Speech by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana), March 1, 2000

Speech by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana), March 1, 2000
DEALING WITH DRUG PROBLEMS (House of Representatives - March 01, 2000)

[Page: H610]
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I read with concern this week that we have had another incident on our southern border in Tijuana with Mexico and their inability to get control of the drug problem. The attorney general of Mexico was quoted, who has been a crusader in trying to establish law and order in Mexico on the drug issue, that one of our primary needs is to get control of consumption in this country.

I want to suggest two different things: in addition, Mexico needs to continue to work to control the borders, because in San Diego, I will be at a hearing next week that the gentleman from California (Mr. Mica) is chairing in the district of the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray). There is only so much they can do in San Diego, across from Tijuana if we do not get some control of our borders.

There is also only so much we can do in northeast Indiana, as I have talked with Sheriff Dukes in Noble County and Sheriff Jackson in Huntington County and Sheriff Herman in Allen County. There is only so much they can do in my district if the drugs keep coming across in California and Arizona and New Mexico and Texas that pour then into Indiana.

So we need Mexico's continued help, and we need even more aggressive efforts to try to crack down on the drug problem.

But I would suggest there are two other things that we will be addressing in this House before too long: one is the Colombia Plan, or better referred to as the Andes Region Plan. Clearly Colombia is in deep trouble. Clearly the cocaine and heroin that is pouring into our country through Mexico and corrupting Mexico is coming originally out of Colombia for the most part.

We need to do whatever we can to help the brave people on the ground in Colombia who are fighting the narco-traffic thugs, whether they be FARC or whether they be others, in Colombia; and we need to be able to pass that passage through this House and through this Senate and get it signed by the President as soon as possible, because we cannot get control in the demand reduction side if the price keeps going down, if the purity goes up, and the supply is coming in the way it is.

Secondly, as we address the Safe and Drugfree Schools Act and as we look at other acts in Congress, we need to make sure that we do not so water down our prevention programs in this country that they no longer have the antidrug bite in them. If we water these things down so much it becomes kind of a feel-good type of program rather than an accountability program, such as making sure we push drug testing and other methods of accountability. Rather than just talk, countries like Mexico and Colombia have a somewhat legitimate gripe, that we are always pointing the finger at them while we are consuming all this and not doing anything domestically.

Another problem that I will be soon meeting with the Department of Education about is an amendment that former Congressman Solomon and I passed on the student loans that said if you are convicted of a drug offense, you lose your loan for 1 year. If you are convicted a second time after you come back in, you lose it for 2 years, and a third time and you are out.

The Department of Education has put out a form that over 100,000, probably 150,000 students, did not even check.

We need to take aggressive action to make sure that those students who did not check that cannot get their loan if they do not check that box. Furthermore, we need a random sampling procedure to make sure that they are actually telling the truth, that the Department of Education partly in my opinion as a gutting process said this applied to everybody in all their years prior to going to college.

This was an accountability provision, not before you went to college. But once you take a student loan, we expect you to be clean, because you cannot be learning if you are on drugs. You cannot be exercising your responsibility if we give you a subsidized loan and then you are on drugs.

I also had an amendment that said if you test clean twice during that process of your first suspension, you can get your loan back. I believe education is critical. But if we are really committed in this country, forget about just talking about Mexico or Colombia or Panama or Peru or Bolivia, if we are committed in this country and we really care about our kids and we care about the violence in the streets and violence in the families, we need to take some serious steps in this Congress to put some accountability at the high school level, at the elementary school level, at the college level and at the adult level, and put some dollars as well as some restrictions behind it.

[Page: H611]
END

As of March 13, 2000, this document is also available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H01MR0-360: