Mark Souder: “I wanted to again point out that this is not something new. Interesting historical footnote: My first job here in…”

“I wanted to again point out that this is not something new. Interesting historical footnote: My first job here in Washington was Republican staff director of the Children Family Committee in Washington, and when the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], who had been involved in Illinois with human services issues like this, came and we worked together there, we were already focusing on alcohol abuse, on crack babies being abandoned in hospitals. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] who was a chief of staff here in Washington worked with a lot in drafting the original antidrug legislation through the 1980's in the U.S. Senate. This has been a longtime commitment, and we cannot back off as Americans. And what is so frustrating when we hear these stories like in Switzerland is do we not learn anything? When you were saying that behavior was in effect being rewarded, what one thing we have learned over and over in our country, and I say this as somebody who has a German background and partly Swiss and who always looked at the Swiss as an international model. To hear this type of thing is so disturbing. We have seen it with gangs. If you say you are going to get such and such, what you get is more kids joining gangs to get the things. If you give benefits to things, people come and abuse it more. You do not get them off.…”