U.S. government shutdown inflicts extra pain on Indian programs
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The U.S. government shutdown, coming on top of the sequestration of the budget, hit Indian Country particularly hard. Programs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service were already underfunded.
WASHINGTON, DC-The shutdown of the U.S. government, coming on top of the sequestration of the budget, hit Indian Country particularly hard. Programs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service were already underfunded. Sequestration, in the form of across the board cuts, took its toll earlier this year and the shutdown has led to a second round of pain.
"You're already looking at a good number of tribes who are considered the poorest of our nation's people," Jacqueline Pata, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, told The New York Times. "When you are dealing with cutting off food supply programs and even nominal payments to tribal members, it creates a dangerous impact immediately."
In many areas of Indian Country, the shutdown indeed represents a matter of life and death. A BIA employee on the Navajo Nation took dialysis patients to the hospital in a truck after receiving permission from Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn.
"I'm not sure we had the authority to do that, but I'd rather get in trouble for doing something we don't technically have approval for than someone dying," Washburn, who remained on the job in Washington, D.C., in order to respond to critical situations, told Reuters.
Now that the shutdown is over, tribal officials are hoping previous funding will be restored.
