Pelosi Defeats Republican Efforts to Cut Millions in HIV/AIDS Funding for San Francisco
Pelosi Defeats Republican Efforts to Cut Millions in HIV/AIDS Funding for San Francisco
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami, 202-226-7616
Washington, D.C. -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats successfully defeated an amendment today offered by Congressman Joe Barton of Texas that would have slashed HIV/AIDS funding in San Francisco by $6.3 million. The amendment to the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill would have removed a provision the Speaker inserted to restore funds that were recently cut by the Bush Administration. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 196 to 230.
In May, the Bush Administration announced an $8.6 million cut in funding for the San Francisco Eligible Metropolitan Area (EMA), which includes San Mateo and Marin Counties. Pelosi worked with Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, to include language in the bill reducing cuts for San Francisco, as well as cuts for 11 other jurisdictions across the country that have been hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. The language restores $6.3 million in funding for San Francisco, reducing the loss to an amount that the region can reasonably absorb in one fiscal year.
The Barton Amendment would have reinstated these severe cuts and threatened access to HIV/AIDS care in San Francisco and other areas where the need for Ryan White services continues to increase.
?AIDS continues to be the second leading cause of premature death in San Francisco, and more people are living with HIV/AIDS in the City than at any point in the history of the epidemic,? Pelosi said. ?Cuts of the magnitude proposed by the Bush Administration would have severely harmed access to life-saving medical care. The House vote today to defeat the Barton Amendment was essential in preventing these cuts from going forward.?
Recent changes to the Ryan White HIV/AIDS initiative shifted funding to areas of the country where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is growing more rapidly. Provisions were included to ensure that these changes didn?t cause drastic cuts that would disrupt existing systems of HIV/AIDS care in any jurisdiction. Despite the inclusion of these provisions, the Bush Administration?s implementation of the reauthorization caused some jurisdictions to lose up to one-third of their funding in a single year, destabilizing existing systems of care.
The Ryan White initiative provides care and treatment to more than 500,000 uninsured and under-insured people living with HIV/AIDS each year. Declines in AIDS deaths in the U.S. over the past 17 years are a direct result of the therapies and services that have been made more widely available through Ryan White.