Dennis Hastert

When I think about education, I think about putting good teachers in the classrooms. All the other folderol and bells and whistles, sometimes it helps but it does not make the difference whether kids are learning or not. I think the effort…

I wish to say, Mr. Speaker, that I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) joining with us today. This is, just as the gentleman said, 3 pages of pages. It is merely words. It is actions that the American people want. It is the will…

I feel sorry for the 40 percent of the AIDS victims who are children, but those 40 percent of the victims who are children are not using needles, so the whole needle issue does not affect those folks at all.

But the sad story is that we have 20,000 people who die of drugs in this country every year, 14,000 directly from drugs. They die because of overdose, they die because of gang violence. They are our kids. They are dying today at our street…

I am saddened that there is clear and convincing evidence that the President lied under oath, obstructed justice and abused the powers of his office in an attempt to cover up his wrongdoing

I will not yield. What I would like to do is also say, on my time, that one of the things that the gentleman said over on the other side of the aisle is that, my gosh, the Congress wants to look at these private numbers. These are not…

Another interesting thing the gentleman brings up, he talks about a $10 billion increase in economic activities. That just does not accrue to any one area in this country. It certainly accrues across the board. If cities, and especially…

In 1952, the United States and Japan entered into a highly restrictive aviation agreement that to this day severely restricts the number of flights between O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and Japan. Despite being the busiest…

I have a news article here from the American Medical News talking about the needle exchanges in Connecticut. Children are finding needles in the streets and garbage. The States Attorney in Connecticut said he has written the Governor…

I was in Switzerland. The heroin movement in Switzerland, the heroin giveaway programs in Switzerland did not start out with giveaway heroin programs. They started out with free needle exchanges, started out with free needle exchanges in…

Bigger government, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on the States. As a matter of fact, we create more loopholes for the States to jump through and what we do is deny the States providing kid care for kids. So those 2.6 million children…

I agree with the gentleman. What has happened, Uncle Sam has been penalizing folks who want to put the free enterprise system to the test and save for the future. Americans should be able to keep more of their hard-earned money, and that…

I will tell my colleagues, the insurance companies would love to have mental health parity because they would like to have those premiums coming in. ... if mental health parity is in that bill, it would cost the moms and dads, the…

We all support the $1 million allocated for the State Model Drug Law Conferences. We understand the gentleman is open to considering in conference where this funding may be most appropriately obtained to ensure the implementation of an…

The statistic is since 1992 to present there has been a 100-percent increase of teenagers that are on, for instance, just cocaine. I think it would be behoove everybody to study what is happening in some of the South American countries…

I think this House does not do itself any honor when in my opinion we try to impugn a Members' motives of why an issue is included or an issue is not included. I guess we could go back and forth in this Chamber and point fingers at each…

I think an important point that you started to bring out is that not only did the Peruvian campesinos or farmers start to abandon their fields, but the price of cocaine in Peru went down tenfold, and all of a sudden it was so cheap that…

We are in negotiations with the White House, staff to staff, and intend that that will be on a higher level when those negotiations are finished. I think that result will show in the bill.

That, plus we passed a piece of legislation that dealt with Social Security that said we could deal with it later than March 1.

I can tell the gentleman from California that we will roll those votes, but we cannot guarantee that they will go much beyond 2.

Mr. Chairman, a refinement of the Boucher amendment assures that rural telephone companies defined in H.R. 1555 will be exempted from complying with the competitive checklist until a competitor makes a bona fide request. Once a bona fide…