Speech by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), March 29, 2000

Speech by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), March 29, 2000
The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title I?

AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MS. PELOSI
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment Offered by Ms. Pelosi:

Page 3, line 8, after the dollar amount, insert the following: (reduced by $51,000,000)'.

Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, my colleagues, the amendment at the desk that I have cuts $51 million of the $185 million in the funds in the DOD account in this supplemental bill. The $51 million cut represents all the money provided for the push into Southern Colombia.

Primarily these funds were to pay for training, equipping and deploying the counternarcotics battalions into Southern Colombia. I offer this amendment, once again, to emphasize that our emphasis is wrong.

We have an emergency supplemental before us today, because we have an emergency in our country; and that is the issue of substance abuse.

As I said earlier and earlier today in the debate on the rule and in general debate, we have an emergency supplemental bill before us today, because, indeed, there is an emergency in our country, and that is the dependence on substance abuse by so many people; indeed, 5 1/2 million people in the United States.

I introduced the amendment to emphasize that in this bill with that emergency in our country, we do not have $1 of emergency spending for reducing substance abuse in our country for treatment on demand and for prevention.

In the Rand report, which I quoted earlier, it says that for every dollar spent on treatment or demand in the U.S., we get 23 times more value than on money spent in the country of origin in the coca leaf eradication program, 23 times more effective.

This report says that if we want to reduce demand in the United States by 1 percent, if 1 percent would cost $34 million if we spent it on treatment on demand programs. To get that same 1 percent reduction, by the approach taken in the chamber today, coca leaf eradication, you would have to spend 23 times that, or $723 million.

We can spend $34 million on treatment in demand in the U.S., or we can spend $723 million in the country of origin, that being Colombia what the discussion is about today.

Every indicator in this Rand report that was done in conjunction with the Department of Defense and the office of National Drug Control Policy points to the value of treatment on demand. Even in an OPED in 1998 General McCaffrey wrote, it is a sad time when the number of incarcerated Americans exceeds the active duty strength of the Armed Forces.

[TIME: 1600]

`A Rand Corporation,' this is still General McCaffrey's quote, `a Rand Corporation study in 1994 found that increasing drug treatment was the single most effective way to reduce domestic drug consumption.'

So how can we have a bill that addresses an emergency in our country where we have 23 times more effectiveness by addressing demand in our country has all of its emphasis on eradication of the coca leaf in another country. Maybe it is important for us to go that route, too.

But we have so much uncertainty about the success of the $1.7 billion that we are allocating to Plan Colombia, and so much certainty about the effectiveness of treatment on demand that it is hard to understand this legislation.

Let me say that we have a treatment gap in this country, and that is part of the emergency. There are 5 1/2 million substance abusers in the United States. Of that, 2 million receive treatment; 3 1/2 million do not.

In an amendment that I wanted to offer that I offered in committee for $1.3 billion to be used for prevention, for treatment on demand, for prevention program geared to our youth, we would have been able to meet the needs of 303 substance abusers in this country, 303, only one-tenth of the problem. I was defeated in committee.

Trying a more modest approach in the Committee on Rules, I put forth a $600 million treatment-on-demand amendment and was not given the opportunity to bring that amendment to the floor.

So I offer this modest cut of $51 million from the funding for the push into southern Colombia and to emphasize, as I say, the improper emphasis of this bill.

We all agree that President Pastrana is a great and courageous person and deserves our help. I want to make that point. But I think this is the wrong way to go.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), which will come later, about some other issues in the bill.

As of March 30, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H29MR0-173: