The White House on Monday organized a conference call for reporters about stalled multi-billion-dollar settlements for American Indians and black farmers, underscoring the political importance the administration places on getting the troubled deals approved.
Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli called the settlements, which would conclude more than a decade’s worth of anti-discrimination lawsuits, “truly historic.” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Interior Secretary David J. Hayes joined Perrelli for the conference call, which was promoted by the White House.
All three officials urged the U.S. House of Representatives to approve the settlements. In early January, there will be a new, Republican-controlled House that could be far less amenable to the settlements. (The Democrats kept control of the Senate, albeit by a smaller margin than before.)
The Senate approved the settlement of the cases, known by the shorthand Cobell and Pigford II after the lead plaintiffs, just before Thanksgiving. After the Senate vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the House Democratic majority leader, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said they wanted their chamber to consider the settlements within days.
The Cobell settlement amounts to about $3.4 billion for Indians who long contended they were shortchanged by the Department of Interior on royalty rights for natural resources on tribal lands. The $1.15 billion Pigford settlement would compensate black farmers for years of discrimination by the Department of Agriculture on farm loans and other benefits.
The House actually endorsed the settlements in July, but did so by attaching it to a war-funding bill — a device that the Senate rejected in passing its own version of the Cobell-Pigford package. So now the lame-duck House is being called upon to vote again.
Vilsack and Hayes agreed with Perrelli that the settlements will be as nearly fraud-proof as possible, fair to the taxpayers as well as the plaintiffs and that, in Vilsack’s words, they go a long way toward “righting the wrongs of the past.”
As the official who overseas the Justice Department’s civil division, Perrelli has been an administration point man on the settlement negotiations.
