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HELENA — The U.S. House of Representatives attached a $3.4 billion government settlement with Indian trust beneficiaries to a war-funding bill that it passed just before breaking for the July Fourth holiday.
The settlement was one of several additions made late Thursday to the $80 billion appropriations bill that includes funding for the troop surge in Afghanistan and money for federal disaster assistance. It authorizes the Obama administration to settle a class-action lawsuit with between 300,000 and 500,000 American Indians who claims the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars held in trust by the government.
The House originally authorized the settlement in May, but it was tucked into the Democrats' jobs legislation that stalled in a Senate filibuster late last month.
The plaintiffs hope including the settlement in the war-funding and disaster-relief bill will mean the Senate will approve it.
"We expect that the Senate must give prompt and serious consideration to the bill because, without enactment, there are no funds for our war efforts and no funds for FEMA," plaintiffs attorney Dennis Gingold said Friday. "The bill is too important to this country. Partisan politics must not obstruct passage."
Gingold credited House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer with moving the settlement authorization forward, calling him a "true champion for individual Indian trust beneficiaries."
"It is important for this settlement to move forward as quickly as possible, and because Republicans have stood in lockstep opposition to every piece of legislation, including it in the supplemental makes it more likely it will become law sooner," said Hoyer spokeswoman Katie Grant.
Another $1.15 billion for a discrimination settlement between African-American farmers and the Agriculture Department is also in the war-spending bill after stalling in the earlier jobs legislation. Minority lawmakers are pushing hard to keep the money for both settlements, but there is significant pressure in the Senate to pare the measure.
Sen. John Barrasso, the vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, has said the Indian settlement should be a stand-alone bill with several changes, such as capping lawyer fees at $50 million.
Barrasso spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the Wyoming Republican was at a funeral Friday and could not immediately comment on the House's action.
Under the proposed settlement, $1.4 billion would go to individual Indian account holders. Some $2 billion would be used by the government to buy broken-up Indian lands from individual owners willing to sell, and then turn those lands over to tribes. Another $60 million would be used for a scholarship fund for young Indians.
Lawsuit participants would receive at least $1,500, and many would receive considerably more.
Elouise Cobell, the Blackfeet woman from Browning, Mont., who filed the lawsuit in 1996, has urged passage of the settlement, saying it's long overdue.
Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., said he supports the settlement but voted against the measure because the public had not been given a chance to examine all the additions to the spending bill.
"Denny supports finalizing the Cobell settlement but not when it means putting funding for American soldiers at risk and adding billions to already record-breaking deficits," Rehberg spokesman Jed Link said. "The emergency war supplemental shouldn't be used to fulfill an election-year wish-list."
