Dan Kildee: “I was here in 1988 as a Member of the Interior Committee, and I helped write IGRA. I am very familiar with it. All laws…”

“I was here in 1988 as a Member of the Interior Committee, and I helped write IGRA. I am very familiar with it. All laws here are written on Capitol Hill, not Mount Sinai, so I know that they are not perfect bills. But this has been a good bill. As I said, from the very beginning, I told Mr. Pombo that I admired his courage to address this situation, but I do think that it has not been addressed properly, particularly with equating sovereign tribes with counties. I would be glad to work with him, bring this bill out on regular order where people could offer amendments on a very, very important bill. This bill took us a long time to write in 1988. We had great debate in 1988 and great input. We wrote a good bill. So I date back to those, probably one of the few who were here when we wrote that law, and I think that to amend it in this fashion, particularly on suspension, and, secondly, treating sovereign tribes as if they were like counties which are creatures of States, treat them as two equals. The Constitution does not say, Congress shall regulate commerce with foreign nations, the several States, the Indian tribes and the various counties. It mentions the three sovereignties here. That is very, very important to me, and we bore that in mind when we wrote this bill back in 1988. I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that we will be able to defeat this today, and Mr. Pombo knows. I have talked to him repeatedly on this.…”