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Even as they reap ever larger profits from slot machines and gaming tables, tribes with successful casinos continue to collect federal taxpayer dollars. An Office of Management and Budget report shows that from 1993 to 2001, overall federal funding for key Native American programs climbed from $5.3 billion to $9.4 billion--a 77% increase. Government and congressional officials say they have no idea how much of that went to tribes with successful casinos. But data Time has analyzed suggest that Washington often rewards rich tribes and penalizes poor ones by distributing funds based on historical practices rather than need. A tribe with a profitable casino often gets more money per capita than a tribe without one.
Consider the BIA's distribution of tribal-priority-allocation (TPA) funds to tribes. Each year the BIA hands out about $800 million for basic programs such as general assistance to individual Indians and families, vocational training and child welfare. While TPA funding is a small fraction of the BIA's total spending on Native Americans, it underscores how awry the system has gone. In President Bush's 2003 budget proposal, the 28,000 Turtle Mountain Chippewa in North Dakota, 68% of whom are unemployed, will receive the equivalent of an average $154 each. But the 400 members of the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida, whose Miccosukee Resort and Gaming Center rakes in an estimated $75 million a year, will collect $2,858 per person--almost 19 times as much. In South Dakota the 41,000 Oglala Sioux, with unemployment at 88%, will receive $168 per person. But California's Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, whose casino takes in an estimated $150 million a year, will collect an average of $4,457 for each of its 44 members.
The GAO has twice criticized the BIA's distribution system, pointing out that "tribes with the highest reported revenues can receive more TPA base funds than other tribes with no revenues or with losses." Congress directed the BIA to report by April 1, 1999, "on alternative methods for distributing TPA funds, taking into account tribal revenues and the relative needs of tribes and tribal members." While acknowledging funding inequities, the BIA will not change the system. One reason: the tribes view such government funding as an entitlement. As an official of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians--a tribe in Minnesota with two casinos, which take in an estimated $200 million a year in revenue--once told a congressional committee, "The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide TPA funding to tribal governments ... The facts of the inequities are not that some tribes have been given too much but rather that other tribes have been given too little."
Such inequities occur not only with BIA funds. A TIME examination of spending by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shows that tribes with casinos often pull in more HUD money per capita than casino-less, poor tribes. Over the past four years, while HUD has handed the Florida Seminoles housing funds averaging $2,800 per member, the tribe's five casinos have generated nearly $1 billion in revenue. The Mississippi Choctaw tribe, with its lucrative Silver Star Resort & Casino, pocketed an average of $5,900 in HUD funds per person. By contrast, the Navajo, the country's largest tribe, has a 52% unemployment rate but has received only $1,500 per member.