WASHINGTON (AP) House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced new political
objectives Thursday, saying the focus on drugs, education and teen
pregnancy will be even more important than balancing the budget.

Gingrich, RGa., said his goal was to achieve a drugfree America by
Jan. 1, 2001, following a ``national crusade fully as intensive as the
effort to balance the budget.''

Gingrich was addressing the National Religious Broadcasters about where
he and the Republican Party are going after reaching agreement with the
White House on the GOP's longtime goal of balancing the budget by 2002.

On the budget side, he said the $5.5 trillion national debt could be
eliminated by 2024 if spending were held at 1 percent below revenues
every year after 2002.

But he outlined his main goals as eliminating drugs, improving education
and reducing teen pregnancy by the start of the new millennium in 2001.

On drugs, he said those caught crossing borders or producing commercial
quantities of drugs should get mandatory life sentences on first
conviction, and the death sentence for second convictions.

``If you sell it we're going to kill you,'' he said.

He suggested using the Air Force to help track traffickers and
recommended religionbased drug rehabilitation programs.

He said schools today are ``often no more than holding pens for our
children,'' and said he would push for a system in which children who
attend poor schools should be given vouchers to ``go to a school that
actually cares.'

He said he would promote private efforts to prevent single teenage
girls from having children. He said half of girls under 18 who have
children out of wedlock will be longterm welfare recipients, and 70
percent of juveniles in state reform institutions were raised in
fatherless homes.

Gingrich told the religious broadcasters that it was ``vital that we
reassert the centrality of faith in the definition of America.''

He endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment on school prayer, saying
a society divorced from religion is a ``hopeless, empty desert of
despair.''

Gingrich later joined a news conference by the House education committee
to release a letter to President Clinton questioning whether federal
education dollars were being spent wisely.

The letter said an investigation by the subcommittee on oversight and
investigations found 760 education programs run by 39 agencies, boards
and commissions at a cost of nearly $100 billion annually.

The Clinton administration and other Democrats have called the list
misleading because it contains such items as training for air traffic
controllers, and programs that are still on the books but get no money.