<DOC>
[109th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:23688.wais]
H.R. 2829, THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY REAUTHORIZATION
ACT OF 2005
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
H.R. 2829
TO AUTHORIZE THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY ACT
__________
JUNE 15, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-73
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
JON C. PORTER, Nevada BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia Columbia
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ------
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina (Independent)
------ ------
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
PATRICK T. McHenry, North Carolina ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DAN BURTON, Indiana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN L. MICA, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota DIANE E. WATSON, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CHRIS CANNON, Utah C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina Columbia
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director
Nicholas Coleman, Professional Staff Member and Counsel
Malia Holst, Clerk
Tony Haywood, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 15, 2005.................................... 1
Text of H.R. 2829................................................ 8
Statement of:
Carr, Tom, Director, Washington-Baltimore HIDTA, on behalf of
the National HIDTA Directors' Association; and Stephen J.
Pasierb, president and CEO, Partnership for a Drug-Free
America.................................................... 137
Carr, Tom................................................ 137
Pasierb, Stephen J....................................... 145
Walters, John, Director, Office of National Drug Control
Policy..................................................... 106
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Carr, Tom, Director, Washington-Baltimore HIDTA, on behalf of
the National HIDTA Directors' Association, prepared
statement of............................................... 140
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 96
Pasierb, Stephen J., president and CEO, Partnership for a
Drug-Free America, prepared statement of................... 148
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 5
Walters, John, Director, Office of National Drug Control
Policy, prepared statement of.............................. 110
Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 104
H.R. 2829, THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY REAUTHORIZATION
ACT OF 2005
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2005
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark Souder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Mica, Gutknecht, Cummings,
Norton, and Watson.
Staff present: Nicholas Coleman, professional staff member
and counsel; Michelle Gress, counsel; David Thomasson,
congressional fellow; Malia Holst, clerk; Tony Haywood,
minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order.
Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming. We should be
able to get through our hearing now without any more votes.
Thank you for your patience, Director Walters, and all the
others who are testifying today. Today's hearing assesses and
addresses H.R. 2829, the Office of the National Drug Control
Policy Reauthorization Act of 2005, which I introduced along
with Chairman Davis of the full committee.
Two years ago, Chairman Davis and I introduced the Office
of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 2003,
which the committee adopted and the House passed unanimously.
Regrettably, the Senate did not act on its version of the bill,
meaning that reauthorization had to wait until the 109th
Congress.
This time around, we have kept many of the reforms first
introduced in the 2003 bill. However, we have made some
significant changes to the earlier act, as a result of two main
considerations.
First, we have attempted, to the greatest extent possible
consistent with our subcommittee's basic policies, to harmonize
the House and the Senate bills from the last Congress. While we
do not expect that the two chambers will pass identical bills,
I do hope that we can pave the way for initial passage and a
successful conference by reaching at least the broad outlines
of a compromise. I look forward to working with our Senate
colleagues in that endeavor.
Second, our subcommittee's hearings and other oversight
activities since 2003 indicate that further reforms are
necessary for ONDCP to fully achieve the goals that Congress
intended for it in 1988. ONDCP's reports to Congress on the
progress of drug control policies, its interactions with other
agencies, and its management of its own programs all need to be
improved. This bill attempts to strengthen, not weaken, the
office and its programs.
At the outset, it is important to understand that ONDCP is
a very unique institution within the Federal Government.
Although it is situated within the Executive Office of the
President, it is not simply a political arm of the White House.
If that were all that Congress wanted from ONDCP, there would
have been no reason to establish the office by statute.
What Congress wanted instead was an office that would not
only assist the President, but would also be responsible to
Congress to account for the Federal Government's progress in
drug policy. That is why Congress created the drug budget
certification process, for example, as well as other oversight
tools.
From the beginning, then, the Director has had to serve two
masters--the President and the Congress. That is not an easy
task, and that dual responsibility must be kept in mind when
reviewing our bill and the administration's response to it.
Neither this nor any administration is ever going to be
entirely happy with how Congress shapes the office, since what
Members think of as oversight is typically seen as interference
by an administration. That is normal in a government with
checks and balances.
Having said that, I would like to address several key
sections of the bill that have been singled out for criticism
by the administration. First, the administration opposes the
bill's mandate that the annual drug budget report prepared by
ONDCP for the Congress include all Federal drug control
activities proposed by the President. Since 2002, the
administration has tried, to the greatest extent possible, to
limit the activities included in that budget to those that have
a separate line item account and are exclusively dedicated to
drug control.
I understand the motivation behind the administration's
shift, and I know that the office was trying to make the budget
easier to read and simpler to manage. However, in practice this
policy was never consistently implemented. Many activities were
included, such as interdiction by the Coast Guard and legacy
Customs Service, that were not exclusively dedicated to drug
control.
Moreover, the new budget guidelines left out many
activities that the average citizen would think of as drug
control, such as the cost of prosecuting and incarcerating drug
traffickers in Federal prisons. This led many critics,
including our full committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, to
charge that by excluding these items the new budget
artificially inflated the proportion of the drug control budget
going to treatment and prevention, as opposed to enforcement.
I believe that, if we are going to err on one side or the
other, we should err on the side of inclusiveness. The primary
purpose of the drug budget required by Congress is to inform
Congress and the public about how much the administration is
proposing to spend on drug control. The bill does not call on
the office to include activities with only tangential
connection to drug policy, but it does require that all drug
control activities defined in the act be included. We need a
drug budget that attempts to be complete, rather than a budget
that is open to the charge, however unfair it may be, of
political manipulation.
Second, ONDCP apparently is not going to fight too hard for
its earlier proposal to remove the High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Areas [HIDTA], program to the Department of
Justice. However, it is criticizing the provision in the bill
that would require the administration to submit a separate
budget request for each individual HIDTA.
If ONDCP actually had the discretion to shift resources
among the HIDTAs, this criticism would have greater force. As
it is, however, every appropriations bill since the late 1990's
has required level funding for each individual HIDTA, meaning
that ONDCP has no real discretion over 90 percent of the
program budget.
The 2003 House bill tried to remedy this problem by
requiring ONDCP to allocate resources through a ranking system,
based on relative importance to the national drug threat. It
quickly became clear, however, that the Senate would not agree
to that system, and it was opposed by many of the HIDTAs and
their supporters in Congress. This time around, we have adopted
the Senate proposal to require individual HIDTA budget
requests. Is this the best possible solution? No. But I believe
it is the only politically possible way to break this
appropriations logjam.
Finally, I would like to address a concern raised by both
ONDCP and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America about the
Media Campaign. Specifically, the administration and the
Partnership have opposed a provision in the bill that would
require at least 82 percent of the campaign's Federal dollars
to be spent on the purchases of time and space for anti-drug
advertising, if the campaign's budget falls below $125 million.
If the budget is above $125 million, this floor would only be
77 percent.
Last time around, ONDCP did not have much of a problem with
this provision because the campaign's budget was $145 million
and the Senate was proposing an 80 percent minimum floor,
regardless of the budget size. Now, however, the program's
budget has fallen to $120 million, meaning that the 82 percent
floor would apply. ONDCP argues that this would force the
campaign to abandon its efforts to do Internet advertising and
other, less traditional media activities.
Anyone who has followed my career knows that I have fought
to strengthen the campaign and get it sufficient funding. If
the dollars were there, I would have no problem seeing some of
them spent on new media. But we included the 82 percent minimum
for a reason. The original intent and the primary purpose of
the campaign is to get anti-drug ads on the air. When the
budget is shrinking and the advertising costs are going up,
diversifying into other areas, however great their future
potential, just is not feasible.
Furthermore, I would have more sympathy if the
administration had actually requested more than $120 million
for the campaign this year. If ONDCP wants the campaign to do
more, it should start by fighting for more dollars. At some
point, shrinking budgets are going to make this campaign
totally ineffective. That day will only be hastened if the
campaign tries to take on more responsibilities than its budget
will allow.
Although the bill we are considering today was technically
sponsored by Chairman Davis and me, it is also the product of
the work of many interested parties who we consulted in
drafting legislation. It includes the Dawson Family Community
Protection Act proposed by the distinguished ranking member of
this subcommittee, Mr. Cummings. It includes a number of
changes to current law requested by Director Walters and the
administration. And it incorporates suggestions and ideas from
other committees and Members of Congress and key outside groups
including the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, drug
treatment providers, the Partnership for Drug Free America, the
Ad Council, and members of Federal, State, local, and tribal
law enforcement participating in the HIDTA and CTAC programs,
including the DEA.
I thought it was important, however, for the subcommittee
to hear from the primary organizations that would be affected
by the bill, and for that reason I asked Chairman Davis for the
opportunity to hold this hearing before tomorrow's markup. I
very much appreciate the willingness of our three witnesses to
join us today to discuss the bill.
We welcome Director John Walters of ONDCP; Director Tom
Carr of the Washington-Baltimore HIDTA, testifying on behalf of
the National HIDTA Directors Association; and Mr. Steve Pasierb
of the Partnership for Drug-Free America. We thank everyone for
joining us, and look forward to your testimony.
I would now like to yield to Ranking Member Mr. Cummings.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder and the text
of H.R. 2829 follow:]
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Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you for holding this important hearing today with regard
to H.R. 2829, legislation to reauthorize the Office of National
Drug Control Policy.
During the 108th Congress, the Government Reform Committee
reported on a bipartisan basis and the House passed H.R. 2086.
Like H.R. 2086, the bill before us would reauthorize the Office
of National Drug Control Policy and three key programs
administered by ONDCP--the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking
Areas program, the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center,
and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. ONDCP, HIDTA,
CTAC, and the Media Campaign all play an important part in
America's overall anti-drug policy coordinated by the ONDCP and
they deserve to be reauthorized. Because the Senate did not
pass similar legislation during the 108th Congress, we are
starting all over anew.
Let me say from the outset that I believe that H.R. 2829 is
a stronger bill than its predecessor. This is a bill that will
strengthen ONDCP, its component programs, and our overall anti-
drug effort by providing increased interagency communication
and cooperation, enhanced program and contractor
accountability, and continuous evaluation of anti-drug programs
and initiatives to let the administration, Congress, and the
American people know, in objective terms, what approaches are
working and what needs to be improved or rethought.
The bill is bipartisan in spirit to the extent that it
preserves key compromises reached last Congress through
negotiations between the committee's majority and minority on
H.R. 2086. Most notably, this bill would disallow the use of
any funding for the Media Campaign for partisan political
purposes, or to affect the outcome of electoral or regulatory
decisions.
H.R. 2829 also carries forward key bipartisan provisions in
H.R. 2086 that I strongly supported, including the Dawson
Family Community Protection Act. This legislation, which I
reintroduced with Chairman Souder earlier this year, would
annually provide at least $5 million in HIDTA funds to support
neighborhood safety and community cooperation with police in
areas severely affected by violent drug trafficking activity. I
sincerely appreciate the chairman's inclusion of the Dawson
provisions in H.R. 2086 last Congress and in the current bill.
The Dawson provisions underscore the importance of the
HIDTA program, which provides vital Federal funding to support
uniquely flexible and effective collaboration between Federal,
State, and local agencies. H.R. 2829 includes provisions to
preserve and strengthen the HIDTA program in its current form
and in its current location within ONDCP.
This is in stark contrast to the administration's proposal,
set forth in the President's fiscal year 2006 budget request,
which would gut funding for the HIDTA program and move HIDTA to
the Department of Justice under the Organized Crime and Drug
Enforcement Task Force. H.R. 2829 rejects this abandonment of
HIDTA while providing for increased cooperation with OCDETF and
enhancement of HIDTA's performance measurement system. The bill
provides HIDTAs the flexibility to address emergent drug
threats within and outside current HIDTA boundaries and to
support counter-terrorism activities, as the Director of ONDCP
deems appropriate.
H.R. 2829 also carries forward provisions from H.R. 2086 to
ensure that programs to expand access to drug treatment are
adequately supported in the Federal drug control budget, and to
halt enforcement of the drug-free student loan provision
against persons convicted of drug crimes prior to applying for
Federal educational assistance.
The bill requires ONDCP to develop comprehensive strategies
to address the severe threats posed by South American heroin,
Afghan heroin, the drug smuggling across the Southwest border,
in addition to calling for a comprehensive strategy for sharing
and coordinating counterdrug intelligence.
H.R. 2829 authorizes CTAC's technology transfer program,
which provides valuable support to State and local enforcement
programs. The bill also provides for increased coordination of
interdiction assets and efforts through its definition of the
duties and activities of the U.S. interdiction coordinator and
interdiction committee.
With regard to the Media Campaign, the bill authorizes
increased funding in line with the program's original
authorization, recognizes pro bono advertising as the program's
central component, provides for greater contractor
accountability, requires testing and evaluation of ads before
they appear on the air, and requires an independent evaluation
of the campaign's impact on preventing and reducing illicit
drug use by our youth.
Mr. Chairman, illegal drugs continue to exact an enormous
toll on American society in the form of lives lost, families
destroyed, communities decimated, and human promise wasted, not
to mention the immense costs to our health care system and lost
economic productivity and potential. I see this heartbreaking
scenario play out every day in my own neighborhood and in the
surrounding communities in Baltimore City and Howard County
that I represent. Nationwide, according to ONDCP, approximately
26,000 lives were lost to drugs just last year. This is simply
intolerable and our Nation's drug strategy must aim to reduce
this number sharply. I believe that H.R. 2829, if enacted, will
move us in the right direction.
We are joined today by the Director of the National Drug
Control Policy, the Honorable John Walters; the president and
CEO of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Mr. Steve
Pasierb; and Mr. Thomas Carr, director of the Washington-
Baltimore HIDTA program, who appears on behalf of the National
HIDTA Directors Association. I welcome their views on the
merits of this legislation and how it will affect their
organizations' contributions to the national anti-drug effort.
Finally, I want to commend you, Mr. Chairman, for your
leadership in crafting the legislation before us. I also want
to thank the witnesses for their unrelenting efforts to reduce
the harm that drugs inflict on our society every day, and for
their willingness to appear before our subcommittee today.
And with that, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you. Ms. Watson, do you have any opening
statement?
Ms. Watson. Thank you also, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
most important hearing on a bill that has major short and long-
term implications on our Nation's communities. The
reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
is part of a many step process that this Congress must take in
helping eliminate drugs on our streets.
As we all know, the drug problem in the United States is of
major concern to everyone. Areas surrounding my congressional
district and many jurisdictions throughout the State of
California are considered as High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Areas. Drugs are the root cause of a significant amount of
criminal activity nationwide and positive efforts to eliminate
the drug trafficking and use should be at the forefront of all
of our agendas.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy with its
immediate supervision of the National Youth Media Anti-Drug
Campaign, the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center, and the
Drug-Free Communities program is an essential part of combating
the drug problem in this Nation. These efforts are essential in
improving community safety and cooperation in areas severely
affected by violent drug trafficking activities.
Thanks to the witnesses and their willingness to come and
testify in order for all of us to understand the dire need for
an Executive Office of National Drug Control Policy. This
subcommittee, I am sure, will do everything in its power to
help reauthorize this most important entity to fight the
rampant drug problem in these United States. I want you to
please continue in your diligent efforts in fighting the war on
drugs and removing this poison from our communities.
Thank you, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative
days to submit written statements and questions for the hearing
record, and that all answers to written questions provided by
the witnesses also be included in the record. Without
objection, it is so ordered.
I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents,
and other materials referred to by Members may be included in
the hearing record, and that all Members be permitted to revise
and extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Our first panel is composed of the Honorable John Walters,
Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. As you
know, our standard procedure is to ask our witnesses to be
sworn in. So if you will rise and raise your right hand.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that Director Walters
responded in the affirmative.
I now yield to you to raise your comments, concerns,
suggestions on the legislation.
STATEMENT OF JOHN WALTERS, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG
CONTROL POLICY
Mr. Walters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you Ranking
Member Cummings, thank you Congresswoman Watson. I would ask
that my written statement be entered in the record here, and I
will just summarize a few points and comment on the issues,
some of which have already been touched on.
I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the progress we
have made together. I do understand my job as helping to
organize for the President the executive branch effort, but
also to help with the Congress in carrying out the enactment of
laws and the appropriation of money. I served a long time ago
in an administration where Dick Darman was OMB Director, and he
used to say ``Policy without budget is just talk.'' And my
general view is that is true.
So it is important that we both have law and that we have
the resources to carry out the purpose of law if we are going
to get to where we want to be. Together, we have gotten
enormous progress in many sectors I believe of this effort--17
percent decline in teenage drug use since 2001; 600,000 fewer
teenagers nationwide using illegal drugs in 2004 than in 2001.
We have to go further and we are trying to build on that
effort through expanding not only prevention programs, of which
the Media Campaign is an important part, but also, as you know,
requests for improvements and expansions of the treatment
system of the United States, the expansion of drug courts, the
expansion of efforts to intervene in the health system through
screening and brief interventions, the effort to expand
programs that involve drug testing, random testing, for the
purposes not of punishment, but of helping to intervene and
protect young people from use.
My written statement discusses a variety of provisions in
the reauthorization draft that we have concerns about. We think
that the current authorities of the office have operated not
only to help meet threat, but making a fundamental difference
with Congress and with other agencies, not only the executive
branch, but other nations, and now is not the time for change
to those things that are working. Obviously, we want to go
further. Obviously, we are not saying everything is perfect.
But there are some provisions in the reauthorization bill
which, as you know, we have concerns would take us backward.
I know the national drug control budget is a concern for
this committee and has been, I have testified here before and
heard that. We believe that OMB's budget review and
certification process is a critical instrument in focusing
resources toward critical initiatives and supporting the
policies as established by this Nation.
Since ONDCP was last authorized, there has been a
significant change to the drug budget process and what we
believe has enhanced our ability to have truth in budgeting, to
managing things that are really manageable and really make a
difference, and to make sure that we are not diverted in that
effort by efforts to say that resources that appear in the
budget that may be connected to the drug problem are vital,
direct, and central to making a difference in the drug problem
when they are not.
This proposal that we made to change the budget was
initially communicated to the Congress in February 2002
Strategy Documents. We did not do this secretly. It was fully
implemented for the fiscal year 2004 budget request of the
President that was presented at the beginning of 2003.
Prior to this change, the drug control budget consisted of
close to 50 budget accounts totaling $19 billion. The revised
presentation provides a greater degree of accountability and
allows I believe both the executive branch and the Congress to
see what is really being spent and what the real tradeoffs are.
We are concerned with Section 5 of the reauthorization bill
because it would have the overall effect of returning ONDCP to
the budget scorekeeping methodology of the past. It is not, and
we do not want, and I know you do not want, for us not to count
things that are really there. That is not our goal. And I know
we may have a reasonable person's disagreement over this. But
we want to count things that are really there, and we want not
to be making presentations about expenditures that are not
really manageable and directed and accountable at reducing the
drug problem.
I think when I last testified I mentioned that for this
budget cycle alone--as you know, the Veterans Administration
Hospital system is a major provider of treatment because of the
extent of that system and the people that they reach. For this
year, they had determined that they could reasonably add a
number of health care costs related to individuals that come in
for substance abuse problems.
Given the magnitude of that system, that would have added
half a billion dollars to what we could have scored as
treatment money being spent by the Federal Government on anti-
drug efforts in the area of substance abuse. We elected not to
do that because it was not really treatment funds, it was
treating other health costs.
Are they real, should they be treated? Of course they
should be. But we are trying to represent what we are really
spending on treatment, not all the other ancillary health
benefits.
Now if we are going to be consistent in this and we are
going to include that half a billion dollars, of course there
would be--I cannot even estimate at this point--massive sums in
other Government health care expenditures that we could develop
formulas to reasonably score as a portion of what we are
spending on drug control. The reason for not doing that is not
to not present the cost, as you know, we provide a report that
estimates the real cost of the drug problem. The reason for
that is to make sure that you can see and we can see what is
really being spent on drug treatment.
We have asked for another $50 million to the $2 billion we
are spending in the block grant. I am not sure we are going to
get that. But that is real treatment money and let us argue
over that and how well the treatment system is working. If we
inflate that number because of the categorization of costs
rather than expenditures, we are going to end up with a
misleading debate, less accountability, and I believe less
ability to manage resources.
Let me just touch on one other issue, because I know we are
pressed for time. We are concerned about Section 11 and the 82
percent requirement for the youth anti-drug Media Campaign
purchasing on advertising time and space when the appropriation
drops below $125 million. I know members of this committee have
been making efforts with us over the last several years to
increase and maintain the Media Campaign.
Despite those efforts and our best efforts meeting with
appropriators, and many of you have joined me in that effort,
the campaign has taken consistent reductions from the
President's request. Congress has not met the President's
request year after year after year and we have had a ratcheting
down of the resources for this campaign.
We have now asked for level funding because in the tight
budget climate I think it was reasonable for us and my
colleagues to say why not first get what we request before we
start seeking more money that we are not going to get and
create an expectation that is unreasonable. That is a fair
assessment, I believe.
The problem with the 82 percent as we see it from running
the program is it is not that we are using the additional money
to go after what may be important media subsequently. Today,
more children, the teenagers we are trying to target, spend
time on the Internet. If you want to get their time, attention,
their brains focused on this issue, you have to go to where
they are. They are less on television, they are less on radio,
they are more on the Internet. That is why businesses are doing
exactly what we are trying to do here. That is why the best
minds in the business have increased the percentage here.
But that is not the only issue. The issue is not simply--
and I will take a little bit of issue with you, Mr. Chairman--
to put ads on the air, and I know you mean this. It is to put
effective ads on the air. It is to put ads that work. That is
why the provisions about testing and evaluation are so
important. And we have used those provisions to put more
powerful ads on the air. That is why the campaign is working
better and helping to contribute to the reductions we have not
seen in a decade.
What we want to do is make sure there is enough money, even
as the program drops, to continue that testing and to put fresh
advertisements on the air, because this is still a big program,
and to make sure that the content is there with the resources
to prepare it. Otherwise, we are buying time for stuff that is
stale, that does not work.
And third, as you know, we believe very strongly that part
of the effectiveness of this campaign has been to see that one
size does not fit all. That we have targeted advertising that
we have had to spend additional money to get for Africa-
American youth and parents, for Hispanic-American youth and
parents, for Native American youth and parents, and for Asian-
American youth and parents. These are populations that have to
be, we believe, targeted specifically because one size does not
fit all here and we have to have sensitive and direct and
effective advertising and advertising buying.
All of that costs money that is outside of time and space
requirements. I am warning, legitimately, so that we do this
with open eyes, if you impose this limit at the current
spending level of the campaign, we will have to gut that kind
of advertisement. That is the probable result because we will
not have sufficient funds to maintain the regular one-size-
fits-all advertising and to buy the special ethnic targeting
that we are using. We believe that is a critically important
part because we know that many of those communities have been
disproportionately affected and continue to be by the drug
problem.
Last, I will just mention there are other portions of the
reauthorization that we believe inappropriately constrain the
President in the delegated authorities he has in a number of
areas, not only in budget presentation, in the certification
process that is now lodged under the President's delegation
through the Secretary of State and I participate, as does the
National Security Adviser in the final recommendation to the
President. In addition, there are some others that we can talk
about but that we have conveyed in some detail to the staff
about those constraints.
This is not about we think this is meddling. We think that
the problem here is in order to effectively use the tools of
the executive branch within the limits of the law, we need to
have some ability to present these fairly. You will decide what
the budget is going to be, you do every year. You will decide
what ultimately happens with the acceptance and support of
policy through the budget and legal process.
What we are asking is to allow us to organize the executive
branch so that we can present the best information to you, to
work with you, and to bring the executive and legislative
together effectively so that we can reduce that 26,000 people
that die every year from drugs further as the years go ahead. I
know that is also a goal that you share with us. And I look
forward to working with you as this process continues.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walters follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you. I will see if Mr. Mica wants to get
into a discussion on the certification. He was the original
author of that language as a staffer for Senator Hawkins, and I
helped when I was with Senator Coates. And part of the problem
with the Secretary of State is that she, in this case, has
other considerations in addition to drug trafficking. We are
strong supporters of that provision and I believe it is
necessary for your office to give that recommendation, and we
are concerned that it has not been as aggressively enforced as
it should be.
But I wanted to start with a question. I was not at the
meeting and I just want to clarify this because I was very
upset. You suggested at a meeting that the President might
issue a signing statement that would disavow some provisions of
this law. Are you saying that the President when he signs a
bill into law can choose to ignore or refuse to comply with
elements of the law?
Mr. Walters. We always comply with the law. The reason for
this is to be fair with everybody so that nobody thinks that we
were not candid, and I think we have had a reputation of
working with your office. We may disagree. You have gotten on
the phone, yelled at me, and we have had spirited discussions.
We do that because we care.
I have never had a conversation with any member of this
committee, never had a conversation with any Member of
Congress, House or Senate, where what they have told me is the
problem with the policy or what we are trying to do is it is
getting in the way of something else they want to do. The
problem is how do we get there faster. I understand that and
that is what we are trying to secure here.
But there are larger issues, and what we alerted the staff
to, and I personally alerted people to, is there are going to
be larger issues that may be of concern to the White House that
would impinge on Presidential prerogatives that we think may
need to be more closely defended. So there are also areas of
interpretation.
One example is the language about the status of the
Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. I
understand from some of these meetings that you and maybe other
members of the committee believe that the language does not
direct the President to put certain people in the cabinet,
which is not a statutory arrangement. There are people who
have, and others may have as we look at this as this proceeds,
another opinion, in which case they will be responding and we
will be responding as an administration to those provisions.
So, there are times where the ambiguity or the
understanding of a bill at the time of signing on the part of
the President is explained. And we may face such an issue if
some of these provisions continue. I am not trying to be cute
here. I am trying to say, in candor, I am trying to tell
everybody where our position is insofar as we have been able to
examine the provisions.
Mr. Souder. Quite frankly, it is an impeachable offense not
to enforce the law.
Mr. Walters. We are not talking about that.
Mr. Souder. And the suggestion that you believe that
provisions in this law--for example, it does not say anything
about the cabinet. If the President wants to add, which is not
a provision statement, it would just be a comment, that he
believes this law does not bind him to keep you in the cabinet,
it is true, it does not say anything about the cabinet. What it
says is that you have to be at a rank and status the same as a
cabinet member, which does not mean you are in the cabinet, but
you are of rank and status. And to deny that would be to not
follow the law.
And any clarification that suggests that your rank and
status would be different, that your salary would be different
would be a violation of law. And we cannot stand here and tell
kids that they have to follow drug laws and then have the
President of the United States say, oh, I get to interpret the
law this way to try to get around it, that I am going to try to
avoid very explicit provisions. My question is, what other
provisions would you suggest that he would try to get around?
We cannot prescribe the cabinet, the cabinet is a personal
preference, but we can say rank and status.
Mr. Walters. I do not want to start an argument about
something I just think there does not need to be an argument
about. Presidents for some period of time, Democrats and
Republicans, when they sign a certain piece of legislation
where there may be some cause for confusion have issued signing
statements to clarify what the President understands to be the
meaning of the bill so that there is no misunderstanding.
Nobody has ever been impeached for that. Nobody has ever
suggested it is an impeachable offense.
It is a matter of making clear so that if there is any
ambiguity, Congress could of course pass another law with a
different view and present it to the President for signing or
not. All I am saying is these touch on prerogatives that are
very carefully watched by the executive branch because, as the
Congress respects its power, the President respects his power.
That is what the separation of power is about.
Mr. Souder. But you are not suggesting that the 82 percent
provision would fall in that category?
Mr. Walters. No, sir. I do not think anyone would ever come
close to suggesting anything like that. No, sir.
Mr. Souder. OK. I am just trying to identify what would be
a provision that would be something--mainly, the cabinet
question?
Mr. Walters. I think some of the issues--again, I do not
want to, I think maybe the best way to do this, I do not want
to speculate on that. We will try to keep you informed so that
we are not accused of blind-siding you. But I also have to tell
you that, as you know, I think sometimes the levels of
ambiguity are a source of friction. So I think actually it is
important for us to be clear about where we stand.
Mr. Souder. Well we could try to clarify it in the bill if
you would tell us what--I mean, if we included report language
that suggested that we are not questioning the authority of the
President to create his own cabinet, that would certainly clear
that up.
Mr. Walters. I think there are other measures in there that
touch on the manner in which the President presents his budget
that may be issues of concern by OMB. Again, I am not issuing a
signing statement. I am not issuing a veto threat. I am not
issuing a Presidential position before he has had that
position. I am trying to do what I thought you wanted us to do,
and that is work with the committee and the staff to explain
issues that may be problems so that you know where we are and
do not get surprised down the line.
And if we get in a position where there is conflict,
obviously we make more progress when we have consensus. I am
merely stating, and I do not think it should be a surprise to
anybody, that some of the provisions--well, again, I am in the
President's cabinet. I have the rank that I believe the
reauthorization law would add in the current law. I do not
think anyone has suggested, at least I have not seen it lately,
that we do not have appropriate execution of the law as it
stands here regarding the Director of the Office and the
carrying out of the office's duties.
So I do not think this is a problem that has manifested
itself. I understand that you have concerns about the period
subsequent to this President and maybe this Director, as you
probably should. But I am just saying that the more we enter
into some of these areas, the more there could be potential
serious administration issues that are not over drug policy but
are over the separation of powers.
Mr. Souder. I also wanted to ask one more question on the
national ad campaign. Nobody disagrees that there has been more
diversity in media. But were you suggesting that--and you have
had substantial reductions in the national TV time because the
costs are rising while the program has been flat--that any
major campaign in America has been reducing their national TV
at the rate we have been reducing this campaign?
Mr. Walters. Well, actually, I will go back and look at the
numbers, but off the top of my head, I do not believe we are
actually reducing it. In fact, through a lot of hard work, I
recognize this could be another case where no good deed goes
unpunished, but through a lot of hard work we have more
efficiently run the campaign. We have taken back more of the
match. We are maintaining the reach and frequency with young
people even on a lesser budget.
Now I realize that weakens our argument to say, well, we
would like to have the budget maintained or we would like to
have the budget increased. But the fact of the matter is, yes,
I think it is very difficult, as we have tried to warn each
year, as you have tried to help us warn appropriators each
year, that you cannot continue to take out roughly $20 million
out of the program every year and take it somewhere else and
continue to have the kind of weight we have.
We are at the point, and I think that is why we are so
concerned about the 82 percent is, is what we need to maintain
is the ability to have power, to have contact with the target
audience wherever they are in the media, we have to go where
they are, and that is changing, and we have to be able to
produce an array of ads that reach the groups that are needed
to be effected here. What we are worried about, we want to put
as much contact on the air, there is not a disagreement on
that, we are just saying that this kind of limitation is likely
to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Mr. Souder. You are, in effect, wandering into incredibly
explosive territory. I just want to say this for the record,
that while there has been more efficiencies if you count the
donated time, which, quite frankly, was there, it has just been
organized differently, that I am not going to argue that
effective ads are not important, and I am a big believer in
market research, but the truth is that, as has been noted in
the media, I have defended your office and the office of ONDCP
as we have had multiple questions about the ad agency, as we
are now having questions about the research agency. And that,
in fact, much of this was donated prior to when we started to
get in and have these services contracted and the argument that
it would be more effective.
Now we have run into problems in both categories. We have
seen actual real time, in terms of real dollar time that we can
buy, reduced. And you have warned, and others have warned this
committee and other committees that there is a point where we
reach a tipping point where we cast this whole campaign
overboard. And that part of this 82 percent question is to say
there is some minimal level here that if we do not get it up on
the air, this campaign is good-bye. And that is what our
attempt is to do. The Senate actually pushed it just as hard or
harder. And I do not believe that this provision is going to
change.
Now I would like to see more dollars so that we could be
more creative. And the people who want the more creative things
to add to the campaign, which would be helpful, we need to get
more dollars or find other free sources in working with the
national media and different localized media and Internet to
try to find creative free market ways to supplement the
national ad campaign.
But this was meant to reach the bulk number of buyers, to
put the dollars there, and it is getting at a dangerously low
level. And with the particular problems that we have been
having already, which just keep getting compounded from my
perspective and harder and harder to defend, it is very
frustrating.
Mr. Walters. I just want to say one thing. I would frame it
differently and I think the difference is important. When I
came on board, as you know, this campaign was not working
effectively. Drug use was not going down. And ultimately, as
you believe and the President believes, it is not about whether
we try against the drug problem. That is the minimum
requirement for public service and taking public
responsibility, that you are going to attempt to seriously to
the best of your ability reduce the threats to the public. The
issue is, are we competent at reducing those threats?
Today, with the expenditures, with the management problems
that we faced, with the need to clean up some difficulties the
campaign had before, and in all that, through the standing of
many of you sitting at this table, we have built a better
campaign that is working. We should not have this discussion in
a false kind of atmosphere of this is not working and we have
to get this truck that is up on blocks running again.
This truck is driving an important dimension, if not maybe
the most important dimension, of declines in youth drug use.
Because the same surveys that show those declines show us that
kids exposed to the campaign understand the dangers of drugs
and particular drugs that we have tried to target because of
their particular threat more aggressively, have better
understanding, that parents are now talking to their kids more,
that they are monitoring their kids more, and the kids say
that.
So this campaign is working in a way that it has never
worked. It is successful. How do we follow through with that? I
think we need to continue to do the reforms that we have put in
place. That is, reach kids where they are, reach them with
powerful messages, reach them with the right time and
frequency. As you know, we have taken back some of the
``match'' here and focused it on actual parallel programming of
the same kind and the same place that is segmented.
One of the problems with the power of the campaign, I will
tell you from my personal experience, is when I talk to most
Members of Congress and most adults and I even show them in
some cases the youth ads, they are very pleasantly impressed
but they never see them. Why do they never see them? Because we
have such a capacity now with using the best techniques to
target kids in target audiences because that audience is
segmented. They do not all watch Bonanza at night together as a
family.
The biggest single place where people saw the ads was the
Super Bowl because of the co-viewing and the monumental size of
that audience. But most of the power that we are having is we
can put these ads in a very cost-effective way in the reality
of young people. But that reality is not the same reality as
adults.
So what we have to do is be able to kind of defend the
program that is working as powerfully as it is with the
knowledge that creates certain challenges, because it was much
easier for everybody when they saw all the ads on the prime
time media which adults were watching. The problem is it did
not reach the kids and it did not have the power that we
needed. We have all changed that.
And I am not saying this in any facetious way or any way of
being kind of obsequious about this, it has been a slog, you
know that. We have met with appropriators, you have written to
your colleagues, you have talked to people, because we are in
the same appropriations bill that builds highways and this
program can be turned into asphalt, and has been. This program
has been shifted to other kinds of priorities, including the
HIDTA program you brought up.
Yes, we like law enforcement, we want to balance strategy.
Law enforcement will be continuing to lock people up at young
ages forever if we do not reduce demand. You all agree with
that. That is what we are trying to do.
I just ask you, this is not a trivial provision, we believe
this will break our ability to reach minority youth, break our
ability to have the kind of consistent power, and it is not
tomorrow, it is because the appropriation is at this level. Now
we are all working to try to get this appropriation to stop
hemorrhaging, but I think we also have to be honest.
Mr. Souder. I am just not buying that you can reach
minority youth more through Internet than you can through
targeted television.
Mr. Walters. We are not reaching everybody the same way.
Mr. Souder. That is a nice try. But I understand that we
have a difference of opinion. We will continue to work through
that.
Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. First of all, I want to thank you again for
your service. I do just want to go back to something that the
chairman just said. I realize that minority youth have
dramatically increased with regard to use of the Internet,
something that I follow very closely. As a matter of fact our
youth in my district have probably gone about 30-35 percent in
the last several years in the use of the Internet.
But that is not my question. My question is more of an
overall question with regard to ads on computers. Have we done
some market research with regard to whether kids actually look
at these ads? I watch my 11 year old and I do not know what ads
she might be looking at, but she is usually focused on whatever
she is trying to get to. And while we adults may very well kind
of look at the ads on the side or whatever, have we done some
research on that on kids?
Mr. Walters. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. I notice you made a big deal of it and I want
to know how did you get there.
Mr. Walters. Yes. I think that is a very important point
and I am glad you raised it, because I was not clear about
this. Why is Internet advertising attractive? One, because the
kids are there and if we are going to reach them we have to go
where they are. If they are not in front of the television,
they are in front of the computer, running ads on the
television does not help you.
If they are on the computer, how do we reach them? We all
use computers. There is a lot of stuff there you never pay any
attention to. One of the reasons why it is extremely cost-
effective to advertise in this area is because you can pick a
market, you can go to pages where your audience is going to be
and you can segment it to some degree much more cost-
efficiently than you can when you buy a prime time television
ad.
But what you have to do is you have to have ads that people
will click through. We can measure click-through, and we can
measure when they click through to a Web site that then has
additional information how much time they spend on that Web
site, how many other pages that they use. We use the commercial
services that provide advertising monitoring here; it is not my
office. We have a very high for the market click-through rate
for this audience, and we have them spending more time on the
Web sites.
Now, I want to raise that particular issue. It costs more
to make those ads. The way you get them to click through, as I
understand it, and we rely on experts, as you do, I know many
of you when you use advertising in political campaigns, is
there has to be something intriguing about that banner or about
that thing on the screen.
So you have to have new things, they have to be done in a
creative way that get the target audience to click on that and
come through. Because we are not just choosing the particular
thing that is written, we are not choosing words, we are using
an interaction. We want them to interact with the computer. It
can have a much more powerful effect because then they get
involved and they actually read more than they would if they
were watching a television program and there may or may not be
an ad on.
The cost here is not tremendous but it is an important
additional dimension of advertising in this medium, which, as I
say, is more cost-effective, but it is more costly to kind of
get the creative material there to bring them to the
information. It is not just showing them in front of a screen
that it has only got one thing on it. We are initially
competing and we have to have a competitive advantage.
Mr. Cummings. Let me ask you, you are in a kind of
difficult position here with the HIDTA situation. This stuff is
political. Let us not kid ourselves. Everybody has a HIDTA.
Nobody wants to give it up, including me.
Mr. Souder. I do not have one.
Mr. Cummings. Oh, I am sorry.
Mr. Souder. It is going to get more difficult.
Mr. Cummings. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman.
Well, I have one. You know how politics work, everybody
wants to cover their own turf, and legitimately so. People have
problems, some problems are more extensive in one HIDTA area
than somewhere else. But the fact is, if I have a problem in my
area, as far as I am concerned, and I am sure that is how most
of us think, then it is a major problem because we have to deal
with it, we hear from our constituents, we have to deal with
all the problems that are associated with drugs.
Now, I say all that to say that the probability is that no
matter what happens there are going to be HIDTAs. I am just
wondering how do you then deal with that? Because I am trying
to project in the future. I know the chairman asked you about
issues as to things that might be in your prerogative and all
that. I am not there. I am sure that does not fall with that. I
am just asking how do you deal with that considering all of the
effort that you all have made to kind of change that landscape,
because it was major policy change, would you agree?
Mr. Walters. Yes. The chairman accused us of not fighting
very hard, while hard enough to get him to call me up pretty
mad. So I was not aware that we were backing off in some kind
of trivial way. But, yes, look, we knew when we made the
proposal that there was going to be some pain associated with
this. We were going to receive some, others were going to feel
some.
Why did we do that? Not because we do not want there to be
aid to people who are suffering and need to be helped in terms
of enforcement. Again, the President's budget, as you know,
includes the elimination of over 100 programs. If we did not
like the program and we thought it was not effective and we
thought there was a better use for the money, we zeroed
programs. We did not zero the HIDTA program.
We did reduce it to try to focus on State and local law
enforcement, and we tried to move it into an area we thought it
could be better managed with other Federal, State, and local
task force operations in the Justice Department. I understand
that many people think that is a bad idea and we may not get
it.
I still think the merits of this are we want to focus on
areas where there is not only benefit to individuals with this
program that live there, but there are areas that have a
broader implication. Baltimore-Washington, I do not think
anybody has questions about.
Again, to show you what I actually think is the underlying
commonality for all this, I was going to read what I thought--
there is nothing better that sums up my view of this program
than to say the following: ``It is easy to make a case for the
need to send Federal assistance to the hubs of national drug
traffic to disrupt the market and keep drugs from every city in
America. It is much harder to make the case to take taxpayer
money from Indiana and send it to another State if it is to be
used mainly for local projects or is not effective.''
Now, that was a very wise man, the chairman of this
committee, who said that in his own testimony. I agree 100
percent with that. And the question that we face with this
program is how do we get it from being simply a selective
revenue-sharing program that does not have sufficient
accountability into something that allows us to cutoff markets
that have spread--Baltimore-Washington, New York, other areas
of the country. We believe we could better integrate it by
providing accountability.
Now the reason I do not have particular support for the
budgeting requirement in the current draft of the
reauthorization is, look, I admit that the current situation is
such that we do not have accountability in the discretion of my
office to direct money. That is a problem. We are trying to fix
that and we would like to work with you to fix it.
I do not think this comes close to doing it. Because when
you have to submit individual HIDTA budgets with the
President's budget submission, they will have to be prepared 18
months, maybe closer to 2 years, but at least 18 to 12 months
ahead of when they are going to be executed. That is driving
your car through the rear view mirror. Nobody can predict in
law enforcement where they are going to be as a result of
enforcement operations of any significant magnitude 18 to 24 or
12 months from now. They need to have the ability to respond to
real threats.
Again, we are not just funding the underlying
infrastructure of local law enforcement with this program. We
are trying to target major needs and cases that are going to
have larger ramifications.
Again, it is pretty obvious to me that the Congress has a
problem allowing us the discretion to choose these. I do not
know whether the solution is to look at something like allowing
us to, with some selectivity, choose to give money to this
program on the basis of the applications brought forth by
designated areas or maybe even larger designated areas for
compelling cases, have them compete, and those that have multi-
jurisdiction enforcement measures that are going to have larger
ramifications for their particular jurisdiction or for larger
jurisdictions, maybe tie some of it so it has to be more
routed, maybe allow others of it to be more discretionary.
Again, here is the underlying problem I am getting at that
I think is of concern for you who have HIDTAs and those of you
who do not. The problem the administration is going to have is
a version of what you have as authorizers and that
appropriators kind of do not have as much because of the way
this is playing out politically. We are going to have trouble
maintaining support for the program.
So this pain is likely to continue year after year if the
program one, does not demonstrate results, which we are trying
to build into the program but is taking an awfully long time
and is going to be still painful, and we will see whether
people want to hear winners and losers when we have results;
and two, that it is selective. It is a revenue-sharing program
that is not national. It is in 28 places.
And the question is why are those 28 places, given the
variety of character of those places now, why are they
selected. And in this competitive environment for State and
local law enforcement moneys, it is very difficult to say that
these are the places that ought to get that money when we do
not have accountability and we do not really have a defensible
way of defending where the moneys are located.
So I do not want to fight with you and other Members year
after year after year, but I feel I am in a position where if
we are going to carry out our responsibility, we are going to
have to say we do not think this is as competitive as some
other things. And so then instead of moving ahead on consensus,
we are going to be fighting over the political debate about the
spoils of the HIDTA program.
Mr. Cummings. So, basically, if you could sum up what you
just said, you are trying to figure out how do we be most
effective and efficient with the funds that we have while doing
the kind of work that HIDTA is doing.
Mr. Walters. Yes. I want to go back to Chairman Souder, of
his testimony, not of the draft bill.
Mr. Cummings. OK. Let me just ask you one other thing. You
said something, I am always talking about efficiency and
effectiveness, and one of the things that you talked about here
was this whole budgeting situation. And you used just a moment
ago in your direct testimony I think a thing about the
Veterans' treatment.
I think we all want truth in reporting, in budgeting. If it
is not there, we do not want to be told that it is there
because at some point we have to deal with that, whatever the
fact is. But I take it that this is just a matter of where you
place the numbers in certain budgetary documents. Is that
right? In other words, these things are happening, it is just
that you do not want them to be categorized the way that the
bill is saying it should be done. Is that it?
Mr. Walters. Yes. I want to be clear. The reason I brought
this up and the reason I think this is more heated than it
might be otherwise is that I believe this seriously weakens the
power of my office. The program stuff on Media Campaign, as you
know, I am concerned about. I do not believe, leave aside the
executive prerogative issues which may be more separation of
powers than applied to me, there is nothing in the bill that
more concerns me about powering down my office's ability to do
a job than this measure.
That is why I made the change in the budget in the first
place. And I will tell you why. It is very easy for both
appropriators in Congress and budget people in the executive
branch outside my office, when you have large things connected
here and the issue is going to be scrutiny, how much are we
spending on treatment, how much are we spending on prevention,
what is the ratio of supply reduction to demand reduction, that
becomes a huge game. The issue is, are we looking at real
things or are we gaming ourselves?
Once you start putting in entitlement programs and other
kinds of things, as you know, many things are influenced by the
cost of drugs, and if you really start putting this in there,
one, you create a sense that we are spending all this money and
why are we not getting more for it, but also we end up having
an apparent focus. When I was in the administration, in
President Bush's father's administration, we increased actual
treatment requests and spending more than any other
administration at that time, whether it was 4 years or 8 years.
Every single year, as Chief of Staff, I had an enormous
fight with the Secretary of HHS Louis Sullivan, not because he
did not care about treatment, but because the squeeze of
everything else he was forced to deal with in the health care
budget meant that he had to jealously guard his resources and
he did not want to put as much money into drug treatment as he
did into other things, you know, WIC, and caring for people
that are in need across the board. How did we get there?
Because we could say that treatment number was isolated.
As this has expanded, it has become harder to do that. That
is why we cut it back to programs we could really manage. Now
there are several that we cannot fully count as substantive.
There is the Coast Guard, as was mentioned, there is the legacy
Customs agencies, there is the Veterans Administration system,
and there may be one or two more that I am now forgetting.
What did we do in that case? We used the authority that the
office has to both score a certain portion of money, but we
also asked for spending plans that would be modelled on the
Defense Department, which has a portion of its money but has a
central transfer account that money comes out of so it really
goes to drugs.
As you get into more accounts that have smaller and smaller
amounts, or that are not manageable, we spend all of our time
then arguing about things that really are not central to
reducing the problem. I do not want either somebody in the
public or somebody in Government to be able to game us about
this.
So that when you look at the budget and you say, are you
cutting prevention, we have to score what we did. We had to
score the cut to the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, you
saw that up front, and I was not able to score 14 other things
in the Department of Education, or 5 other things in HHS, or 6
other things in other programs in other places and say it is
not really a cut to prevention because look what we found when
we did rescoring.
That is what happened in the old days. I was in the Reagan
administration, I was in other administrations. That is what
used to happen, people found money. And they can make
reasonable arguments about, well we should be scoring this and
look at all these resources. But you know and I know no one is
going to pull money which used to be scored from Head Start
because it is not specifically categorized and put it into
treatment programs in HHS because it is not real money. It is
an estimate of cost, not an estimate of budget that is
manageable.
And we can talk about which things ought to be in here if
you want, but the fact of the matter is I believe that in order
to hold people accountable you have to have programs that are
managed. Otherwise, all these things are not going to show
results because no one is going to be able to evaluate them.
Mr. Cummings. Let me just ask you one last question. Let me
just tell you where I am trying to get to. If I have a million
treatment slots, what I want to know is, assuming it is the
same cost per treatment slot, hypothetically, just like last
year and this year, is there an increase in treatment slots?
Are you following what I am saying?
Mr. Walters. Yes, sure.
Mr. Cummings. I am asking you what method best reflects
that, and I am assuming you are going to say yours, right?
Mr. Walters. Partially. We cannot----
Mr. Cummings. Do you understand what I am saying? I am
trying to figure out, well, then, if there is some other agency
that you do not have a lot to do with, they just so happen to
have some money that goes for some treatment slots, I am trying
to figure out how does that play. But I am more concerned about
what you deal with and whether, when I look at what you deal
with, there is a reduction in my treatment slots, or whether
they are the same, or whether there is an increase. Do you
follow me?
Mr. Walters. Yes. The reason I hesitated is you picked an
area where we have a particular problem because of the block
grant. We are trying to build accountability into treatment.
You have picked something else we could have had probably more
of a metric.
What we have done with, for example, and we have worked to
try to change this, is we tried to create more accountability
with the States to measure how many slots do we have, what
slots are being used, how effective are the slots being used,
how were they proportioned against the need. We are trying to
get there. We are not there yet.
What we did with the Access to Recovery money, the
President's request for additional treatment to be used to
follow the needs of individuals, is we asked for such a
monitoring program. Now, the dollars are not buying treatment
services, now the dollars are being given to trackable
individuals in the form of reimbursable resources that the
States then have to track it. They have to tell us how many
people got served, they have to tell us what the cost of those
services are, and they have to tell us whether or not those
services were effective, there is a quality control over the
provider, and we let people choose, and we are going to provide
that information.
The reason we did that is not only we wanted to have real
expansion of capacity, but we want to see whether or not--I
just met with people, one of the Access to Recovery grantees
for the first $100 million is Idaho. I was just out there and
met with people there. I think they have fantastic news. They
believe they are doubling the number of treatment providers in
that State as a result of the Access to Recovery program. They
are bringing not only non-profits in, they are bringing for-
profits in that will now provide services on the basis of a
reimbursable fee-for-service kind of arrangement we see in
other things, with floors and minimums and standards here.
What they are concerned about is are we going to continue
this program, because they have had an enormous expansion of
those providers in that State. We have done that also with one
grant of the first 15 to a Native American group in California
and they are expanding the number of providers dramatically.
And that is not just the direct in-treatment service providers.
But we know and you know, we need a continuity. We need to get
people back in the community with housing, we need to make sure
that they are transitioned to education and jobs. It allows a
proportional expenditure on those things that we know make
recovery durable.
I think that is what is most encouraging here, and we want
to try to do that. Again, that is what we want to talk about.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I get to participate
in this review of the reauthorization. Sometimes we go along
and sort of do things almost in perpetual motion here. I did
not get to do an opening statement, but I want to comment first
on----
Mr. Souder. Do you want to do an opening statement?
Mr. Mica. No. I am going to ask some questions. It will be
a combo. But Mr. Cummings, who is getting up, was talking about
the HIDTAs and that they are political. I must say, with the
HIDTA that I have in central Florida, I found the situation
very political back in the mid-1990's. And I guess because I
was in the minority at the time I did not get attention, and we
had a different administration and I could not get the then
Director to designate one in central Florida. We had record
heroin deaths.
So I took it to Congress and I think I got central Florida
included by legislative fiat. Then I got a call from the press
that said John McCain had identified my HIDTA as a pork
project, at which point I became totally unglued, because I had
kids dying in the street.
So when I found out the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey
says, I found out that when my proposal got over to the Senate
they added two areas that really should not be HIDTAs on to it.
And that was the reason for John's designation. I had a rather
pointed call with John McCain at the time and he did clarify
his position that mine was not a pork project, that it was
needed, but the others had, for political reasons, latched on.
What we have done over the past 15 years is added 28 to a
program that has kind of lost its purpose. I have to say first
of all, I had greatly admired John Walters. I do not know where
he was, but we have needed him for some time to come and say
that the Emperor has no clothes, because HIDTA definitely is
out of control. It does not serve its original purpose.
I am as guilty as anyone when they said that the
administration is cutting HIDTAs, to sign something and we will
protest or something. I signed it and then I started looking at
what John had thought out and looked at. HIDTAs did not serve
their purpose.
And even recently it sort of rubbed me the wrong way that
some of the HIDTAs are buying equipment and setting up little
bureaucracies and they are getting this set amount whether or
not the problem exists or whether we had this situation 10
years ago or not. This needs to be corrected.
I think, John, their proposal to shift it may make a lot of
sense, cutting down administrative costs and duplication, but
it does need to return to a targeted program. And I salute you
for waking up the sleeping folks here. It has to be disturbing
because these folks have had their snout in the trough for some
time now and they are so accustomed to feeding at the HIDTA
trough that they cannot see the original purpose for this. So,
first of all, I would not give up. You are not going to give
up, are you?
Mr. Walters. No, sir.
Mr. Mica. OK. You answered my question there. Then the
other issue that was raised is the 82 percent. I think this has
raised a great discussion because when we started out the Media
Campaign we thought of media as the traditional media, TV and
radio. And here again John Walters has looked at this and said,
hey, if they are not watching this stuff--and you wonder, you
know, we are spending a huge amount of money on these ads. What
are we doing with this money? You have to target your audience.
This makes a lot of sense.
So I become concerned that we put artificial constraints.
Now we may need some compromise that they develop a plan,
submit it to us. I mean, you have targeted purposes you want to
serve, Mr. Chairman. But I think what we need to do is look,
are we reaching those audiences, and then it is not always how
much we spend, but it is where and how we spend it.
Do you think, Mr. Director, that we can come up with some
compromise plan or something that could be provided to satisfy
the Members? The problem is you did inherit a program with a
lot of problems. It was a new program that got off on some
tangents and had serious problems and people have genuine
concerns for the way the money is spent. Do you think it is
possible we could reach something that would satisfy the
committee?
Mr. Walters. Sure. I think some slight language changes,
actually, just allowing the inclusion of the 82 percent toward
services would help us have some flexibility here. What we need
is some flexibility to maintain the things that I think
everybody wants.
We recently sought ads, for example, that I know both of
your States are concerned about, in regard to meth. We did
those through an urgent, short time contract with PDFA to
produce those ads. We are going to hopefully have those ready
by the end of the summer. We could not do that with the current
budget with this kind of provision because it would not be,
under the way this is written we believe, an allowable expense
with the 82 percent requirement.
So if we can add, without troubling you that we are going
to bulk up the administrative costs, that we are going to
maintain quality, we are going to maintain targeting, and we
are going to maintain progress, we all want that. I am hoping
that we can reach a consensus because I think that is when we
move ahead, as I said, and I think so do you.
Mr. Mica. Again, Mr. Chairman, I have seen a lot of
bureaucrats in 24 years on the Hill in different capacities,
and people come up from agencies and usually repeat the same
thing or propose the same thing. I have to commend the Director
for coming up and taking on a tough issue like the HIDTAs. And
I am as guilty as any, but I am willing to give up mine in
central Florida. What purpose is it now serving to continue
that flow of money to a problem that we identified years ago.
Now, I might have other problems, and I fought for Mr.
Cummings who certainly has a problem. We had an intolerable
situation in Baltimore. Part of that was that the local
authorities would not even work with the HIDTAs. But getting
the resources and then getting the right program together and
then targeting it, we might do more good for Baltimore right
now in targeting maybe Puerto Rico or some other point where
the stuff is entering the country and the market.
But, again, I appreciate your taking those difficult
positions, and then also educating us on educating the public
and those potential drug abusers. Because if we are doing the
same thing or targeting the same thing and it is not working,
we are making a mistake.
The final question, I will not take as long as Mr.
Cummings. Is he still ranking member?
Mr. Souder. Yes.
Mr. Mica. Good. Very good. Very good. Because he has had a
lot of experience in this area. The final thing is maybe you
could tell me where we are, John, on getting international
cooperation? I helped author that language tying drug
cooperation and we had the fully cooperating language, which I
guess we changed to demonstrably failed in cooperation. Where
are we now, and is the language sufficient? Is this effective,
or do we need to do a relook at that?
Mr. Walters. I think the language is working. And the
reason I say that is we have had historic cooperation, as you
know, you have been involved in some of the direct, as has the
chairman, direct work with some of the foreign governments. It
is not so easy in places like Colombia, but we have a unique
partner and through that we have had remarkable progress.
I think the difference was in the past, because of the
variety of interests, when we tried to make the criteria so
narrow, I think we sometimes had other interests that are
inevitably going to be in the offing here that weakened our
ability to be candid, frankly, about what was happening here.
I think it is very important that we have a report every
year about what these governments are doing. For many of the
people in those governments, it is very important to have the
truth be told. And they, frankly, trust the United States to
tell the truth here, as they do in other areas.
But I think we are now able to say, both on the one hand
and on the other hand, and whether they are making progress and
what they are doing, and in a way that allows those governments
to cooperate. There were times in the past I think, frankly,
where we had trouble and we had to say to people who needed
encouragement----
Mr. Mica. Are they? Mexico was on a steady increase in the
corruption. Now we are seeing of course a change in the
situation in Bolivia. A lot of that had gotten under control.
But some of that was because of the fear of being decertified
and, remember when we had that, just before decertification
they were all over the ballpark trying to cooperate.
Mr. Walters. Yes. I think two things happened here. One is,
certification is obviously an important tool. You had the
reaction to it. But also the ability to describe what is
actually happening. Because certification could be done, as you
know, with an explanation, even under the old criteria, where
you would say, well, is the glass half full or half empty, and
you would make a judgment and then you would kind of explain
why that judgment was true, even though I think many people
like yourself, sometimes myself, wanted to have a firmer line
here. But there were a variety of ways.
Ultimately we asked ourselves, how do we move things along
and have credibility, use the pressure that the government of
the United States with its resources and its authority have,
and also bring these countries along. I think we are doing
that. There are certainly problems in Mexico. But I would point
out that the Mexicans have put more major traffickers in jail.
They are having trouble with managing them in that situation.
I have met with the new Attorney General just in the last
week. But we also have capable forces now that are not perfect,
that need to grow, that need to have roots, but are now able to
go after some of these traffickers as never before. And I would
say the biggest example of that, which I think is undeniable,
is, unfortunately, the violence along the border.
The reason that the violence is what it is at this point is
they have destabilized major organizations and those
organizations are fighting each other now, they are also
fighting authorities. Unfortunately, this horrible problem
sometimes goes through those transition points when the violent
who are stable become destabilized and turn on each other.
But the Mexican government is going to face the challenge
because it has actually been moving forward of how does it move
it to the stage where the violence and the power of those
people decline. I do not know how much more progress President
Fox can make here because of the near end of his term. But we
are going to face the issue again with them of how do we move
them forward.
I just visited the Southwest border and I met with DEA
personnel that we have in Mexico. We are trying to work on more
effectively using our resources there because we think we need
to do that. But, again, it does require partnership. I think it
is sometimes frustrating because these governments have had
enormous problems, and continue to have enormous problems, with
corruption. I do not think we have a simple way of erasing all
that, as you know.
But I think we have to figure out how can we maximally make
progress. How do we posture ourselves with the tools in
legislation and with the actions of the government of the
United States to be able to put positive forces in as strong a
position as we possibly can. And it is mixed in some places.
Yes, I am worried about Bolivia. I am worried about some of
the areas. But also, again, on balance, overall production in
the Andes of cocaine is down dramatically, across the Andes,
overall interdiction is up dramatically because of
effectiveness. Heroin, which is a part of the problem here in
Washington, in Baltimore, in Chicago, heroin availability from
South America is down 17 percent as a result of eradication and
interdiction efforts.
So, never before in history have we had as many movements
on supply and demand moving in a positive direction. Our
problem, as it is yours, is to follow through.
Mr. Mica. Well now that we have gotten rid of the other
side, I can ask another question. Staff is still here. They are
monitoring very closely.
Did I hear you say 26,000 drug over-dose deaths?
Mr. Walters. I think that is the estimate of total deaths.
Mr. Mica. That is continuing to rise. Because when I left
the Chair it was about 19,000.
Mr. Walters. I will have to check on the trend line.
Mr. Mica. I think I heard you say 26,000.
Mr. Walters. Yes, I did say 26,000.
Mr. Mica. It sounds like it has not improved a whole lot.
To some degree, it depends what you count.
Mr. Walters. That may be. It used to be a lot of this was a
result of, say, drug-related violence. And some of that is
obviously still going on. Sometimes it is a result of over-dose
deaths. Again, over-dose deaths are more common when drug
supply is growing.
Mr. Mica. But that drug-related violence is the people who
are on drugs who die. That does not count the people who were
the victims, which would probably double that number.
Mr. Walters. Right. We also, as the chairman indicated, it
is how you count, because we also have in the case, for
example, of cocaine, in some cases of heroin, we have a lot of
people who have been addicts a long time and are dying as a
result of the higher rates of disease and debilitation caused
by the drug. So, again, all these deaths are tragic and we want
to stop them, that goes without saying.
Mr. Mica. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, just to you, on this
HIDTA thing, I really think the administration has raised some
issues and I think we really need to look at this. Because it
is not targeting and it is not doing what it was set up to do.
We are spending the same money in some of the same areas. The
accountability, to me, is lacking. And somebody has yelled
``uncle.'' Maybe their solution is not the right way, but we
have to find a way.
Mr. Souder. Well, I disagree with your fundamental point. I
think that you can argue whether the National Ad Campaign or
the HIDTAs or local law enforcement has improved the numbers.
We have made progress. I think we have leveraged our dollars
more effectively than we have historically.
Interestingly, one of the challenges in the quote that I
was given was correct that the Director did, but what he did
not comment was that in my area I do not have a HIDTA, I have a
drug task force funded by Burn grants that the administration
proposes to zero out, other people have meth Hot Spots programs
that the administration proposes to zero out, other people have
it funded in other categories.
And when you looked at it holistically, what you had was a
piecing together of some places had HIDTAs, some places had
drug task forces, some people had them funded through COPS,
through Burn grants, or Bureau of Justice Assistance, Chairman
Rogers had his funded through a whole other type of program
that he was able to fund down in Kentucky, and pretty much most
regions of the country now have different cooperative things
that we tried to push 10 years ago to get State, local, and
Federal so they did not arrest each other, so they did
information sharing.
It was embarrassing, quite frankly, to hear the testimony
of the Department of Justice, as well as others, say what their
alternative was to the existing HIDTA program. They do not have
it. They have not researched it. They had not talked to
anybody. The national narcotics officer said not a single
person that they had identified in the whole Nation had been
contacted about the change. It looked to me like an attempt to
nationalize.
Now we had discussions about where the best place to put it
is in the budget and how to do that. But interestingly, I think
Director Walters ought to get a medal from the HIDTAs in the
United States. He has done more to advance the HIDTA program in
the past 30 days than any other individual in the United
States. Now, that is not what his goal was.
But in fact, we were looking at trying to figure out how to
tinker with it, how to make changes with it, how to challenge
it, how to concentrate on the Southwest border more, how to
address the meth question, how to give flexibility to the
Director's office at least in the 10 to 15 percent. But by
going wholesale after it, what has happened now is we have more
Members of Congress who actually met their HIDTA directors, who
visited their HIDTAs, who the sheriffs came into their offices.
This program is now more solidified in Congress than it has
ever been. The chances of us changing the program are less than
they have ever been. Our ability to modify it in legislation is
less than it has ever been. We are going to have more people
requesting HIDTAs than we have ever had.
So I think Director Walters, I do not think it was his
intention, but he gets the Gold Star for promoting the HIDTA.
And if this was a back door way to increase the HIDTA funding
in your agency, to increase the influence, which I do not think
was the original----
Mr. Walters. Mr. Chairman, you are getting mean here. We
have had spirited discussions but you have never been mean
before. [Laughter.]
Mr. Mica. Again, I have no problem with funding HIDTA. I
think HIDTA was well intended. Knowing all that, it is our
responsibility to see that the money be properly directed. I do
not know exactly how we do that, how we formulate it. Maybe it
does not belong in Justice, maybe it belongs right where it is.
But we still have a problem with directing the funds as
they should be. And maybe someone needs to also look at the
COPs and all the other programs. And part of what the
administration said is we have all of these other programs,
too, with huge administrative costs which detract from putting
the money in the programs.
Mr. Souder. But the funny thing is, as we got into this
battle, to use a cowboy expression, it is all hat and no cowboy
when you look at many of the Federal programs. The Federal
programs that are overtly in Washington have more overhead. We
have the most leveraged program in HIDTA. We have like 10
percent of the dollars invested in HIDTA, whereas if we run it
out of OCDETF, we have like a 90 percent overhead versus what
gets to the grass roots.
And when I came here, one of my goals was to have a mix of
Federal, State, and local, to have partnerships to try to do
the cooperation. Now, does that mean that there are no
inefficiencies that we----
Mr. Mica. But they are the same partnerships that we have
had for 28 years. Maybe it is time to look at those, at least
in the HIDTA. In some areas we do not have them. I am telling
you how mine started. Mr. Cummings spoke to the politics of it.
Is that right? And just to continue, and we are getting the
same earmark or amount just about every year. That is not right
and it is our job to change it.
And I did say I never looked at this until he raised the
issue and the administration raised the issue. I signed off on
another letter like I always do and go on my merry way thinking
everything is hunky-dory. But that is not the way it is, and we
can see that.
So we have to do a better job with the limited resources.
Keep the administrative costs down. Same thing with the Media
Campaign, it does not make sense to spend all that money on TV
if the kids are not watching it on TV. Just out of curiosity,
have I ever heard an ad on NPR?
Mr. Walters. You might see parents' ads there. There are
some radio ads.
Mr. Souder. But you were one of the long time critics and
had concerns about the way some of the national ad campaigns
were being run. But we are in actual TV dollars, I think we
could find quotes, we are below the minimum we said we would
need to sustain the campaign, unless we can get this 120 up.
Now they have leveraged it.
Mr. Mica. Again, the fundamental question raised here, does
it make sense to be spending as much as we have in the past if
we are not getting the results.
Mr. Souder. As you know, because both you and I were
critics of the last administration when they tried to diversify
it from the TV and they argued that they were going to
proliferate it into all these little type of programs, we led
efforts to keep that from occurring because, in fact, what the
Director said here today, was that you need adequate research,
you need to make the ads effective.
The more places you put ads, the more studies you are
having to do, the more you are spreading your bureaucratic
dollars into analyzing effectiveness, media buys, production
because you are trying to do it in 100 different places that
you have to go bang for the buck. I am just saying this as a
factual statement, that we are more likely, if we have a
proliferation of locations where the ads run, to go back to
using a total private sector development and placement rather
than a paid one.
I supported having the Director have the flexibility to do
paid advertising, you being able to have an advertising agency
outside the traditional donated services, going to paying for
research as opposed to getting voluntary research, because I
felt that gave additional flexibilities.
But as the dollars in effect become frozen, even if you
stay at $120 million, the ads are going to go up 15 percent
this year. So it is a 15 percent real dollar reduction. And
what happens in the course of that is the more things you try
to do, the more percentage of overhead goes up and the
percentage that you are putting in each of those media things
go down.
I am not arguing that alternative media should not be the
case. It may be that we have to pull off television other than
the Partnership-donated ads and go to all alternative media
because we do not have enough national TV at some point. But it
does proliferate all of the elements' overhead when you start
to try to figure out whether an Internet ad, whether the people
who then hit your targeted Internet location and went to your
home page, were trying to see what it was, maybe we reach the
curious.
But there is a whole other level of study that has to
occur. Where at least with the TV ads, you have a very direct
hit, it is a measurable type of thing, we can see it is having
movement. And to the degree we take the dollars out of
something that has measurably been moving the attitudes, it
becomes tougher.
It is not that it is not changing. But I dare say that the
average campaign running for Congress and trying to reach
people and do the segments are not taking our TV dollars and
going beyond the threshold of the number of people we need to
reach to move it to Internet. If we are going to move to
Internet, we add it to our TV dollars because we know we cannot
get elected without the basic television.
Mr. Walters. Well, again, you are thinking of this in terms
of audiences to get elected.
Mr. Souder. I am thinking of segments. I said segments.
Mr. Mica. I used to be in the communications business. I
sold cell phones when they were as big as a brick. And who
would have thought you would have wireless and all of that in a
little gadget like this some 10 or 12 years later. When I
thought of a Media Campaign and proposed legislation, I had it
fully funded by the public service obligation, actually donated
time from television. And at that time, we did not have the
cable proliferation that we have now. I never envisioned public
money. That was the Clinton administration. The compromise was
this 50-50 solution.
I would like to go back and get even more public service
time, because the public does own the airwaves, we did control
them, and they have wormed their way out. They used to put a
few ads on between like midnight and maybe 6 a.m., but they
were never on other times. And each time they have diminished
their requirement through a little effective lobbying or
scamming out. But we do control TV, and, as I understand it,
the Federal Communications Commission is still in business. But
they do not participate as we intended.
But the markets do change and the target audiences that we
are trying to reach do change. I think we need to have some of
that flexibility, not be stuck in another era. So, I yield back
the balance of my time. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Dr. Walters, do you want to have any closing
comments?
Mr. Walters. No. Again, we want to make this work, as you
want to make this work. We have to be able to target the
audience and we have to be able to do that in a way that is
cost-effective. I think, as you know, if you look at the
overhead costs or the production costs with this campaign vis-
a-vis other public service campaigns, it compares very
favorably. We will continue to try to make optimal use of those
resources.
Again, I will live and die, as I think the program will, on
does it produce declines in drug use by young people. If it
does not, then it is not enough. It is not the only thing that
is going to do that. But if drug use is not going down, I think
we are going to be looking at all these programs and saying,
you know, why are we making this expenditure, or why are we
running it this way.
All I am asking is at a time when we have drug use going
down, in a time we have it going down at a rate that we have
not had in a decade, all those same surveys show that exposure
to the campaign is a significant contributing factor to the
knowledge, information, and motivation of young people who are
reducing their attractiveness to drugs. I want to be able to
follow through with it. And I am just asking you to please
consider modifying with a word or two here our ability to do
this under the provisions of the reauthorization act.
I cannot help but say, for just a moment, to say thank you
to Mr. Mica. He is the first Member of Congress I have talked
to who has a HIDTA who is willing to be quite that frank. The
chairman has always been frank on this, but there always was,
as he said, I am not somebody who has grabbed my authority to
make myself a HIDTA. I appreciate your willingness to reform.
Believe me, I certainly understand how hard the reform is.
But, again, as with some of you, I have done this because I
think it is necessary for us to be honest about what is going
to move the ball ahead. We may disagree, we may not win some of
these, there may be times, but ultimately, if we are going to
make the drug problem smaller, we have to do things that are
effective.
And if we dance around them, if we are afraid of politics
or afraid of people being rough with us, or we cannot take
phone calls where we are candid to each other, we should not be
doing this, we are not worthy of the public trust that we have
maintained. And for those people who have a problem with that
and go around us, I have told them if you want to stab me in
the back you are going to have to use old holes because it has
been done before and it is not going to make a difference. We
are going to continue to use the authority that we have to tell
the truth.
And I want to thank both of you who have been stalwarts in
this, and I think by your comments today show that you have
done that again. So we look forward to working with you. We
hope we can work out these differences because we want a
stronger office, you want a stronger office, and I want to move
as much on consensus as we can.
Mr. Souder. OK. Thank you for coming today.
Our second panel, if you could come forward, is Mr. Tom
Carr, Director of the Washington-Baltimore HIDTA, on behalf of
the National HIDTA Directors' Association; and Mr. Stephen
Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America.
If you would remain standing, we will administer the oath.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that both witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
Mr. Carr, if you could go ahead with your testimony. As we
noted at the beginning, your full written testimony will be in
the record. So feel free to do a summary and make whatever
comments you want.
STATEMENTS OF TOM CARR, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE HIDTA,
ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL HIDTA DIRECTORS' ASSOCIATION; AND
STEPHEN J. PASIERB, PRESIDENT AND CEO, PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG-
FREE AMERICA
STATEMENT OF TOM CARR
Mr. Carr. Thank you, Chairman Souder. It is an honor for me
to appear before you today to discuss the reauthorization of
the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.
ONDCP and the HIDTA program are a vital part of our
Nation's efforts to address the numerous threats that illegal
drugs and drug trafficking pose to the safety and well-being of
our communities and citizens. My colleagues and I at the
National HIDTA Directors' Association are impressed with the
ONDCP reauthorization legislation that you have recently
introduced in the House of Representatives and believe it is an
important step forward for both ONDCP and the HIDTA program.
Collectively, my fellow directors and I represent over
1,000 years of law enforcement experience, many of which are in
the drug enforcement field, and we feel ultimately that the
provisions that are being provided in this bill will buildupon
ONDCP, the HIDTA program, and help our great Nation.
The proposed ONDCP reauthorization bill contains numerous
amendments and additions to the current authorizing language
that should benefit both programs. Improving coordination of
drug law enforcement activities among Federal, State, and local
agencies has proven to be one of the HIDTA program's most
valuable tools for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency
of drug enforcement efforts. This bill promotes enhanced
interagency coordination. We are certainly happy to see that.
Developing and sharing accurate, timely information and
intelligence on drug trafficking and drug-related crime
activities is essential to the continued success of drug law
enforcement efforts. The HIDTA program has emerged as a
national leader in the field of drug information and
intelligence, operating over more than 50 regional law
enforcement intelligence centers and promoting a wide variety
of initiatives aimed at expanding information sharing.
Performance measurement, and I wish Mr. Mica had stayed
around, performance measurement and data collection are two
areas in which the HIDTA program has excelled in the past 2
years. The directors of the Nation's 28 HIDTA regions are
actively engaged in efforts to enhance the program's
performance management process. During my testimony before this
committee on March 10, I provided the committee with an
overview of the performance management process that we
developed and implemented in 2004, and next week, as you know,
we are going to release the results of that showing the I think
fantastic outcomes that many of our HIDTAs and the HIDTA
program as a whole have achieved.
Finally, this bill will implement some worthwhile changes
internal to the HIDTA program itself. In many cases, the bill's
language clarifies and expands existing program elements, such
as the HIDTA designation process and the performance management
process. The bill also authorizes HIDTA regions to support
counterterrorism efforts and witness protection programs.
The requirement for ONDCP to issue an annual report to
Congress on consultative activities surrounding the preparation
of the National Drug Control Strategy is a welcome addition
that is obviously designed to promote collaborative efforts
among ONDCP and State and local agencies and organizations.
This is entirely appropriate in light of the fact that State
and local governments and community organizations are generally
the first to identify emerging drug trends and bear much of the
responsibility for addressing the consequences of drug use and
drug trafficking.
The GCIP provisions included in this bill will be of great
benefit to law enforcement. My fellow directors and I welcome
the efforts to address these issues through the GCIP and look
forward to playing an active role in its development.
The Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy proposed in
the bill is another outstanding idea. The increasing volume of
illegal drugs, violent gangs, illegal immigrants crossing into
the United States from Mexico requires this increased border
law enforcement effort. HIDTA directors strongly support this
provision and want the committee to know that they are eager to
volunteer their time and talent to participate in shaping this
strategy from its inception.
One of the most significant obstacles for HIDTA regions is
the limited amount of reliable and timely data available on
many key aspects of drug use and trafficking. The HIDTA
directors encourage you to consider insert language authorizing
the Director to promulgate a standard data reporting format
that will simplify the data collection process and the analysis
process.
The bill's provisions regarding performance measurement are
especially welcome. The requirement that ONDCP regularly
evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of its own
performance measurement systems and techniques will prove
helpful in promoting the development of better tools for
measuring program results and relevant drug-related trends.
Let me turn for a second just to the HIDTA program itself.
The statement of purpose of the HIDTA program incorporated
within this bill we feel is excellent. It accurately captures
the program's current purpose and does a fine job of
recognizing the very needed changes that have taken place
within the HIDTA program since its establishment in 1988.
The new requirements for regulations governing the HIDTA
designation process mandating a review of designation requests
by a panel of independent experts are a welcome change from the
loosely organized designation process that has been used by
current and past administrations. Perhaps if we had this
earlier we would not be in sort of the mess we are in today,
one might say. Further, the HIDTA directors are pleased to see
that drug distribution activities and the harmful impacts of
illegal drugs will be added to the list of factors to be
considered in the designation decision.
The provisions authorizing counterterrorism assistance will
be a useful addition to the HIDTA program. Many regions already
sharing information with counterterrorism task forces provide
support for their cases on a routine basis. This provision will
officially recognize and codify these efforts.
Our association is encouraged by the bill's language to
cause the Director and the Attorney General to work together to
ensure DEA's participation in HIDTA's intelligence support
centers. DEA plays a major role in most HIDTAs but its role
could be even greater if it provided personnel and data bases
to augment the work of these centers.
The requirement for an assessment of intelligence sharing
efforts is another wise addition to the bill, given the number
of intelligence sharing systems and programs that have
multiplied over the years.
Witness intimidation has become a very prominent issue in
many of our Nation's communities, especially those suffering
from increases in gang-related violence, as in Washington, DC,
northern Virginia, and Baltimore. As the Director of the
Washington-Baltimore HIDTA, I want to personally commend you,
Chairman Souder and Ranking Member Cummings, for your undivided
attention to this issue and your sincere commitment to
addressing it through the Dawson Family Community Protection
Act. This act will enhance protection for our most troubled
communities and, in addition, fund efforts to promote witness
protection.
The HIDTA Directors' Association wholeheartedly supports
this proposed reauthorization bill. The bill recognizes the
need for improved coordination for drug enforcement, drug
intelligence activities, and proposes numerous constructive
responses to address these needs. The bill's performance
measurement and data collection provisions will reinforce the
HIDTA program's recent advances in performance measurement by
providing reliable and timely data. It also proposes worthwhile
changes and additions to enhance the operation of the HIDTA
program that will continue to build on its considerable
successes and help to adapt to the ever-changing nature of the
illegal drug trade.
We firmly believe this bill represents a major step forward
in the evolution of ONDCP and the HIDTA program. Thank you for
allowing me this opportunity to share our views with this
committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carr follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you, Mr. Carr.
Mr. Pasierb, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN J. PASIERB
Mr. Pasierb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
inviting me. And before I get into my testimony, I really want
to thank the subcommittee, and especially you, Mr. Chairman
and, via staff, Ranking Member Cummings, for your incredible
leadership on this issue. It has been an honor to work with you
over the past several years.
The Partnership, as you know, is a coalition of volunteers
from throughout the communications industry known for research-
based education campaigns that have proven to be effective both
in changing attitudes and in changing behaviors, reducing
illicit drug use. The Partnership serves as the primary
creative partner to ONDCP on the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign. Congress authorized the campaign knowing very clearly
that the private sector, working through the Partnership, had
agreed to contribute its time, talent, and expertise in really
the truest sense of a public-private partnership. The
contributions to date have exceeded $125 million. And as a
nonprofit organization, we have also invested millions of our
donors' dollars in servicing the Media Campaign.
My testimony will focus on the campaign's effectiveness in
reducing the demand for illicit drugs and the country's ongoing
need for such a pervasive demand reduction program. This media-
based education program is a crucial component of America's
drug strategy. Since the campaign started, the leading national
studies that track teen drug use have all noted substantial
declines.
Allow me to offer evidence on the effectiveness of the
campaign drawn from the 2004 Partnership Attitude Tracking
Study. This is the 17th wave of a national study on attitudes
and drug use among 7th through 12th graders in public, private,
and parochial schools. And there are really three key points.
First, significantly fewer teens are using marijuana today
than when compared with 1998, the year the Media Campaign
launched. And marijuana risk attitudes among teens have
improved significantly over the same time. As you know, the
Media Campaign is focused heavily on preventing use of
marijuana, as this comprises the majority of youth drug use.
The data continues also to report strong correlations
between heavy exposure to the Media Campaign's advertising and
lower drug use and stronger anti-drug attitudes among teens. In
2003, Roper ASW reported that teens exposed frequently to the
ads are far more likely to have stronger anti-drug attitudes
and are up to 38 percent less likely to use drugs.
Finally, the third point, the number of teenagers reported
learning a lot about the risks of drugs via television
commercials has increased steadily since the launch of the
Media Campaign. In fact, for the first time, teens are now more
likely to cite TV commercials as a key source of anti-drug
information than any other source. And Mr. Souder, the last
time we were together we lamented together the fact that
families are no longer in first place, and that is something we
have absolutely got to change.
The 2004 Monitoring the Future Survey from NIDA also showed
that over the last 3 years alone there has been a 17 percent
decrease in teen drug use. That translates into 600,000 fewer
teens than in 2001. It is also important to note that the Media
Campaign was the single largest prevention effort in the
marketplace during that time. Monitoring the Future
specifically credits the Media Campaign with those trends.
Mr. Chairman, you are not going to find a more efficient,
more effective way to educate teenagers about the dangers of
illicit drugs. We know anti-drug advertising, when grounded in
research and sound strategy, when executed creatively, and
tested for maximum impact, and delivered in appropriate and
sustained levels of media, does indeed work.
Also, the ONDCP Media Campaign perfectly complements the
ongoing public service campaigns of the Partnership. Together,
we cover the waterfront of issues, from marijuana to ecstasy,
to methamphetamine, and other illicit drugs. The Partnership is
also moving to take on emerging threats like prescription drug
abuse and steroids in the media time that is donated to us, as
well as redoubling our existing efforts on methamphetamine.
We want to thank you for the thoughtfulness that was put
into crafting H.R. 2829. For the Media Campaign, this bill
emphasizes accountability, it clarifies our roles and
responsibilities, and it correctly identifies the Director of
ONDCP as the single person responsible for the major decisions
about the strategic direction of the campaign. The language
offers flexibility to the campaign coordinators, while ensuring
focus.
We are most appreciative that the legislation reaffirms
private sector participation, through the Partnership, as this
remains a central item and also was what the original
authorizers set forth for the campaign. Also, we want to thank
you for reaffirming the dollar-for-dollar media match that
further makes this program among the most efficient anywhere in
government.
One area where we also express concern is in the
requirement that 82 percent of the appropriated funds be
exclusively allocated for the purchase of advertising time at
the $120 million appropriation level. We understand and
appreciate the committee's intent to emphasize the very real
importance of message delivery, yet down at $120 million we
believe that level of spending requirement will also constrain
the campaign.
In particular, limiting the ability to thoroughly test all
the new ads for all media, mainstream and niche; providing the
production for sufficient ads necessary for us to keep the
campaign fresh; and limiting the ability to create special
campaigns for traditional media that serve minority and ethnic
populations, as well as the aforementioned need to be on the
Internet with compelling banner advertising and other content.
Given the campaign's current funding level of $120 million,
we would suggest rather the broader definition of appropriate
expenditures under an 82 percent ceiling, a redefinition if you
will, that would include all advertising services required to
ensure volume and effectiveness of messages and content placed
into the Media Campaign's time and space. That is the only
concern.
Again, we support this legislation, and thank you and the
committee for advancing the reauthorization bill. The Media
Campaign is exceptionally efficient, costing less than $6 per
year, per teen to implement. Our Nation could spend Federal
resources in countless ways to educate teens about the dangers
in drugs. We will, however, find a more efficient and effective
way to do so than through the power of mass media.
Demand reduction is a critical element in a balanced effort
to address the drug problem. The National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign has proven its value in the same trusted national
research studies that have guided the drug field over the past
three decades. It helps stem the inflow of young lives into
drug use. Fewer drug users is of benefit not only to the health
of our Nation, but also to all of those working in law
enforcement and in drug treatment.
The process of changing social attitudes and behavior is
ongoing. It requires relentless persistence because right
behind the current generation of kids is another one that is
going to need to learn about the risks of drugs all over again.
We, as a country, have a responsibility to offer these kids a
solid education about the dangers of drugs before they take the
path of learning about it on their own.
The Media Campaign is an imperative voice consistently
educating teens and their parents. It is a reliable voice, one
that parents and children have grown to trust. You have our
full support as this bill moves forward. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pasierb follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you. I would like to ask a couple of
questions on the 82 percent so I understand this better. In
your testimony you said it limits the providing for the
production of sufficient ads necessary to keep the campaign
fresh. Is that not donated?
Mr. Pasierb. A lot of it is, but the production costs, if
we need to go out and rent a crane or something like that, a
lot of that is reimbursed. The creative strategy, the creative
ideas, all of the work that goes into bringing the ad ideas
forward, are all donated. But when the Office of National Drug
Control Policy goes out and says we want to produce this one or
that one, a majority of the out-of-pocket costs are picked up,
the hard costs that people would have to incur. But the time,
the talent, the energy, the marketing wisdom are all donated
and continue to be donated.
Mr. Souder. What are the hard costs on Internet?
Mr. Pasierb. A lot of those advertisements that are done
are done through some of the ONDCP contractors because they
require computer programming, Internet-competent people. And in
the Internet space there is not a lot of volunteerism.
Mr. Souder. That is what I was going to ask. How come? Why
should the ad agencies be willing to contribute for television
and not for other?
Mr. Pasierb. We have seen, interestingly enough, that the
traditional advertising world, the advertising agency world
continues to make a big commitment to do the print, to do the
television, to do the radio. That same sense of community and
volunteerism, if you will, does not necessarily exist in the
Internet space. And ONDCP, we think rightfully so, has gone out
and got the best and brightest talent by having to pay for it.
Mr. Souder. Why is that same support not there in the
people with the hard equipment? Why should the people donate
creatively but not donate equipment?
Mr. Pasierb. Well, because the people who--they are rental
companies. If I say to you I will do everything I need to do to
throw you a wedding, but then I have to go out and rent the
chairs and rent the tent and rent the glasses, now you have
made me pay $20,000 for your wedding.
Mr. Souder. What I mean is, why should we expect an
advertising agency to donate their time, but the people who are
leasing the sound equipment not to donate?
Mr. Pasierb. There is a huge level of volunteerism within
that, but there are also a lot of hard costs. The average
television commercial in America costs well over $300,000 to
make, and ONDCP is spending far, far less than that to do the
production of each one. So they have done, in our view, a
superb job of getting as much volunteerism as humanly possible.
But the nature of literally producing a miniature movie and
doing dozens of them every year means that not everything can
be donated.
Mr. Souder. How much in, say, a Pepsi ad or a typical ad
would be hard costs versus soft costs?
Mr. Pasierb. An average Pepsi campaign may have million
dollar productions in it, which also the agency had many
hundreds of thousands of dollars that they charged for it as
well. We eliminate the hundreds of thousands of dollars, we
would never do a million dollar production, and we get a level
of volunteerism that Pepsi could never realize, and the ability
to choose a different advertising agency for each one.
Mr. Souder. And it is good to know that there are hard cost
contributions. Maybe we can get that information. But in
reality, a creative person donating their time is their hard
cost.
Mr. Pasierb. Yes, it is. It is their brain, their most
valuable asset.
Mr. Souder. It is how many hours a day they can work and
how much creative energy they have, and for an advertising
creative person or a sound producer who is donating his time,
in your testimony you said sound producers are donating their
time, that is their money. I was in retailing. My hard costs
might be if I have to buy a dresser to sell and I have to rent
a truck.
But that is because I deal in hard products. But somebody
who deals in soft markets has this distinction of people who
have soft things, oh, they are just donating their time, that
is different than somebody else donating hard goods. I do not
see the distinction. Money is money to the different groups.
The question is how much, and I do not know the answer, how
much we have leveraged that. But if we are going to get
squeezed here, ultimately the point when you ask the taxpayers
to participate should be to have as much of that as possible go
over the air. Now if we say over the air should be multiple
things other than television, then that is another decision.
But it should be in purchase time and the goal was to have the
minimal be in the actual production.
Mr. Pasierb. I am sure our colleagues at ONDCP can pull
those numbers together. And I know for a fact there is still an
extraordinary level of volunteerism.
Mr. Souder. Would you not agree that the more things you
try to do the higher percentage your overhead becomes?
Mr. Pasierb. My feeling is that we go after a very elusive
target--the American teenager--who on his couch is probably
talking on his cell phone, has a laptop computer in his lap,
and is flipping through the television channels. We need to
capture that child's attention any way we can.
Clearly, television has given us the biggest lift and it
really is still the majority piece of this campaign, as proven
by the research. But there are a lot of kids who we cannot
reach that way and the Internet is something that has gone from
being kind of a sucker's bet maybe 5, 6 years ago to being a
mainstream medium for teens. We would really have to gauge our
ability to be effective to continue to drive the trends if we
used one medium versus another.
Mr. Souder. Let me ask another question with that. The
Director implied that in other words, what about the marketing
research firms and the test firms? Are they donating their time
like the producers and the creative talent are donating?
Mr. Pasierb. No, they are not. They are contracted through
ONDCP for their services.
Mr. Souder. Why are they contracted and not leveraged like
the creative people?
Mr. Pasierb. To tell you the truth, I am not sure other
than that is an industry which none of us have really any sway
over the people who can put together a group of teenagers in
Tacoma, WA, that we can then go talk to for an hour. That has
never been an industry for us, the Ad Council, anywhere in the
public service lexicon that has necessarily volunteered those
kind of services.
Mr. Souder. When the Partnership was started, what started
the concept of donated time out of the Partnership, and why did
the creative industry respond differently than the market
research industry and the test industry?
Mr. Pasierb. To tell the truth, I am not sure. But clearly,
when the Partnership was started the media community came
together and said we will provide the time, the advertising
community came together and said we will provide the content,
and the majority of the Partnership's budget was spent on
things like research and testing that they could not obtain for
free.
In the early days, what really made the Partnership
struggle was finding hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay a
research firm to be able to prove that the good works were
indeed effective. And that is in my view just kind of like
grass being green, that is kind of the way the world has been.
Maybe it is not right, but that is the way it has been.
Mr. Souder. In the Media Campaign, I did not know this
answer and I cannot recall it here, but it sets up my next
question, that often there is 15 percent that goes to the
account for placement of large contracts, 10, or 7\1/2\, or 5,
or whatever. Is that completely waived in the case of the
National Media Campaign, or is that still there?
Mr. Pasierb. I believe so. I believe the contracts that
ONDCP has with their advertising contractor are for services.
And that advertising contractor also has to deliver to ONDCP
that 100 percent match, or more than 100 percent, which the new
contractor is doing. So that arrangement, that ability just to
take 15 percent off the top does not exist.
Mr. Souder. So there is no other way for the agencies that
are donating their creative time to recoup any costs?
Mr. Pasierb. No. No. And the government has a very hard
system for the costs that they can recoup. If they go and park
in a parking garage, for example, at the shoot, they cannot get
paid for that. It has to be for the core pieces of the
campaign.
Mr. Souder. Well, there is an incredible inequity here.
Basically, if we are willing to pay for it, nobody is going to
donate their services. If we are willing to pay for the market
research, if we are willing to pay for hard equipment, the
question is why is one group being treated differently than
another and should we be leveraging that harder. Because the
goal here is to minimize overhead costs and maximize placement
costs. That is the bottom line.
Mr. Pasierb. Yes. In our pro bono campaigns, we have the
luxury of saying we are going to have to wait a couple of
months until somebody volunteers to do that; we are ready, we
have all the pieces in place, but until somebody volunteers a
studio we are stuck. The National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign cannot work on that kind of paradigm because they have
bought the hole in the American Idol that they need to fill
tomorrow night.
Mr. Souder. Yes. That is a fair point.
Mr. Carr, do you have any--I was kind of taken aback by
some of Mr. Mica's comments. You went through most of your
prepared testimony, but I wonder if you had anything to add to
that. You said that the study was coming on the data. But the
second thing is, in the broader question, which I think is a
legitimate question that Mr. Cummings was raising too, is the
net impact of what has happened in this debate in Congress is
that HIDTAs are more solidified, at least for short term, and
there is probably going to be, with the reduction in Burn grant
and COPS and other programs, more pressure for more HIDTAs
rather than less.
The initial direction of the HIDTA program was to be High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. That has clearly evolved over
time as more Members have more regional concerns, whether it is
meth in their area which may or may not be tying to the High
Density Trafficking Areas but more regional. How do you see the
HIDTAs, and do you see this eventually more or less absorbing
the drug task forces in the different regions?
How do we work this in with various Justice Department
programs that are out there in meth, that are out there in
other programs that are being independently created? How can we
integrate this better given the fact that you are placed under
ONDCP to focus predominantly on narcotics but we have this
proliferation of drug task forces and other things around the
country that may or may not be integrated?
Mr. Carr. Well, that is a good question. I think the stars
have aligned. There were a lot of things going on that for one
reason or another fortuitously came together at this point in
time. Perhaps what the Director did, as you pointed out, may at
some point in time earn him five stars. I do not know if we are
ready to give it to him right away.
However, for 2 years we worked on and developed a
performance measurement process. It is an honest process
because it does what it is supposed to do. It shows what the
individual HIDTAs do, what they do not do, whether they are
efficient, whether they are effective. We have good, solid
outcome measures. It collectively shows what the program itself
as a whole is able to accomplish.
Now we have 1 year's worth of data. Is that sufficient data
to make long range projections on? Not at this point. But we
are in the process of gathering data for the second year. I do
not think we are far out from doing that. The point is, the
system works well.
If the Burn grant program goes away in terms of drug task
forces, we are the only game in town. So what that means is
that others that heretofore may not have been as willing to
collaborate with HIDTA-funded task forces will now, in order to
keep functioning, I think be more in a position where they are
by necessity, for survival, going to turn to the HIDTA task
forces and seek ways in which they can leverage HIDTA dollars
or HIDTA resources. Because as you correctly pointed out, much
of what we do is take a few HIDTA dollars and leverage millions
of dollars to accomplish what we want to accomplish.
We have over 50 HIDTA intelligence centers. They are
sharing information. And I would say they are functioning on an
above average level but they can be much better. This bill,
through the GCIP plan that you mention in here, through the
Southwest Border Strategy, through the inventory, I mean,
common sense inventory of task forces, whether they be Federal
or merely State and local task forces, will enable us I think
to get a better handle on what these centers should do, what
they do do, and then come up with a better intelligence-sharing
plan. So again, I think the stars are aligning, which will
enable us to accomplish all the things that heretofore we have
had, just like the intelligence community, had some obstacles
blocking our ability to collect, share, and manipulate
information.
Mr. Souder. Clearly, we have an incredible disconnect right
now between Congress and the administration on how to focus on
meth. The administration has no national meth strategy, I think
it is fair to say that. In fact, they are not even sure what
their own agencies are doing in meth because of freelancing at
the local level because of local demand right now. We have
these meth Hot Spots programs being funded.
How do you think the HIDTAs are working inside this? Do
different ones have meth subgroups? I know I have met a few
like that. How do you suggest, if we come up with a kind of
meth strategy, how should HIDTA fit into the meth strategy?
Mr. Carr. Well, I can show you some pretty remarkable data
that we just put together as a result of our performance
measurement, because performance measurement is not only used
to show whether someone is efficient or effective, it is also
strategic. We used the national meth and clandestine lab
striations to identify the sizes of labs, from zero to 2 ounces
all the way up to the top level which is the super lab.
If you read the National Meth Strategy, they talked about
super labs activity in the United States decreasing,
diminishing, and suggesting that meth super lab activity is
being conducted outside the United States. What they failed to
take notice of, and our data clearly shows, is that while super
meth labs did, in fact, decrease, the lab level just below that
increased significantly.
We have mapped this and we mapped it in relation to HIDTA
seizures. We can show that, for example, the Appalachia HIDTA
has become inundated with zero to 2 ounce labs, the Midwest
HIDTA, up and through your area, Mr. Chairman, has now become a
hot bed of the lab level just below the super lab.
So I am not so sure that meth production has decreased.
What I see are signs that the size of the labs may have
decreased but the number of labs has increased. So I think we
have a lot of data to contribute to the development of a
strategy, and I think we have data that can show where some of
the focus ought to take place within the confines of the
continental United States.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I thank both of you for
participating and continuing to work with our staff and us as
we move this bill tomorrow and as we most likely head to the
floor and conferences, which will be the longer term strategy.
Mr. Carr. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Pasierb. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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