Amending the Dayton Aviation Heritage Preservation Act of 1992 to Adjust the Boundary of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park
Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I am really glad to see we can pass eight bills by unanimous consent here. I want to thank my colleague from California Senator Padilla, my colleague from Oregon Senator Merkley, and my colleague from Ohio Senator Brown for helping to work to develop these pairs and to move them forward.
I also want to acknowledge the cloakroom teams--thank you very much; we appreciate that--as well as the ranking member and the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member Barrasso--and their committee for their assistance.
We have now passed a total of five Alaska lands-related bills in the past couple days. Just last night, my friend Senator Hirono graciously offered a pair that included my legislation to sunset an outdated requirement in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act for Native village corporations to help convey lands to the State of Alaska to be held in trust for municipal uses.
By sunsetting this requirement and allowing our village corporations to regain title to these lands, it will help free up lands for pressing needs such as housing. I hear it all the time when I am out in the villages. We were able to move that measure.
We paired it with a bill from Congresswoman Radewagen to allow American Samoa to more easily make amendments to its territorial constitution. I was out in American Samoa with a group of Members a couple of months ago, and this was a priority for the Congresswoman and for the Governor. So it is good news for them as well.
The four bills that we just moments ago passed are important as well. We have legislation to amend ANCSA to ensure that when aged, blind, or disabled Alaska Natives receive dividends from their settlement trusts, they do not inadvertently become ineligible for certain Federal assistance programs.
We have another bill that settles Cape Fox's remaining land entitlement to remedy an injustice limiting where they can select lands. This has been going on for more than half a century here, so very important to the people down in the Cape Fox region.
Then we have my legislation to reauthorize the National Volcano Early Warning and Monitoring System, to provide for critical research and monitoring systems, upgrade existing networks, and install new detection technology. This helps in a State like mine or a State like Hawaii, where we have people who are living around volcanos.
We included legislation led by my colleague from Alaska Senator Sullivan to extend the Alaskan Native Vietnam Veterans Allotment Program for an additional 5 years. This is to ensure that eligible individuals and their heirs can receive their rightful lands. These are individuals who stood up, answered the call, served in Vietnam, and during their service were unable to make their Native selections. So remedying this has been a long cause of both mine and Senator Sullivan.
So we recognize that this is the end of the year, and all of these measures that have just passed all start with an S-dot, which means they are Senate bills. They are going to go to the House. They may not become law this year. We get that, although hope springs eternal around this place. But I am hopeful that the House can pass potentially some more bills by suspension. If they can't, we can revisit these in the new year, which are absolutely not controversial, but to get them across the finish line in this body is important. I know there are a lot of folks in these communities that are waiting for final action on that.
So I am pleased to be able to actually do some legislating here this evening.
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