Sorry if this topic has been posted before -- I didn't see it anywhere, but I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention.
Apparently Bush attached a rider to the bill appropriating money for wildfires (a bill, mind you, that NOBODY was going to vote against) in order to avoid accounting for billions of dollars the governnment owes American Indians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3372229,00.html...While there was widespread support for the firefighting money, lawmakers questioned a provision in the Interior bill that gives the department a one-year reprieve from a legal order to account for billions of dollars that American Indians say they are due for mismanaged oil, gas, timber and grazing royalties held in trust by the government. ..
Eric Alterman also has a piece on it:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/752664.asp?0dm=C215O&cp1=1...But if you need a reason to hate Dubya, try this. Just when I thought the Indian Trust litigation could be put to bed for a while, last week the Administration does something so odious that many Republicans publicly expressed their dismay. To bring things up to date: the judge in the case ordered the Interior department to conduct an audit to determine just how much money it (admittedly) owes to individual Native Americans. The Administration slipped in a rider to a bill which prohibits Interior from doing this for up to a year. To imagine how heinous this is, imagine if Congress sent a bill to Ike saying “we want you to ban the Justice Department from enforcing the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.” And it’s probably unconstitutional.
It gets worse. You see, the appropriations committee tried something like this before but once the committee on Native affairs caught wind it was dropped. So this time the appropriations committee sprung it during the house-senate reconciliation for....the bill to increase funds to fight the fires raging in California! Congress was forced to pick between delaying those funds or swallowing the rider (giving cover to many who voted for it, though it was a close vote in the House anyway). As John McCain and Tom Daschele said, if it was any minority but Native Americans this would never have happened...