Thomas Daschle: “Mr. President, the point I made in the short remarks that I have just completed is that the circumstances affecting…”

“Mr. President, the point I made in the short remarks that I have just completed is that the circumstances affecting Indian tribes are vastly different than those affecting any other cross-section of the population. We have unemployment rates in South Dakota close to 90 percent. Indian tribes nationwide have unemployment rates of up to seven times what they are for the rest of the population. Not only are we dealing with an extremely high level of unemployment, there is also little infrastructure to deliver social services on many reservations. Clearly, we have circumstances on many reservations that is far different from other areas. That is really what we are trying to do, to recognize the extraordinary difficulties that we face in a very concentrated area: Reservations where there are really no resources; reservations where there is no employment. We cannot locate businesses on reservations today. We are simply saying that if we are going to do this right, if we are going to allow tribes to do this right, we should allocate a 3 percent set-aside for tribes to allow them to begin solving these problems.”