House approves $50B to fight AIDS, diseases
WASHINGTON (AP) - April 2, 2008 About $41 billion of the $50 billion over five years would be
devoted to AIDS, significantly expanding a program credited with
saving more than 1 million lives in Africa alone in the largest
U.S. investment ever against a single disease.
Every day another 6,000 people are infected with the HIV virus,
said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman,
D-Calif. "We have a moral imperative to act and to act
decisively," he said.
The House voted 308-116 to extend and broaden the scope of the
$15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that
President Bush promoted and Congress enacted in 2003. It has been
hailed as a noteworthy foreign policy success of the Bush
presidency.
The White House, which backs the House bill, said the program is
supporting anti-retroviral treatment for about 1.45 million people
and is on track to meet its goals of backing treatment for 2
million, preventing 7 million new infections and providing care for
10 million, including orphans and vulnerable children.
In 2007, 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV and
AIDS, according to the United Nations.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, top Republican on the
Foreign Affairs Committee, added that while the program is based on
altruism, it has strengthened U.S. security.
Without addressing the AIDS pandemic, 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, D-Calif., who died
of cancer in February. The measure is named after Lantos and his
predecessor as Foreign Affairs chairman, the late Rep. Henry Hyde,
R-Ill., who 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 it
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 participating 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 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 not opposed it.
Some conservatives still objected. "This is irrational
generosity," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., saying the
country doesn't 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 last five years Congress exceeded the $15 billion goal,
appropriating $19 billion for global AIDS and related programs.
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.
"This will be remembered as the single most significant
achievement of President Bush's two terms in office," said Rep.
Donald Payne, D-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee
on Africa.
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The bill is H.R. 5501
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