Tom Coburn: “I want to bring one additional point before I yield to the other gentleman from Oklahoma. We have before us an historic…”

“I want to bring one additional point before I yield to the other gentleman from Oklahoma. We have before us an historic agreement on tobacco which has associated with it taxes on tobacco. Do my colleagues know where all the cigarettes will be sold in the future? They will be sold on tribal properties throughout the United States. The Cherokee Nation, the Creek Nation, the Choctaw Nation, anywhere in history that they have lands, they will come and buy land and claim it as tribal lands, and they will be the sellers in fact of gasoline, they will be the sellers in fact of tobacco, they will be the owners of casino gambling, of bingo halls, and, in fact, the revenue lost to individual localities, municipalities and States will be enormous. We have to deal with the greater issue: Can there truly be a sovereign country inside a sovereign country? That is one we will not attack. Nobody wants to deal with that issue. That is why we face this problem. And until we say the Indians cannot be truly sovereign, until we stop giving to the Cherokee Nation $100 million a year and allowing them to waste a large portion of that through the problems, if the gentleman is familiar now with what is going on with the Cherokee Nation, then we will not solve this problem.”