Office of Insular, Junket and Non-Marital Affairs
The Office of Insular Affairs is the "BIA" for the American colonies in the Pacific (other than Hawai'i), and the Carribian (other than Puerto Rico and the Guantanamo district of Cuba). The "otherness" of the Government of the Northern Marianas is utterly fictive, unless one wanted to make the bizzare claim that the Nashville Office of the BIA was operated by some government other than the United States. Anyway, here's the exculpatory text-bite for Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, the newly and unanimously elected Chairman of the Democratic Caucus, "who has lived his life with a commitment to a high ethical standard", according to Nancy Pelosi, and who will head the "Clean House Team":
He was invited to the Northern Marianas Islands by its government, which was seeking legislation that would have allowed them to abolish minimum wage standards. Congress' ethics rules allow members to travel at the expense of other governments. Clyburn took the trip, was unimpressed by conditions and voted against the legislation.
Now why a Dem has to even be awake, no, alive, to know that abolishing minimum wage standards anywhere a Dem has a jurisdictional claim (even colonial jurisdiction) is a bad idea is just one of those clean government progressive mysteries.
Since there is no scuba diving in Indian Country, particularly the profoundly poor and politically grotty bits, we 'skins are safe from the attentions of those clean government progressive mystics.