Full-Year Continuing Appropriations, 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. COLE. I thank the chairman for yielding.
I had not intended to speak on this particular issue, but I had the opportunity to hear my good friend from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) in debate recently, and I wanted to come down to the floor and correct a misimpression he has about the so-called Carcieri fix. And let me begin by thanking my good friend, the chairman, for allowing us to put that particular legislation in the bill.
I actually proposed the amendment on the floor. It was passed unanimously on a bipartisan vote by our subcommittee of Interior. And the bill, frankly, the measure has absolutely nothing to do with gaming. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court fix that it addresses didn't involve gaming at all. It involved a housing case, land put into trust and used for housing by an Indian tribe.
What the Supreme Court has done--by a very narrow interpretation of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act--is to create two classes of Indian tribes, some of whom can receive land in the trust, as they have for 80 years by Secretaries of the Interior of both parties, and some of whom now cannot. Almost all the cases involved here, almost every single one, involved cases that have absolutely nothing to do with gaming.
This is ultimately a sovereignty issue and a process issue. Frankly, if this fix is not made, it would not have been made without the support, frankly, of the members of the committees of jurisdiction and of the United States Senate, who said this was the best vehicle and the best way to go. But if the fix isn't made, we are going to have billions of dollars worth of litigation and have enormous disruption of economic development in Indian Country.
I think my friend is simply under a misimpression, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to make that point for the record.
I again wanted to thank my friend, Mr. Obey, for working with us and his staff and my good friend, the chairman of the subcommittee, Chairman Moran, for working with us for a bipartisan solution to a real problem.
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