Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman. Mr. Speaker, for several years, I have been actively involved in a troubling, off-reservation gaming issue in my home State of Arizona regarding the Tohono O'odham Nation. TO has been attempting to open a Las Vegas-style casino--more than 60 miles from its ancestral lands and reservation in Tucson and in another tribe's former reservation in the Phoenix metropolitan area--for the sole purpose of gaming. This comes after TO and 16 other Arizona tribes adopted a compact, approved by Arizona voters, which expressly promised there would be no additional casinos or gaming in the Phoenix metropolitan area until 2027. TO alone spent $1.8 million in urging Arizona voters to rely on this limitation. In exchange for this promise, the voters granted the tribes a statewide monopoly on gaming, and other tribes gave up significant rights. Shockingly, a few months after Arizona voters approved Proposition 202, TO finalized a multiyear effort to violate this compact and used a shell organization to purchase land in Glendale for a casino. TO's dismissal of their promise to build no additional casinos in Phoenix is not something that Congress can ignore when the result will be so harmful to what has been a national model. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call attention to critical evidence obtained from the litigation discovery in the State of Arizona v. Tohono O'odham Nation.…”