HOUSE DRUG TESTING PLAN HELD UP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican leaders have apparently quashed, at least for
now, a plan by two Republican lawmakers to require drug testing of House
members and their staffs.

"We have a few well-placed people who don't want this," Rep. Joe Barton of
Texas said Wednesday. Opponents of the plan, he complained, have erected
"one obstacle after another."

Barton, a cosponsor of the proposal with Rep. Gerald Solomon of New York,
said the chairman of the House Republican Conference, Rep. John Boehner of
Ohio, is refusing to allow the drug plan to be brought up for discussion.

Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas told reporters earlier there isn't time
in the House schedule to take up the matter before the August recess, which
begins Friday.

"We are loaded up," Armey said. Barton and Solomon introduced a measure in
June that would require all 435 members of the House of Representatives and
their office staffs to undergo mandatory drug testing.

Many lawmakers have complained that the measure is unnecessary and insulting.

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press

Checked-by: Richard Lake