Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions - S. 1770

STATEMENT ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mr. CAMPBELL (for himself, Mr. INOUYE, and Mr. DOMENICI):

S. 1770. A bill to establish a voluntary alternative claims resolution process to reach a settlement of pending class action litigation, to the Committee of Indian Affairs.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, today I am pleased to be joined by Senators Inouye, Domenici and Stabenow in submitting a Senate Resolution urging settlement of the 8-year old Indian trust funds lawsuit, and by Senators Inouye and Domenici in introducing a bill that I hope and believe will accomplish that goal, the "Indian Money Claims Satisfaction Act of 2003".

The saga of Cobell v. Norton did not start in 1996 with the filing of the lawsuit, it began long before any of us were born. In 1887 Congress enacted the General Allotment Act to break up the tribal landmass and teach Indians to be "civilized".

The legacy of that failed policy is still with us in the form of horribly fractionated Indian lands and the class action case filed in 1996 that is still ongoing.

The remedy the plaintiffs in the Cobell case are seeking is an accounting by the United States of funds that are or should be in the hundreds of thousands of individual Indian money accounts (IIMs) managed and maintained by the Federal Government.

Eight long years have passed without an accounting, and without a single penny being paid to an account holder. Last month, Judge Lamberth issued a 400-page decision and order that guarantees at least 5 more years of litigation, hundreds of millions and maybe billions more spent, with no end in sight to the lawsuit.

Those who insist that a decision by the Judge would mean the beginning of the end of this case are wrong: with likely appeals, Congressional squabbling over money spent on this effort, and additional lawsuits aimed at securing money damages, this case is just beginning.

The U.S. claims that pennies on the dollar are owed the plaintiffs but, without billions more spent on accounting activity, it cannot say for sure how much is in the accounts or should be in the accounts.

Preliminary cost estimates from the Interior Department suggest that it will take $10 billion or more to comply with Judge Lamberth's order on historic accounting. This money will be spent year after year through Fiscal Year 2008 at least.

I believe this money is better spent on re-constituting the Indian land base and building a forward-looking, state-of-the-art trust management system, and providing more dollars to Indian health care and education, which we know are underfunded.

The plaintiffs claim more than $175 billion dollars should be in these accounts, a number the Department has vigorously contested.

Today I am introducing a bill that I believe will end this lawsuit in a way to provide justice to individual Indian account holders and restore some sense of normalcy to the Interior Department.

Just as the Indian Claims Commission, the Trust Resolution Corporation, and the Volcker Committee on Swiss Bank Accounts helped resolve cases of highly complex, historical-based litigation, the bill I am introducing will establish a 9-member, expert-filled "Indian Money Claims Satisfaction Task Force" to develop alternative methodologies to arrive at account balances.

The bill also establishes the "Indian Money Claims Tribunal" to provide binding arbitration for any IIM holder that contests the account balance provided by the Task Force.

I look forward to the swift enactment of this bill and with it, an honorable conclusion to this sad and destructive chapter of Federal-Indian relations.