Mark Warner

The time has come for action. The time has come for movement of legislation. The time has come for discrimination to end and recognition to begin! The time for Lumbee recognition is now!

It is unfathomable that this tribe of 55,000 people has never been fully recognized by our government.

I realize that some of my colleagues have apprehensions about pursuing legislative recognition when an administrative route was established by Congress in 1978.

That question is a dagger in the heart of the good, decent, and honorable people who compose the Lumbee Tribe!

It may surprise members of the Committee that these tribes are not currently recognized.

This bill would provide recognition by the United States of America to the Chickahominy Tribe, the Chickahominy Eastern Division Tribe, the Monacan Nation, the Nansemond Tribe, the Rappahannock Tribe and the Upper Mattaponi Tribe.

I am a strong advocate of federal recognition for the Virginia Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Monacan, Nansemond, Rappahannock and Upper Mattaponi tribes.

The record and the facts are crystal clear--the Lumbee Tribe exists as an Indian tribe and has done so over its long history.

I have been proud to co-sponsor various legislation seeking recognition for these Virginia tribes, including S. 1074.

Senate Bill 161 is essential to correcting this injustice and to allowing the Little Shell Tribe to proudly take its rightful place among the Indian tribes formally recognized by the United States government.

We applaud Senators Corker and Warner for introducing the Housing Finance Reform and Taxpayer Protection Act of 2013.

I thank my colleague for his voice throughout this debate. He and I and a number of other colleagues realized early on this self-inflicted crisis of putting our workforce in jeopardy was bad policy, bad politics, and bad for our country. I…

If we fail to produce, market share goes to someone else.

I agree we need to deal with our fiscal issues on both sides. I would simply remind our colleague that the Senate passed a budget this spring and has asked 21 times to go to conference.

So when people say we need to negotiate, we have. Now they want another one.

I've got to tell you, I really respect your testimony and your restraint, because if you're not mad as hell then I don't think you're appropriately expressing at least the way I feel and a whole lot of folks around the country feel.

I'd like to thank Congressman Young and Senator Murkowski and also everybody that's sitting here for putting a band-aid on the fisheries.

We are already in a position where we're losing our very eminence in science and therefore our ability to attract the best and brightest to join America's scientific community is getting harder and harder.

We can't get appropriation bills, I'm missing the picture here.

If we want to build for the future, if we want to have a scientific enterprise that's the envy of all others in the world, we're going to have to address these kinds of problems directly.

You could potentially have a circumstance where perhaps America does not default, but every State and every locality either is in an immediate budget crisis or they would have to default.

We are in uncharted territory. We do not know what would happen. Why would we take that risk?

Wouldn't the market access fund be the first time ever that there would be this stable existing fee that would help provide some funding in this area?

So if we do not do reform, the status quo is going to even further harm rural communities, point one.

Time is not on our side in GSE reform.