Ernest Istook

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ISTOOK. I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle]. I think when we talk about some parents being responsible and some parents not being responsible, we know it is true. I believe the vast majority of parents are responsible. So much of the concern is that in order to provide what we see as help to those who have irresponsible parents, that standard is applied in the case of responsible parents and provides an inducement, an incentive, if you will, that can help draw their children into that. It is the fact that the current law does not distinguish.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, one of the great blessings in my life is being the father of five children. Three of them are girls. All three of my daughters are teenagers. We have made the evolution from young teenagers to older teenagers. I heard the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Greenwood] recount, for example, going through with his daughters situations like, can I get my ears pierced, when do I start wearing makeup, when can I get a driver's license. We go through all those experiences, and over and over, we run across situations where our children are told they have to have mom or dad's permission, they have to have the consent of a parent, whether it is piercing of ears or things such as that. We can have a child that is involved in an automobile accident, and we find that for emergency medical care they have to have that parental consent. We have situations if a child is going to have aspirin at school, if they are going to be going on a field trip, these are just samples from some of our schools, from one in Virginia, authorization for medication, to be completed by a parent or guardian before they are going to give any sort of simple medicine to a schoolchild. Field trip permission form. This particular one from the Fairfax County public schools. And then this one, which by the way is from the public schools which my children attend or have graduated from in Ponca City, administering medicines to students. It is the policy of the board that with written parental permission medicines can be administered to your child. Over and over we have that. And here is a standard medical consent form, an allergy shot consent form. Here it says signature of patient or parent, ``patient'' if they are of legal age, ``parent'' if they are not. Here we have the consent or even notice that was provided to the parents of the 14-year-old in Illinois who was lured and coerced and pulled into a sexual relationship with a 37-year-old man to get the shots of Depo-Provera, an extremely controversial drug with plenty of side effects. That is the consent that was required. That is the notice that was required. Nothing. It can have interactions with other health issues with our children, but we will never know about it. We may make a decision that relates to giving our children some other medicine or some other treatment, and we do not know about potential interactions because title X avoids it. So we have these things that are going on which are contrary to the way that people are trying to live their lives and instruct their children, and it all comes about because there is in the title X regulations a requirement of confidentiality. And it is Federal law; it supersedes State law. I hear people say, what about the State law? The answer is, Federal law supersedes it. In fact, we just had decisions in Utah over parental consent on that. One came down about 2 weeks ago in Texas that Federal law controls over State efforts or interests in providing parental notice or parental consents. And this confidentiality is used to declare a child eligible for title X, because then we do not consult the parents on the income so they can become automatically eligible. And in addition to that, the confidentiality is used to avoid turning things in. We have a whole chart of what is the age of consent, what are the laws in the different States? And the youngest any State has, and there are only two of them, two States say that age 14, a minor, could give consent to sexual relations. Two other States say 15; 27 States say 16; five say 17; 14 say 18; and they all have different standards according to the State law on what is considered statutory rape or sexual abuse or child abuse or child molestation. We think those laws are important. They ought to be followed. But title X, with this little confidentiality requirement, has been on the books for 27 years. It is now treating 1.5 million teenagers a year. We know that many, many, many, many, many of them are below the age of consent. They are at the age where the law says, we want to protect them, we want to protect them. Anyone that gets involved in a sexual relationship with them can go to jail. Everyone else has requirements to report child abuse or sexual abuse, but out of the 1\1/2\ million treatments a year, 27 years, which is potentially, what, 40 million treatments, I do not know of a single case, not 1 for 27 years, where a title X provider has ever said, this is a situation where incest is going on, this is a situation where statutory rape or child molestation or sexual abuse is going on. They do not report it. We hear from doctors in hospitals that say, oh, I do not want to have to report that. Everybody else in this country is responsible for protecting our children and reporting situations like that, but we have some people that do not want to get involved, and they are the ones that are making the judgment calls and the decisions on whether our children are receiving these treatments subsidized by hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. I think it is kind of common sense to say, I want my kids protected. Everyone wants their children protected. Let us say simply that if they become aware, they know what the age of consent is, if they become aware of these things, they should report it to the proper authorities, just like everybody else does. Millions of cases with title X providers providing services to minors, no reports. They do not turn them in, even though it goes on. That is the first part. The second part, of course, is notifying the parent, the parent that would have the consent to anything else involving the health and safety and well-being and counseling and guidance of their children. But we cut them off. We isolate them. We say we have made a national decision that is more important than the decisions parents will make in their homes. We have made a national decision because some people, and they do, some people do have problems communicating with their parents to that degree; but because some have the problem, we are going to make it the law to cover 250 million Americans instead of saying, we are going to set up a system that only covers those that have a problem. The amendment does that. It has the so-called judicial bypass language which tracks mechanisms that already exist in every State when a parent is not responsible and needs to be bypassed. We have got it in there. But instead we are told, Oh, let's vote for a substitute, a substitute that says, Well, let's counsel people on how to avoid sexual predation. The trick is that language is already in the bill. The requirement that they encourage teens to get their parents involved has been the law for years. The so-called substitute is just a figleaf, it is just something to try to hide behind because some people do not want to tell their constituents how they voted on parental notice, how they voted on requiring title X providers to report it if they know of a situation. Title X was adopted in 1970. This is 1970. The birth rates for unmarried teenagers in 1970, 22.4 births per 1,000 teenagers. This is it now. This is the year title X was adopted, 1970, and created this bypass for parents involving guidance and direction for their children. Since then, the out-of-wedlock birth for teens has doubled: 44 per 1,000. Because after all if teens think they are being protected, ``Oh, I've learned how to do this'' and they forget to take the pill, forget the diaphragm, leave behind an IUD or whatever it may be, they make a mistake, they think they are protected, they are teens, they are still kids, they make the mistakes and they end up with more pregnancies. If you do things to make sexual activity by teens easier, there will be more sexual activity, there will be more out-of- wedlock births and there will be more abortions, too. The thing to do is to try to diminish the number of teenagers having sex, not to subsidize it with hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer money, which is what is happening now. Please help me protect my children. I am going to have grandchildren someday, grandparents care, too. Let us protect our kids and our grandkids. Let us make a commonsense amendment to this Federal program and say, first and foremost, the parents have a role in their kids and Uncle Sam should never try to take that away. I urge defeat of the Castle substitute and adoption of the underlying amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds in response. Mr. Chairman, contrary to what the speaker has represented, there is not any requirement for title X providers to report these situations. The Congressional Research Service, which provides the information for us in Congress, double checking the laws for us, confirmed that in writing to me, and I have it if anyone would want to look at it. Further, when we talk about the escalation of teen pregnancies, actually, Mr. Chairman, it is since the adoption of title X that the teen pregnancy rate out of wedlock has exploded in this country. Slow increases turned into a doubling after title X was adopted. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Crane]. (Mr. CRANE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object. For clarification, the gentleman phrased it as 3 hours from now. By that, does the gentleman mean 1\1/2\ hours per side? If there is something else delaying the business, it would not be counted against either side; so that 1\1/2\ hours, divided, would be the time the gentleman mentioned?

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that goes to the heart and soul of what happens in the families in the United States of America, what happens with our most precious possessions and involvements, our children and the role between parent and child. Mr. Chairman, this goes to the heart of what families do with their children, what we teach our children, and the role that we undertake as parents, and, unfortunately, how one of the major programs in this bill interferes with that. One of the most important things that most of us teach our children is that certain things should be reserved for marriage. We are talking, of course, about the sexual conduct of teenagers. We are talking about the fact that the out-of-wedlock teenage birth rate has doubled since the adoption of a particular Federal program, a program that allows counseling and contraceptives and condoms and IUD's and birth control pills and other chemicals to be given to youngsters. Mr. Chairman, I am talking about people as young as 13 and 12 years old even, and their parents never know about it and their parents are never notified, they are never involved. Two million dollars a year of our tax money goes to this program. One and a half million teenagers a year go to the so-called title X clinics. A third of the caseload that they handle is teenagers. Now, if my child is involved in something they should not be, if they were using drugs illegally, if they were involved in a gang activity or something against the law, I would be notified. Yet, even though for any other type of medical treatment a teenager is required to get the consent of their parent, Federal law creates an exception if they are going to go into a federally funded clinic and get birth control and contraceptives. Now, Mr. Chairman, what happens is very fascinating. Some people try to paint a picture that teenagers do what they have always done. But what is not known is since Federal law has cut teens off from so much of the advice and counsel of their parents, it is not just teens and teens. Mr. Chairman, look at some of the headlines from Charleston: ``Bus driver guilty in teen seduction''; from Austin: ``Older fathers and teen mothers and tougher laws''; Omaha: ``Going after men who prey on minors''; the Rocky Mountain News in Denver: ``Adult men blamed in teen pregnancies''; Chicago: ``Older men who impregnate teens targeted.'' The Washington Post, ``California cracks down on men to curb underage pregnancies.'' You see, studies in recent years have shown that 60 percent of young women who have sex before the age of 15 were coerced by males an average of 6 years older than them, and that two-thirds of births to teenage girls across the country is a situation where the father is not a teenager but they are 20 or older. Sexual predators who prey on young women have the opportunity given to them to give them that extra little bit of reassurance and keep the relationship going because they simply take them to a title X clinic, a Federal clinic, where they are given the contraceptives and their parents are never told about it. A situation that under the laws of almost any State in the country would be illegal, that might be labeled sexual abuse or child abuse or molestation or statutory rape, is totally ignored. We have laws on the books in just about every State saying that if there is this kind of activity involving a minor, you are supposed to report it. But we have a Federal regulation that says what they do in the title X clinics is absolutely confidential and cannot be shared with anyone, not law enforcement, not the parents. This amendment fixes that. It says, if there is a situation, such as I described, involving an underage child, title X providers must report that and comply with State law the same as anyone else who deals with services to our young people. It says, before any contraceptives are going to be given to a minor in a title X program, their parent will be notified 5 days before that is disseminated. Mr. Chairman, this is not a requirement for parental consent, but it is a requirement of notification to fix this problem. Mr. Chairman, I would certainly urge adoption of the amendment. Amendment Offered by Mr. Castle as a Substitute for the Amendment Offered by Mr. Istook

Mr. ISTOOK. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the time. I appreciate the hard effort that so many people have put into this particular piece of legislation, but I really rise not as a member of the subcommittee but as a father because there are so many things in this piece of legislation that affect so many aspects of our lives, our kids and their education, our health, our nutrition, the Labor Department, and all of the impact upon where we work, and, indeed, it also affects very, very directly the relationship between us and our children. I have five children, two boys and three girls, and all three of my girls are teenagers, and I pay attention when a situation happens such as happened in Illinois recently, when it is disclosed that a 37-year- old teacher begins an affair with a 13-year-old girl, carries it on for a year and a half, and, to continue the affair, takes her to a title X clinic funded by our taxpayers' money to obtain contraception. Now, if this were to any other type of clinic, they would be required to report a situation that involves something such as statutory rape or child abuse or sexual abuse of a minor. Well, see, title X has a Federal requirement that whatever happens with anyone who comes into a title X clinic, whether they be 30 or 40 or 20 or 15 or 12 or 11, nothing will be told to anyone. A total confidentiality requirement is written into the Federal regulations which supersede State law, and anyone else that would be required to report this incident to the parents or the authorities has to stay quiet under title X. That is why we have an amendment in this particular bill that is being offered for this particular bill that says providers that are given Federal funding in these are not exempt and must comply with any laws regarding the reporting of child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, or incest. This is a key provision that will be debated, but I think it is one of the most important things because this bill hits us where we live and our families, and the Federal Government should not be inducing people to be able to conduct such activity without even parents being told.

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I will speak from the well on this. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is offered to address the same problem that this House addressed last year by a vote of 212 to 206. It is based upon a very simple principle. All people should be equal in the eyes of the law. We should not say that some person should be entitled to evade their taxes because they make a purchase at a place that does not wish to follow the law and does not collect taxes that are due on certain commodities. Usually it happens to be fuel, gasoline, diesel for automobiles. It is cigarettes. It is alcohol. It is other items that are purchased that normally have a sales tax. Mr. Chairman, about $1 billion a year that is supposed to go to State and local governments to support roads, to pay for schools, to pay for hospitals, to pay for public health and public safety is being evaded with the complicity of the Federal Government. Why? Because the Bureau of Indian Affairs is transferring land at the request of Indian tribes to what is called tribal trust status, which makes it Federal Government property operated by an Indian tribe which has gotten this land not because it is part of their historic property, not because it is any land that had special significance. It may not even be in the same State where the tribe has ever been. It may be hundreds of miles away from any other tribal property. But it is in a prime location for traffic, and they erect there convenience stores and gasoline stations to take advantage of their failure to collect the taxes because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that although taxes are due on the transactions, on the sales to nonmembers of the tribes, they have not granted the States an enforcement mechanism, and that is up to Congress. The tribes have no sovereign immunity, the Supreme Court says, but Congress has not acted. Mr. Chairman, if you could buy your gasoline at two locations and one is being operated by an Indian tribe which refuses to help collect the tax and the other operated by someone else, you will find that on average it is 26 cents a gallon less if you go to the one where the tribe is assisting the tax evasion. If you are buying a pack of cigarettes, on average around this country it is 41 cents a pack less on a purchase of cigarettes. No wonder a person that is trying to play fair and live by the rules and obey the law, that is trying to compete, finds that they cannot because the Federal Government is helping them to acquire the prime real estate locations with no relation to Indian tradition or custom or heritage but with only one thought in mind: They want the extra money. It is huge. New York State estimates they are losing over $100 million a year already, and my State of Oklahoma, the total loss is in the vicinity of $30 to $40 million a year already and it is accelerating year after year after year. This amendment very simply says we are going to have a moratorium on that sort of thing until we can get a handle on it, until we can reinstate the principle of fair play. Mr. Chairman, if you look at some of the advertisements that they run in newspapers, grand opening, for example, of this particular facility in Oklahoma in this newspaper ad, they were not charging the tax on cigarettes. The U.S. Supreme Court says the purchaser, for example, still owes the tax, but they are not helping collect it as all other merchants are required to do by law. They do not collect it on beer, on gasoline. No wonder legitimate operators find that they cannot compete. No wonder that people from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or the National Federation of Retailers, or Governors of State after State, or the National League of Cities and the National Association of Governors have all said we need this legislation. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Visclosky] and I have sponsored House bill 1168 which puts in place the protective mechanism. We have even been denied a hearing so we have to come with this amendment to try to work on the travesty, on the tax evasion. That is what it is, pure and simple, do not take my word for it. Take the word of the U.S. Supreme Court that has said that is what is at issue. It is tax evasion which is illegal. Mr. Chairman, the adoption of this amendment is simply a fair play amendment. It is saying that the U.S. Government will no longer be a party to the widespread tax evasion that not only is taking honest people who try to compete and putting them out of business, but it is draining the resources and the opportunities in State and local government. I ask adoption of the amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I think the important thing to recall is, as has been pointed out before, there are approximately 30 laws on the books under which the Bureau of Indian Affairs can take property into tribal trust. This amendment only creates a restriction, a moratorium, upon one of them. The only reason hearings have not been held, of course, is that despite requests many months old to do so, the authorizing committee has not held the hearings although we have requested them. We have advised people of the provisions which were passed by this House last year by a vote of 212 to 206 which are incorporated in House Resolution 1168 sponsored by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Visclosky] and myself and over 50 other Members of this body. That was what the original amendment was that was offered on this floor because a point of order was raised and sustained against it. Then we came with the substitute amendment which only enacts the moratorium on one of the some 30-odd mechanisms. It leaves in place, for example, the mechanism where they can still acquire property for hospitals and other what is called eleemosynary institutions for public assistance and public good and so forth. We are trying to target this as narrowly as the House rules permit us. And of course with the assistance of the Senate and the conference committee, we expect to improve upon that yet further. This is an important amendment, Mr. Chairman, because the problem, as the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Coburn] states, is accelerating, it is growing, and nobody can stay in business when their competitors have this advantage and can locate anywhere they wish without being tied to existing tribal lands. The moratorium is only on new lands. It does not affect what they may do with lands which the tribes already have, whether they own them outright or are in trust.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I hope we can wrap this up. I think it is important to stress what is happening here, what the Federal Government is making possible because of the patchwork quilt, hundreds of thousands of acres but sometimes it is a quarter acre here, a quarter acre there, maybe a full acre here for a truck stop, convenience store, smoke shop, whatever it may be, with total disregard to the States where a tribe may normally operate, with total disregard to its historic boundaries, whether you are talking about 20th century history or 19th century or 18th century or whatever. It is the basic rule of real estate, location, location, location, that is what is driving this, that and the ability, not because of sovereign immunity, not because of treaties, but, as the U.S. Supreme Court has stated, solely because Congress has failed to act that they are marketing the failure to charge taxes which the U.S. Supreme Court says are owing and are due when non-tribal Members make these purchases. This is not an old advertisement. This ad is about 8 months old. It is after Oklahoma had tried to get tribes to enter into compacts. Only 3 out of 39 tribes in Oklahoma were willing to do so, despite some very heavy financial incentives, because they can make more money by saying, ``Come buy from us, no tax on cigarettes, no tax on gasoline, no tax on beer.'' And what difference does it make if they are not charging those taxes? Look at the difference. If you do not charge on gasoline, 26 cents a gallon, you go to the corner, one station has a price 26 cents each and every gallon lower than the other. Where do you take your business? Cigarettes, average of 41 cents a pack. Where do you take your business? North Carolina cannot come into Massachusetts and say, ``We have a 40 cents a pack, 46 cents a pack differential. We are going to open up a branch of North Carolina in the middle of Massachusetts so the Massachusetts businesses cannot do business.'' I heard someone on this floor say, well, that is okay, everybody can make a deal with the tribes. That means if you do not do business with the tribes you cannot stay in business if you do not let them take over your operation. What a difference it makes. This is from an actual retail location. It goes through their grocery, tobacco, beer profit, personnel, expenses, everything. If they have to pay the tax, the business operates an annual loss of $5,500 a year. If they do not have to collect the tax, they make $927,000 profit. Who can stay in business if the Federal Government permits people to thumb their nose at the law? This is basic fairness. This is basic justice. This is basic playing by the rules. We have $6.5 billion in this bill and in other bills going directly to the benefit of Indian tribes. Do we also say that we want to give them the key to every business in the country, so that those that are trying to abide by the law cannot compete and our local communities do not have the billions of dollars they are losing in gasoline, cigarette, and sales taxes that pays for our roads, that pays for our schools, that pays for public safety? I urge Members to vote for the amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, is the gentleman aware there are actually some 30 different laws under which property is taken into trust and the amendment only addresses one specific one, leaving in place a multitude of others which, among other things, permit tribes to acquire hospital property and so forth? Is the gentleman aware that this is only 1 of some 30 different sections under which lands can be taken in and put into trust?

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I would like to address a couple of issues that have been mentioned by some of my colleagues. For example, we heard the argument, well, is this not the same as States having different levels of taxes for gasoline or cigarettes or whatever it might be. No, it is not the same, because this is a patchwork quilt. This is where the Bureau of Indian Affairs is, for example, taking applications for a tribe in Oklahoma to open up a convenience store at a crossroads of two interstate highways in Ohio where they have never had any historical connection, they do not have any sort of tribal lands or any relevance there except it is a nice location to get a lot of traffic and make a lot of money. An Oklahoma tribe with applications in Arizona, an Oklahoma tribe with applications in Georgia. And it goes on, too, with different States. We have cities finding that different residential lots, not in one block as part of an Indian area or reservation but in a patchwork quilt, they will come in and take one residential lot in the middle of a community and open up a store and say they are exempt from the zoning laws, as well. This is more like if one State said, I am going to buy a piece of property in another State, and if I go out of Oklahoma and I go to Missouri and I say, ``Now this land I bought is no longer under the laws of the State of Missouri, it is under the laws of the State of Oklahoma.'' So you could have, for example, Florida with a gas tax of a nickel a gallon saying, ``We are going to buy pieces of property in Connecticut where it is 38 cents a gallon. And we are going to undercut the price and we will tell everybody they are not in Connecticut anymore, they are in Florida.'' So if they go into Rhode Island where it is 28 cents a gallon, or if North Carolina, with 5 cents a pack cigarette taxes says, ``We are going to open up pieces of North Carolina in New York State where the cigarette tax is 56 cents a pack or in New Jersey where it is 40 cents a pack or Massachusetts where it is 51 cents a pack, and we are going to sell it for the taxes only a nickel a pack,'' you see what happens with this patchwork quilt that is being created. These are not tribes wanting to have operations on their reservations or on Indian lands. These are tribes that want to pick and choose the premier locations anyplace in the country with no connection, no next door neighbor situation with any existing tribes, not contiguous land, but just say ``We want to buy up different tracts and create a checkerboard. And our tribal lands are checkerboarded all over the place, and they all just happen to be locations where lots of people come by to buy gasoline and cigarettes and groceries and evade the tax.''

Mr. ISTOOK. Is the gentleman aware that the examples he cites are States, for example, that have static borders and that what is happening, we have applications and grants of trust status where basically the borders are shifting one plot of land at a time. An application is not, for example, for thousands of acres. The applications may be for one lot, for example, in a State and then another lot in a different state.

Mr. ISTOOK. I want to ask the gentleman from California, because he mentioned examples of different places that have static borders.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, 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. And she is being out competed by a tribal gasoline station that is knocking out the ability of one of their own members to work hard and to make an honest living because they are not looking to build up regular businesses. As the newspaper ad which I held earlier shows, they are trying to sell to people who say, let us not pay gasoline tax, let us not pay beer tax, let us not pay cigarette tax, let us not pay sales tax. And that is what is costing us all around this country, and it is getting bigger every year if we do not stop it.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Rhode Island [Mr. Kennedy] did not wish to yield to have this interspersed with his comments. But you see, what the tribes are doing, if they were establishing something that is basically a commissary for the Indian tribes, there is nothing that we are seeking to do that interferes with that. The U.S. Supreme Court has said, if they are making a transaction with a tribal member, they do not have to charge any State or local sales tax or gasoline tax or cigarette tax, and we are not trying to do that. But what they are doing is saying, we do not want just a location that is maybe in the middle of a military business and we do not want to just handle transactions for the benefit of our own members. They say, we are wanting locations at prime areas. For example, I have a copy of the letter that says Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes are seeking to buy up existing convenience store locations along Interstate 40, not because it is next to their tribal lands or has any relation or is trying to serve the needs of the members of the tribe, but because there are hundreds of thousands of people every day that pass through and they want to be able to sell to them and to undercut the competition and to get all that business, not by selling to members of the tribes but by putting people out of business who are following the law.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I find it interesting if someone would claim that we are disregarding the needs of American Indians in this country, if they will look, for example, at page 5 of the report of the very bill that is on this floor right now, they will find that we are appropriating approximately $6.5 billion for American Indian programs. Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Education, Health and Human Services, Indian Health Services, all of these other matters. Why? Because we have undertaken certain obligations and we seek to honor them. We do not permit, for example, a member of the general public to go into a commissary on Federal military property and buy goods at any sort of reduced rate. That is only limited to military personnel, and reserves cannot even do it if they are not on active duty. Now, if we were to open up those or any other place and say that the general public is invited to come in and do their shopping, in competition with those that are not there for a special purpose, then I would agree with the analogy that the gentleman from Rhode Island [Mr. Kennedy] raises.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I would answer the question if the gentleman from Rhode Island [Mr. Kennedy] is posing the question to me.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?