House OKs $3.2-Billion Measure to Bolster the Fight Against Drugs

The House on Wednesday turned aside Clinton administration objections and overwhelmingly passed a $3.2-billion bill to bolster the Coast Guard, the Customs Service and Latin American governments in their struggle to stop drugs from reaching this country’s borders.

The House of Representatives passed the bill, 384 to 39, just hours after White House drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey testified in the Senate that a similar measure awaiting action there would be too expensive and would represent “micro-management of drug tactics based on a shallow analysis of the problem and our available tools.”

In the House, Republican leaders insisted that they were boosting the budget for drug interdiction because they believe that President Clinton has failed to stem the flow of drugs into the country.

“By the summer of 1992,” House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said, “we were winning the war on drugs.” But he charged that after Clinton took office in 1993, “for a variety of reasons, the war on drugs went off track.”

The bulk of the bill’s funds would be spent during the next three years on the purchase and maintenance of airplanes for the U.S. government--$917 million for the Coast Guard and $889 million for the Customs Service. The money would be in addition to $1.67 billion the administration has set aside for drug interdiction during each of the next three years.

Despite some grumbling over Gingrich’s decision to allow the bill to reach the House floor without committee hearings or approval, Democrats joined Republicans in supporting it.

Latin America specialists were troubled by provisions that would increase funding for foreign military units engaged in drug interdiction. The bill earmarks $177 million for helicopters and planes for Colombia and $18 million for helicopters for Mexico. Bolivia and Peru also would receive extra funds.

The Washington Office on Latin America, a private, nonprofit think tank that has often fretted over increased military assistance to the region, warned that the bill would “undermine U.S. policy goals of supporting democracy and human rights around the world.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) sought to delete the funding for Colombia and Mexico, urging Congress to “stop dumping our dollars on corrupt police” in those two countries. But her amendment eliminating these funds was defeated, 354 to 67.

McCaffrey, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the bill “proposes authorizations that are far in excess of expected appropriations and the president’s budget without specifying where these funds will come from.”

He seemed most upset by the congressional attempt to, in his eyes, exert excessive control over administration drug policy. As an example, he cited a provision that set aside $1.25 million for “concertina wire and tunneling detection systems at the La Picota prison” in Colombia.