trying to move this bill. This bill moved unanimously through the House the last session of Congress. We believe we now have a bill that we will work through with the Senate as we work with the Republicans and the Democrats in the other body.

And we believe this bill will become law if not unanimously, nearly unanimously. There are 15 amendments today. Some amendments did not directly relate to this bill. But if Members want votes on some of these, that will be fine. We are prepared to accept, I believe, 13 of the 15 amendments, one we believe we can work out in conference. We are opposing one.

This is a bipartisan bill. And for those who have been concerned about meth, there is a lot in this bill related to meth that will force their hands. But the amendments today will make it clear that the United States Congress wants some action out of this administration on meth. It is bipartisan. It is suburban, rural, and urban and it is time that we started to act aggressively.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking the House to vote down the previous question on this rule today so that the House might have an opportunity to consider two provisions which were dealt with in the Appropriations Committee yesterday. As we all know, this country has been rocked with stories about the potential purchase of port facilities in this country by a foreign corporation. I am not quite sure what the policy ought to be, but I do know that we ought to have a policy.

In fact, this country needs to have an overall policy with respect to the question of foreign investment in this country in general, but we do not. What we have discovered in this episode is that when a company such as the port terminal that has been discussed in newspapers, when a company like that is purchased by another foreign entity, it is only at the option of the two parties who have an economic interest that our government is even informed that the transaction is taking place. That is why our President had to tell the Nation that he did not have a clue about this port transaction.

Well, our President ought to have a clue and we ought to have a process that guarantees that he will be informed and that process should not rely on the voluntary action of the parties who stand to make money in the deal.

Yesterday in the Appropriations Committee we had an amendment adopted by Mr. Lewis, the chairman, which threw out the Dubai port deal. But the committee in that process declined to support the Sabo amendment which would have tried to establish a process under which this country would be guaranteed that our government would always know when such a transaction is being contemplated. And it would have set up a process which would have assured a time certain for Presidential action and would have given the Congress a role to play in that process.

Without the action of the Sabo amendment, we are simply, on an ad hoc basis, taking one action to forbid one port from being purchased by a foreign party but we are still leaving the country open to other deals about which our government could know nothing. I do not think there are 10 people in the Congress who knew, for instance, that a Chinese corporation had taken over the port at Long Beach. It would be nice if our Government knew things like that.

The only way that we are going to get something like this done is if we force the Congress to face the entire issue. And it seems to me that this bill is a handy vehicle for doing that. I know that people will say, ``Well, you are trying to attach a matter to a bill that does not have anything to do with the matter at hand.'' I would simply say I have learned plenty from the majority leadership of this House about how to do that in the past few years, and I think we need to take advantage of that learning at this point to deal with what is a very serious problem facing our country on this question.

We need to have a policy on this so that we do not look as we did yesterday, like a bunch of chickens flying in all directions the minute an issue becomes controversial. We need to have a long-term policy to deal with this issue. The Sabo amendment, as it amends the Lewis amendment in the Appropriations Committee yesterday, would do that. And this bill before us today would be a decent venue to discuss that in a broad fashion, which is why I would urge defeat of the previous question so that we might be afforded the opportunity to offer such an amendment and have the House work its will on it.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, the opportunity to hear from the vice chairman of the Committee on Government Reform about this important issue today, about ONDCP, is important. Today we have an opportunity to hear from the youngest member of the Republican leadership, newly elected chairman of our policy committee; a young man who is from Florida; a young man who has been in the thick of the battle of seeing not only the devastation of drugs but also what communities and what effective law enforcement can do in combating drugs. He is a young man who has an opinion. He is bringing that opinion to the Republican policy committee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam), my colleague from the Rules Committee.

Mr. PUTNAM. I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, drugs are a scourge. It is a scourge that is not just an inner-city problem. It has spread like a cancer into our small towns, our suburban areas, farming communities, areas that used to view the war on drugs with a certain jaundiced eye as being somebody else's problem.

In Florida, unfortunately, we have been on the cutting edge of this war, beginning with the cocaine cowboys of the eighties, the dope runners who would use our airstrips and grassy areas to bring things in from the Caribbean and from Central America, and we have seen how it has ripped apart our communities.

We have seen how it has filled our schools with children with severe learning disabilities and developmental difficulties because of decisions that their parents made in using these terrible drugs, these highly addictive and dangerous chemicals. We have seen the costs that it has on society, and it is nothing short of a national tragedy. So I am pleased that there is such bipartisan concern for dealing with this scourge.

I am heartened by the bipartisan number of amendments that are being offered to try and improve upon this work of really giving the ONDCP the authority and the teeth that they need to continue to go after this. This Congress is working together to curtail the dangerous proliferation of drugs, and particularly that of methamphetamines. Meth abuse is where we really see a tremendous amount of growth outside of the cities, outside of those traditional areas where we have associated drug use.

My home district in central Florida is not what you would stereotypically think of as a high-drug trafficking area, a high-crime area. It is an area of suburban bedroom communities for larger cities and rolling citrus hills and cattle ranches. The largest city has less than 80,000 people in it. And yet it is, unfortunately, on the short list of major production areas for methamphetamine because of its rural nature, because they can have these labs in the middle of nowhere, where the stench from the creation of that terrible drug is not noticed.

In fact, the DEA says that meth has become the most dangerous drug problem of small-town America. They note that young people ages 12 to 14 who live in small towns are 104 percent more likely to use meth than young people living in larger cities. What a frightening statistic for people who think that they are escaping big-city problems when they move to smaller towns. Meth abuse is most prevalent in these rural areas, as we said, because you can set these labs up anywhere without detection, the more rural the area is.

My district has seen a huge spike in meth abuse, meth production, since the nineties, which has a direct correlation to rising crime rates, overcrowded prisons and an impact on local law enforcement and local schools.

I appreciate the work of the Meth Caucus here in this Congress for continuing to bring attention to this epidemic of methamphetamine abuse. It is imperative that our Congress ensure that the Federal Government start treating this national problem with the same urgency and the same commitment that our State and local governments and grassroots advocacy groups have been treating it with for years.

I urge my colleagues to support the rule. I appreciate the hard work of Mr. Souder and Mr. Sessions and all the folks who have put so much into this, and I urge Members to support the underlying bill as well.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I will be asking Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question so I can amend this rule to allow a vote today to block the President's plan to turn over our Nation's ports to a government-run company in Dubai.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment and extraneous materials immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dent). Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Florida?

There was no objection.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. My amendment provides that immediately after the House adopts this rule, it will bring up legislation that does two things, undergirding what my good friend, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Obey, mentioned in his remarks earlier.

First, it stops the President from moving forward with his deal to transfer operations at a number of our Nation's busiest ports, including the Port of Miami immediately south of my district, to the Government of Dubai state-owned Dubai Ports World. This is the identical language that was offered in the Appropriations Committee yesterday by Chairman Lewis and later adopted by the committee on yesterday.

Secondly, the legislation would strengthen the process by which our government reviews future foreign takeovers. Specifically, it would require that all foreign transactions that could result in foreign control of any entity engaged in interstate commerce to undergo a thorough review that mandates the direct involvement of the President and the Congress. Whatever Members believe about the Dubai agreement, the House should be guaranteed an up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to turn control of a significant number of our Nation's ports over to a company that is owned by a foreign government.

This administration, without consulting the Congress, negotiated a secret backroom deal to turn the management of our vital ports over to a foreign entity. The House must be involved in this process that directly affects our national security now and in the future. We are sent to Washington to protect this Nation and its citizens. We owe it to them to make sure this type of deal is never allowed to slip through the system again.

I want to emphasize that this vote, the vote on whether to order the previous question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote. A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote against the agenda of the Republican majority. A ``no'' vote will allow those of us concerned about the safety and security of America's ports to offer an alternative plan right here and right now.

It is a vote to consider homeland security priorities for the American people which the majority today has refused to consider.

I urge all Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can bring up legislation that gives Congress the right to cast a vote and be heard on this matter of significant national security. I wish to repeat that: I urge all Members, both sides, to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can bring up legislation so that we can do our job that gives Congress the right, just the right, to cast a vote and to be heard on this matter of significant national security.

Vote ``no'' on the previous question.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, the opportunity to be on the floor today to talk about the ONDCP, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the reauthorization of that important act is why we are here today, and I do understand that the gentleman from Florida and the gentleman from Wisconsin have some very strong feelings about some other issues that are not germane to the discussion of ONDCP.

I would also note that I am sure there will be a discussion today as we adjourn between the leadership parties, as they always meet on the floor to talk about thoughts, issues and ideas; and I am sure part of that discussion is going to be about the process that has been discussed through the Appropriations Committee, where there appears to be bipartisan agreement on moving forward on that important legislation.

However, today, I encourage all my friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle to maintain their focus on what the attempt is today, and that is to support the rule that reauthorizes ONDCP on behalf of America's families and for our future.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks by reminding my colleagues that defeating the previous question is an exercise in futility because the minority wants to offer an amendment that would otherwise be ruled out of order as nongermane. So their vote or the request is really one without substance.

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