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U.S. House approves $50 billion to fight AIDS
The Associated Press

Thursday, April 3, 2008

WASHINGTON: It took some shocking statistics - 33 million around the world suffering from HIV or AIDS and 6,000 new infections every day - for U.S. lawmakers to put aside policy disputes and come together.

The House of Representatives voted 308-116 on Wednesday to more than triple, to $50 billion over the next five years, the money available for a program fighting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and other stricken areas of the world.

House Democrats, who voted unanimously in favor of the bill, were effusive in their praise of President George W. Bush, who promoted the global AIDS program that Congress originally enacted in 2003 and backed the House bill.

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, funded at $15 billion over the 2003-08 period, is "universally recognized as one of the shining accomplishments of the Bush administration," said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.

About $41 billion of the $50 billion would be devoted to AIDS, significantly expanding a program credited with saving more than one million lives in Africa alone in the largest U.S. investment ever against a single disease.

Twenty million people around the world have perished from AIDS, said the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, Democrat of California. "We have a moral imperative to act and to act decisively."

The White House said the program is supporting treatment for about 1.45 million people and is on track to meet its goals of backing treatment for 1 million, preventing 7 million new infections and providing care for 10 million, including orphans and vulnerable children.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said the program is based on altruism but also has strengthened U.S. security.

If the AIDS pandemic is not addressed, she said, it "will continue to spread its mix of death, poverty and despondency that is further destabilizing governments and societies and undermining the security of entire regions."

The compromise bill was one of the last endeavors of the former Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, who died of cancer in February. The measure is named after Lantos and his predecessor as chairman, the late Representative Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois. They worked together on the 2003 act.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a similar $50 billion bill, and the legislation is seen as having a good chance of passing in an election year in which few major bills will reach the president's desk.

To advance the legislation, conservatives had to give up a provision in the 2003 act requiring that one-third of all HIV prevention funds be spent on abstinence programs. Instead the bill directs the administration to promote "balanced funding for prevention activities" in target countries.

Liberals, in turn, had to accept some restrictions on family planning groups' participation in AIDS programs. Conservatives, concerned that money might be diverted to abortion promotion, pushed for a provision that allows the use of funds for HIV/AIDS testing and counseling services in those family planning programs supported by the U.S. government.

A measure in the 2003 act requiring groups receiving funds to have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking, opposed by some health groups as impeding anti-AIDS efforts among sex workers, was also left intact.

The White House, which originally promoted doubling the program to $30 billion, has expressed concern over the $50 billion figure but has not opposed it.

"This is irrational generosity," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, arguing that the country does not have enough money to help veterans and the elderly. "This is benevolence gone wild."

The bill authorizes $10 billion a year, or $50 billion through 2013. Of that, $41 billion is for AIDS prevention and treatment, $4 billion for tuberculosis and $5 billion for malaria. The actual dollars still have to be approved in annual spending bills, but over the past five years Congress exceeded the $15 billion goal, appropriating $19 billion for global AIDS and related programs.

The $41 billion includes up to $2 billion a year for the international Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The bill limits U.S. contributions to the Global Fund to one-third of total contributions.

It expands the program, originally focused on 15 mainly sub-Saharan African countries, to include Caribbean nations as well as Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho in Africa. The goal of the next five years is to prevent 12 million new infections, provide anti-retroviral treatment for 3 million and train more than 140,000 health care workers. The bill increases coordination with drinking water and nutrition programs and efforts to educate girls and women.