Spending for Federally-funded Programs in Indian Country

Dec 19, 2011

Spending bills (appropriations) came in two big chunks this year. In November, Congress approved a “minibus” – a collection of three appropriations bills. These three bills covered Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 funding for five federal departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), plus three science agencies.

Funding for the remainder of the departments are being folded today into an “omnibus” – a large appropriations bill that covers, in this case nine appropriations bills. (FY 2012 started on October 1, 2011; all programs have been supported by a continuing resolution which expires today, December 16.)

These Indian programs rode the “minibus,” with funding close to FY 2011 levels, or sometimes a bit more. The strong increases proposed for many of these programs in the House legislation did not make it onto the minibus:

In the Department of Agriculture:

• Office of Tribal Relations in the Department of Agriculture,
• Loans for Indian tribes to acquire land, Loans and grants to Alaska Native villages and Hawaiian homelands for water and waste disposal,
• Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, which provides commodity foods to low-income reservation households, including the elderly,
• Native American Institutions Endowment Fund for 34 (“land grant”) tribally controlled colleges,
• Community facilities grants for tribal colleges, and
• Pacific coastal salmon recovery efforts.

In the Department of Justice:

• Assistance to tribal courts, tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction assistance programs, detention facilities on tribal lands and tribal civil and criminal legal assistance, and • American Indian and Alaska Native sexual assault clearinghouse

In the Department of Transportation:

• Indian reservation roads programs

In Housing and Urban Development:

• Native American and Native Hawaiian housing block grants • Indian Community Development block grant

As the “omnibus” appropriations bill (H.R. 2055) leaves the station today, it will carry the remainder of the federal programs for Indian Country operating in the Departments of the Interior, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services and other agencies. All 1,261 pages of this bill, introduced yesterday, must pass today, or federal agencies may be required to close until they receive permission to spend government funds. Look for a full report on appropriations in the January NALU.