Ernest Istook: “I will not yield. I tried to engage in a dialog. You see, they are saying, we do not want to take care of our tribal…”

“I will not yield. I tried to engage in a dialog. You see, they are saying, we do not want to take care of our tribal members. We want an advantage that nobody else has--26 cents a gallon on gasoline. Now, you go to the corner, and I do not care who you are, you drive up to a corner and see the price over here is maybe a $1.20 a gallon and over here it is $1.45. Where are you going buy your gasoline? It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens here. And this is not sales to tribal members. The U.S. Supreme Court in a series, a series, of decisions have said that the tax is still due when they are making the sales to the nontribal customers. Unfortunately, the tribes are not doing that. They are refusing to cooperate with the State and local governments in collecting the taxes that the U.S. Supreme Court says are due, and they are profiting off the tax evasion. They are marketing the tax evasion to their customers. If this were just a matter of tribes trying to deal with their own tribal members and help out and bring people up to compete, that would be a very different situation. But it is not what they are doing. I have a letter from a tribal member who operates a convenience store, and guess what? She collects tax from customers. She follows the law. She does not have the special advantage that the BIA has given some land and trust to her.”