Eni Faleomavaega

Put another way, Madam Chair, this bill is not in the best interest of the United States or the Vietnamese American community.

The United States cannot assume the moral high ground when it comes to Vietnam.

If we are going to put this standard on Vietnam, let's do it on Saudi Arabia, and look at all these other countries that are non democratic.

The conversations with the Department of State, they share my concerns that the measures of this bill could adversely affect our security relationship with Vietnam.

H.R. 1410 is shortsighted in its approach, as contrary to the efforts of the Clinton and the Bush and the Obama administrations.

In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

I do want to thank you for calling this special occasion to recognize one of our colleagues who has just passed away yesterday to say a few words.

I realize Alaska is the largest state in the union, and I realize I am the smallest.

And if I could just start--am I correct, Mr. LaRose? Your particular reservation and band lost 600,000 acres?

I am really, really sad to see that my good friend and colleague, Dale Kildee, will be retiring this year, also a tremendous champion of the Native American community.

And you could not find a better champion than the gentleman from Alaska.

And I want to say for the record that in the 20 years that I have served as a member of this committee, specifically dealing with Native American issues--because, as an indigenous person myself, I have a very strong feeling about these…

You can call me John Wayne, it is all right.

We are talking about how many years that we have been going through this exercise, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years?

This is also what was noted by Congressman Ackerman's earlier statement.

I notice with interest that the proposed budget for the Bureau of Indian Affairs is set at about $2.5 billion.

Where are we with the office that is responsible for monitoring and conducting safety inspections in terms of preventing another oil spill?

Have we taken measures to make sure that the Indian tribes are no longer going to have to file suit for another 10, 15 years to properly gain what they should have been given all these years?

There is no question, Madam Chair, of the implications, just as we are confronted with whether or not we should be selling $6 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.

I am going to lean very heavily on Secretary Babauta and the Secretary of the Interior for assistance.

Why should you be exempted from the national requirements that the minimum wage should be the same throughout America?

I support whatever they agree to. But, of course, there are other things I am thinking of, maybe a 25-cent increase.

The gross sales of these canneries were well over $100 billion in gross sales, and for that period of time, the people were being paid $2 an hour, $3 hour an hour for this 50-year period.

I have a love-hate relationship with our canneries. I love them because they provide jobs for our people, but I have very serious problems with the way they went about making business.

I am very sorry and I apologize that our officials in the Northern Mariana Islands who went to bed with people like Jack Abramoff...