Dorgan Takes Food Out of the Mouths of Starving Children

This post is cross posted from way over at Taking Back North Dakota. It’s in reference to North Dakota’s Senator Byron Dorgan.
This is what Byron Dorgan had to say about conditions on the reservations in his letter to the Grand Forks Herald Tuesday.

…I have worked hard in the Senate to address the crisis that exists in education, housing and health care on Indian reservations.
Indian schools are in serious need of repair and rebuilding….

Things sound pretty bad on the reservations Senator. I did a Google search on Byron Dorgan Reservation Poverty and I came up with 712 responses. Senator Dorgan certainly understands that poverty is a problem on the Reservations.
So why Senator did you accept $95,000 in campaign donations from Indian Tribes? Shouldn’t this money have gone to help those on the Reservations that need it most? Senator Dorgan goes on and on about a lack of funding for needed programs. The quickest way to have got them money Senator would be not taking it from them.
I guess the Tribes must have thought for some reason that they needed to give him these funds. Maybe they weren’t that certain of the Senator’s good will. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have refused them. He should have insisted that this Indian money goes to help Indians rather than a rich powerful Senator.
It’s not like he needed the money. In his last election he spent $3,099,959 to get reelected. That was over 8 times what his opponent spent. Of course an incumbent like Byron Dorgan needs that kind of advantage. (92% of Dorgan’s money was out of state while only 16% of Liffrigs was out of state.)
So Senator Dorgan, do you feel good about yourself taking money from the neediest of Americans?