Senate vote falls short on Akaka Bill

The Native Hawaiian federal recognition legislation popularly known as the “Akaka Bill” has fallen four “ayes” short of the total it needed to pass a procedural vote that would have forced it to the U.S. Senate floor for a final up-or-down tally. At about 1 p.m. on June 8, Washington, D.C. time, senators voted 56-41 in favor of the procedural motion, known as “cloture”; however, the total was short of the 60 votes needed to advance the measure.

Although the cloture effort has failed, the bill itself remains alive in the current session of Congress, and Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), the bill’s main sponsor and namesake, has said he will still try to get a vote on the bill this session. If he is successful, the measure would need only a simple majority of 51 out of the Senate’s 100 members to pass, rather than the 60 required for cloture.

"The bill still stands except that we cannot bring the bill to the floor," Akaka told The Honolulu Advertiser prior to the vote. "This is what has happened for the past six years."

“This is a setback, but the effort to achieve federal recognition must continue,” said Clyde Namuo, administrator of the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which has lobbied heavily in support of the bill. “The additional time will give an opportunity to continue our effort to organize the Hawaiian community. Onipaa (stand fast).”

All of the Senate Democrats in attendance voted in favor of the cloture motion on the bill, along with 13 Republicans and Independent Jim Jeffords. Two Democrats, John D. Rockefeller IV (West Virginia) and Charles Schumer (New York) did not vote on the measure, along with Republican Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), one of the bill’s cosponsors. Sen. Rockefeller’s staff said he was recovering from back surgery; the offices of the other non-voting senators did not immediately reply to requests for information on their absence from the vote.

If eventually passed by Congress and signed by the president, the Akaka Bill, officially known as the Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, would formally acknowledge Hawaiians’ special status as an indigenous people, and would establish a process for official U.S. recognition of a future Native Hawaiian representative body.

Akaka first proposed a recognition measure in 2000, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Rice decision, which declared the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ Hawaiians-only elections unconstitutional in the absence of any federally recognized indigenous status for Hawaiians. But for the last several years the measure has been blocked by procedural holds placed by several Republican senators who oppose the bill.

The June 8 cloture vote was an attempt to overcome those procedural roadblocks. A similar vote had been scheduled in early September, but the vote was put off at the last minute after Hurricane Katrina struck.

During the discussion preceding the cloture vote, supporters of the measure – including Akaka and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), along with Democrats Byron Dorgan (North Dakota) and Barack Obama (Illinois), Alaska Republicans Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, and others – said the measure would grant Hawaiians the same rights and status already afforded to America’s two other indigenous groups, Native Americans and Alaska Natives. They also said it would help rectify more than a century of injustice following the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom with the backing of American troops.

“I believe my bill goes a long way to unite the people of Hawaii by providing a structured process to deal with unresolved issues and unhealed wounds that have plagued us since 1893,” Akaka said during the cloture debate. “...For more than 100 years, Congress has treated Native Hawaiians in a manner similar to American Indians and Alaska Natives. But when it comes to having a process and federal policy on self-governance and self-determination, Native Hawaiians have not been treated equally.”

Said Alaska’s Stevens: “I support this bill ... because it is the right thing to do for the Hawaiian people.”

Supporters also pointed out that the measure has strong support from Hawaii’s state and county governments, as well as many Hawaiian, Native American and national minority rights groups.

Republican opponents of the bill, including Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), Jon Kyl (Arizona), Jeff Sessions (Alabama), John Cornyn (Texas) and others said that it would set up an unconstitutionally “race-based” government and set a precedent that could lead to the “Balkanization” of America along ethnic lines.

Alexander called the bill “an assault on one of the most important values in our country ... our original national motto, ‘E Pluribus Unum’ – one from many. It’s an assault on that principle because it would for the first time in our country’s history ... create a new, separate, sovereign government within our country based on race – putting us on the path of becoming more of a United Nations than a United States of America.”

A particularly disappointing moment for supporters of the bill came when Sen. Sessions read a letter sent that day from the federal Department of Justice asserting that the Bush administration “strongly opposes” the bill, and saying that the recognition afforded to Indian tribes is “inappropriate” for Native Hawaiians.

“As the President has said, ‘we must ... honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples,’” wrote Assistant Attorney General William Moschella. “This bill would reverse that great American tradition and divide people by their race. Closely related to that policy concern, this bill raises the serious threshold constitutional issues that arise anytime legislation seeks to separate American citizens into race-related classifications rather than ‘according to [their] own merit[s] and essential qualities.’”

Just prior to the cloture vote, however, Akaka and Inouye said they believed the justice Department’s opposition was based on a version of the bill that did not include amendments drafted as a result of negotiations with Justice and other administration departments over their concerns. The proposed amendments address issues related to the federal government’s legal liability, prohibition of gaming, military readiness, and civil and criminal jurisdiction.

The senators said they intended to introduce those amendments to the bill if it reached a final debate, which they believe would resolve the opposition expressed in the Justice Department letter.

If the bill eventually passes congress, it will still need to be signed by the president in order to become law.

Click here to see how individual senators voted.