Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
July 1, 1999 -- Page: S7994

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I hope we will be able to allocate the $50 million in the Kyl-Hutchison amendment for the hiring of new Customs agents.

We have a terrible situation. I understand the position of Senator Campbell and Senator Reid in having to allocate this money. I think they have done a yeoman's job working within the budget constraints.

The fact of the matter is, in any budget, any family has to set priorities. This administration has refused to set a priority of protecting our borders from illegal immigration and illegal drugs coming in. The fact is, they asked for no new Border Patrol agents this year, even though Congress has allocated 1,000 new Border Patrol agents every year for 5 years starting 2 years ago.

They didn't even hire the allocation in this year's budget. We authorized and paid for 1,000 Border Patrol agents in this year's budget, and this administration has only been able to hire 200 to 400 agents. Since we lose so many, we are worse off than we were when we started this fiscal year.

Now we come to Customs agents who are, once again, on the front line, particularly for illegal drugs because they are the ones responsible for searching trucks and cars that come in through the border. Once again, we have a request from the President for zero new Customs agents. The Customs Office itself asked for 617 new Customs agents. Look at what these Customs agents are doing. More than $10 billion in drugs flow across the U.S.-Mexico border each year. Last year, the Customs Service seized 995,000 pounds of marijuana, 148,000 pounds of cocaine, and 3,500 pounds of heroin.

We are talking about not fully funding new agents, to not give these people on the front line the help they need in stopping the flow of illegal drugs into our country. In Loredo, TX, the biggest commercial port of entry on our southern border, there were over 1 million truck crossings last year. There are routine waits of 4 to 6 hours. At El Paso's Bridge of the Americas, the hours of operation are from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., but because the Customs Service can't afford to pay overtime, they have to close at 4 so that they will be able to actually finish the people in the pipeline by 5. Trucks entering an import lot after 4 have to wait until 6 the next morning just to have their documentation cleared. This is hurting not only our ability to curb illegal traffic, but it is also hurting trade and free trade and ratcheting up the cost of goods coming in from the border. So it is very important that we look at Customs agents as the front line for getting illegal drugs stopped at our country's borders.

DEA Administrator, Tom Constantine, was before the Commerce, State, Justice Subcommittee this past March, and he said:

The vast majority of drugs available in the United States originate overseas. The international drug trade is controlled by a small number of high echelon drug lords, who reside in Colombia and Mexico. Most Americans are unaware of the vast damage that has been caused to their communities by international drug trafficking syndicates, most recently by organized crime groups headquartered in Mexico. At the current time, these traffickers pose the greatest threat to communities around the United States. Their impact is no longer limited to cities and towns along the Southwest border; traffickers from Mexico are now routinely operating in the Midwest, the Southeast, the Northwest, and, increasingly, in the northeastern portion of the United States.

We need to have as a priority stopping illegal drugs coming through our borders. And if the administration continues to ask for zero new border patrol agents and zero new Customs agents, we are not going to be able to win the war on drugs. We cannot do it.

Senator Kyl and I didn't choose to go in and take from other parts of the budget; that was our only option. When the President comes in with a budget that asks for no new Customs agents, we could do nothing but try to find offsets in order to maintain the integrity of the budget. So we went for administrative costs that were increases in spending over last year. It wasn't our choice to do this, but the difference between having increases in the GSA budget or increases in Customs agents who are going to be on the front line stopping illegal drugs from coming into our country, and to ease the flow of trade into our country, it seems to me, is pretty clear.

So I hope that we can make this a priority. I look forward to working with Senator Campbell and Senator Reid in the conference committee to try to mitigate the impact of any cuts that would be made in other budgets. I understand their position and having to defend this bill. They had hard choices to make. But we can't choose to walk away from law enforcement on our borders. This is a Federal responsibility. We can't fill in with local law enforcement officers. They don't have the capability to stem the flow of illegal drugs into our country.

So I hope our colleagues will support the Kyl-Hutchison amendment. We will do everything we can to mitigate the cuts that we are making in other areas, but it has to be our priority to get control of our sovereign borders, to keep illegal drugs from going into Cleveland, OH, or from going into Tacoma, WA, or Wilmington, DE, because that is where these drugs end up; they don't stay on the border. They infiltrate our country, and we must stop it. This is one of the ways we are going to try to do that.

I yield the floor.