November 9, 2007
LABOR PAINS
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And when it's all done, instead of a baby, you could get a Presidential veto |
There's some good, some bad, and some it-could-be-worse-but-could-be-much-better in the 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill (H.R. 3043) that passed in the Senate 56-37 this week. Advocates expect it to pass in the House today, but without a veto-proof majority. Bush has threatened to veto the $606 billion bill because it includes $9 billion more in discretionary spending than he wants (that's what happens when you wage a multibillion dollar war without raising taxes). House Dems tried to combine the HHS bill with a Military Construction-VA bill, but the Senate said no dice, and the bills were divided.
The good: Cooler heads prevailed in conference, and Sen. Jim DeMint's reactionary amendment prohibiting the use of Health and Human Services funds for any cities that create legal safe-injection drug sites was canned. DeMint proposed this amendment in response to a preliminary meeting discussing the possibility of such a site in San Francisco, prompting advocates to blast Congresspeople with letters and phone calls. Apparently the outrage worked.
"Our biggest concern was that this would chill the debate, but now states and cities are free to continue the important discussion about safe injection sites," said Bill Piper, federal policy director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "We're glad Congress put science ahead of politics."
The bad: Unfortunately Congress put politics ahead of science when it came to perennial sacrificial lamb abstinence-only education, which study after study has proven ineffective. The House increased Community-Based Abstinence Education funding by $28 million to $141 million in an effort to create veto-proof majority for the HHS bill. Even with this little trick, they still couldn't drum up the votes-if the bill passes, America's youth are stuck with state-supported sex-ed misinformation. At least a Bush veto would mean more time to lobby Congress—particularly Speaker Nancy Pelosi—to delete these dreadful ab-only dollars.
"We need to let the Democratic leadership know we can't be sold out," said Bill Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
And while the Democrats may think they're just playing politics, they're really playing with lives. ""With 40,000 new HIV infections every year the increase in abstinence-only funding harms the most marginalized people," said Donna Crews, director of government affairs at AIDS Action.
The could-be-worse-could-be-much-better: The Senate HHS bill includes an increase of the Ryan White CARE Act Program of $84 million, including an increase for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program of $33 million. This is much less than the $681.1 million for Ryan White that the AIDS Budget and Appropriations Coalition requested, but a bump of the $75.8 million increase last year.
"Of course it's not what we wanted, but it's more than we've gotten in the past couple of years," Crews said. "Although we're still anticipating the president's veto."
The bill also provides $300 million in funding for the Global Fund, up from $99 million for the Global Fund included in the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill FY 2007. Additional U.S. funding for the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is provided through foreign aid appropriations, which will mean the total will be between $850 and $890 million—less than the 1.2 billion advocates say would be the U.S. fair share. "It's frustrating because we need a lot for next year, so that would make it an even larger leap," said Lisa Schechtman, Senior Policy Officer at the Global AIDS Alliance. For the 2009 appropriations, advocates are planning to request between $1.6 to 2 billion, about one-third of which would come from Labor HHS appropriations.