"I haven't figured out why Republican presidents like to pick on urban Indians, but that seems to be the case

In the early 1980s, President Reagan (another cowboy president) zeroed out urban Indian health funding in his first six budgets submitted to Congress. Fortunately, Congress saw the fallacy of this proposal and retained funding for these programs.

The Bush budget for 2007 proposes to eliminate the $33 million urban Indian health program, a part of the federal Indian Health Service. Census data shows that more than half of Indians in the United States live in cities.

This program supports 34 private, non-profit, Indian-controlled community organizations that offer a broad array of assistance to urban Indians from direct medical, dental, mental health and substance abuse care to information and referral assistance to other community resources."

Get the Story:
Ralph Forquera: Urban Indians in Bush's sights (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 2/22)

FY2007 HHS Budget in Brief:
HTML | PDF

Relevant Links:
National Council of Urban Indian Health - http://www.ncuih.org
Indian Health Service - http://www.ihs.gov

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