Posted by
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 10:11:51 PM
WP: House Votes to Continue and Expand President's Global Effort Against AIDS
House Votes to Continue and Expand President's Global Effort Against AIDS
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 3, 2008; A04
The House of Representatives yesterday
passed a five-year reauthorization of the Bush administration's global
AIDS program, adding $20 billion to the $30 billion the president
requested.
The program, originally known by the
acronym PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), provides
money to treat people infected with HIV and to help support their
families, as well as for a long list of activities aimed at preventing
infection.
Although it contained controversial
features, including a heavy emphasis on abstinence-oriented prevention
strategies, the global AIDS program has been popular with lawmakers in
both parties and has been praised around the world.
The reauthorization passed 308 to 116. A
motion to send the bill back to committee, which was offered by
lawmakers unhappy with the $50 billion price tag, failed on a 248 to
175 vote.
The Senate version of the bill is out of committee and is awaiting floor action.
"It's a very big bill and an expensive one,
but it does a lot of important things," said Howard L. Berman
(D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "I was
pretty happy we maintained the essence of the bipartisan coalition on
final passage."
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
(Fla.), the ranking Republican on the committee, said on the House
floor that the bill "strengthens our national security" because AIDS is
"destabilizing governments and societies" in entire regions around the
world.
The original program, unveiled by the
president in his 2003 State of the Union address, is spending $15
billion over five years. The reauthorized program would be bigger and
broader in scope.
About $9 billion would go to fight
tuberculosis and malaria, which are huge burdens in many countries
where the AIDS epidemic is severe. Money would be used to buy food for
AIDS patients and their families, provide clean water to communities,
train health-care workers and provide "micro-credit" loans to women
widowed by the disease or ostracized because they are infected.
Unlike the original PEPFAR, the renewed
global AIDS bill would not stipulate the percentage of prevention
spending that must be used to promote abstinence, but abstinence and
sexual faithfulness would remain important strategies.
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