Bipartisan Group Seeks to Boost Drug War With $2.4-Billion Bill

A bipartisan group of more than 35 Senate and House members declared a new phase in the war on drugs Wednesday, introducing what they called a “self-funding” $2.4-billion bill to overhaul and strengthen the nation’s anti-drug efforts.

The cost of the Omnibus Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 would be offset by an estimated $3.2 billion in debt collection mandated by the bill, said Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), a principal sponsor of the legislation.

DeConcini said the bill would add staff to the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to collect an additional $1.25 billion in taxes owed the government and direct other federal agencies to collect $2 billion in non-tax debt. The money would be placed in a new Anti-Drug Abuse Treasury Fund to help pay for the bill, he said.

‘First Major Assault’

DeConcini called the legislation “the beginning of the first major assault on drugs,” continuing the work begun by the Omnibus Drug Act of 1986.

“We have to be more forceful,” he said at a news conference with more than a dozen of the bill’s co-sponsors. “We have mobilized a few assets; we have a lot more to do.”

Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), the bill’s other principal sponsor in the Senate, called the legislation a tribute to police Officer Edward Byrne, a New York City patrolman who was killed last month as he guarded the home of a drug informant in a Queens neighborhood.

D’Amato was flanked by Larry Byrne, a brother of the slain officer, and he spoke of the appeal by the men’s father, Matthew, that Edward’s death not be in vain.

“I like to think that the members of the Congress who are here today in some small measure have responded to Matt Byrne’s appeal,” D’Amato said.

Seek Stronger Leadership

Many of the legislators who spoke at the news conference called for stronger leadership from the other branches of the government to eradicate the drug problem.

“No war has ever been won and no victories have ever been achieved just with the soldiers,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. “And in this war, Congress has been the soldiers, but what we have lacked is a strategy and a plan.”

Rangel, a longtime critic of the Reagan Administration’s anti-drug efforts, scored the President and Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III for recommending that the money Congress has appropriated for state and local law enforcement “be dropped to zero.”