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Even food is a problem, and the Agriculture Department provides cheese, frozen ground beef, rice and other basics through its Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. William Apple, a temporary $400-a-month construction worker who must support nine relatives, says, "That's our main staple food. It's not something we take for granted. Without a job, that's something you depend on from month to month to supply you." The House appropriations bill proposes reducing the program's funding, with an eye toward eliminating it. Says Bernice White Hawk, a 63-year-old grandmother: "We are going to starve if they cut the [food program]. But those politicians, especially the Republicans, are stingy, rich people. They don't care about anyone except themselves."
Native Americans and their allies were hurt but not utterly shocked when the House hacked the Administration's proposed $1.91 billion for the BIA down to $1.68 billion. Most if not all of the House cuts affected the bureau's central and regional offices, a bureaucracy so inefficient that even friends like McCain estimate that only 10 cents on every dollar it administers actually reaches the tribes. Gorton's Senate subcommittee not only tacked on more than $2 million in additional cuts but, claim the injured parties, cold-bloodedly targeted the very programs crafted over two decades to sidestep the BIA's bureaucracy and nurture autonomy among the tribes by funneling money directly to them.
In defense of the Native Americans, Senators Pete Domenici and Daniel Inouye proposed amendments to the appropriations bill that would have reinstated many of those funds. But by then, Gorton had managed to frame the issue as a budget battle, with every cent restored to the Indians taken from someone else's hide. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt so objected to this zero-sum game that he threatened to ask Bill Clinton to veto the bill even if the Indian funds were reinstated, on the grounds that the money would disappear from other key Interior programs, putting "public health and safety in jeopardy," among other things. Similarly, several Democratic Senators apparently found that their fondness for Interior projects in their home states outweighed their party's traditional support for the Indians. Senate minority leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota stood to lose the facility that develops photo graphs from the landsat satellite in his state. His defection made it easier for such key liberal colleagues as Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy and California's Barbara Boxer to do likewise.