Alan Simpson: “Woman, you're going to hear from the entire Dental Caucus tonight. Congressman Gosar from Arizona and myself are the two…”

“Woman, you're going to hear from the entire Dental Caucus tonight. Congressman Gosar from Arizona and myself are the two dentists that are in Congress, so it might not surprise you that I support the gentleman's amendment. I appreciate his sincere efforts to address the obligations, both trust obligations and treaty obligations, and moral obligations, that we have with our Indian brothers and sisters across this country. One of the things I'm proudest of in this bill, as I said in my opening statement during general debate, was to be able to carry on the work that had been done by Chairman Dicks when he was chairman of the committee, Chairman Moran when he was chairman of the committee, and now that I'm chairman of the committee, to meet those trust obligations that we have with our Indian brothers and sisters across this country. One of the areas in this bill, one of the two areas, that actually got increased funding was Indian health services because we do have an obligation to meet these things. Dental decay is the most prevalent disease in the United States; and as the gentleman from Arizona said, it's 300 percent more likely in Native Americans than it is in the general population. That's unacceptable. We have to do something about it. It means that we have to meet the contract obligations that we have had.…”