As Prepared for Delivery
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. It’s an opportunity for me to recognize the importance of your work advocating for and shaping strong Tribal-federal relations and policies and to discuss what we at the Treasury Department have done on Tribal issues over the past three and half years.
From the beginning, we have worked in partnership with Tribal leaders. A few months after becoming Treasury Secretary, I became the first Treasury Secretary to attend a meeting of the Treasury Tribal Advisory Committee. I heard clearly then how much more we needed to do in areas from consultations with tribes to tax guidance.
A little over a year later, I became the first Treasury Secretary to visit a Tribal nation. At Rosebud in South Dakota, Tribal leaders and I discussed additional challenges, from the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to deeply-rooted barriers to access to capital.
The Treasury Department has been committed to responding to what we’ve heard and making real and lasting progress for Tribal economies.
Our work started with putting in place the systems we needed to strengthen Tribal-federal relations and make good policy. We created Treasury’s Office of Tribal and Native Affairs and appointed our nation’s first Native American Treasurer, Chief Malerba. We updated Treasury’s consultation practices to incorporate Tribal consultation for the first time. We’ve now held more than 50 consultations with Tribal communities and more than 800 engagements with Tribal leaders. That’s many more than any prior Treasury Department.
We then made sure that Tribal nations were part of our historic economic recovery. We distributed $20 billion in State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to Tribal governments, helping maintain vital public services and support households and businesses facing the economic impacts of COVID-19. We allocated additional funds to Tribes to support Tribal enterprises and Tribal citizen small businesses through the State Small Business Credit Initiative and have now awarded more than $500 million to more than 230 Tribes.
These funds can be transformational. They are helping Tribes like the Akiak Native Community in Alaska, which used a $647,000 award to invest in a new Tribal enterprise, Yupiit Grant Services. It supports Tribes and Native communities in accessing and administering federal grants, such as for building infrastructure in the remote Kuskokwim Delta of Southwest Alaska.
We have also put Tribal nations at the center of our efforts to build a strong and inclusive economy over the medium- and long-term. We’ve worked to make sure that Tribal nations benefit from the key aspects of our economic agenda, such as the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits for clean energy like solar. And we’ve tackled tax policy issues that have persisted for decades and that many thought were intractable. In September of this year, we released proposed rules implementing the General Welfare Exclusion that give deference to Tribal nations on a wide range of matters. Once finalized, these rules will provide Tribes with the long-awaited clarity they need to support Tribal communities.
Just earlier this month, Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service addressed a different issue that had been pending for thirty years—the tax status of Tribally-chartered entities. We published a notice of proposed rulemaking confirming that wholly-owned Tribal entities share the same federal tax status as the Tribes that own them, and that these entities may file directly for elective pay to access clean energy tax credits. This will help give Tribes the certainty they need to strengthen their economies.
There is no question that we have much more work to do. But I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished. And I look forward to together continuing to advance our work.
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