February 1, 2008
ACTION ALERT! TELL CONGRESS TO VOTE FOR GREAT PEPFAR CHANGES
We need your help! Do you have one hour to spare between now and Wednesday to ensure the next five years of the U.S. Global AIDS Initiative continue the progress of the last five years? If you do, e-mail or call Kaytee from Health GAP (kaytee@healthgap.org or 267-334-6984) to let her know and get a list of people who need calls.
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Help make PEPFAR better than ever! |
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs will be voting on the reauthorization of the U.S. global AIDS and health initiatives (a greatly improved and expanded version of PEPFAR) on Thursday, Feb. 7, at 1 p.m. Congressman Tom Lantos and his staff have fought hard to get the best bill possible introduced, one that includes:
- continuing the progress towards treating the U.S. share of one-third of the people with HIV in developing countries
- ending the required abstinence-only-till-marriage earmark which is proven to not work
- training and support for hundreds of thousands of urgently needed new health care workers
- $50 billion over five years—the minimum funding increase needed to support the program, instead of the flat-funding proposed by outgoing President Bush
- an expansion of the program to include tuberculosis, malaria, nutrition, new protections for the rights of women and young people and microbicides
- a repeal of the shameful HIV immigration ban
This is a truly spectacular bill! But some members of Congress are opposed to this kind of expansion and correction of PEPFAR, and have stated that they will introduce a series of amendments to try to strip all the new programs, funding and policies from the bill.
The first step to making it law is to get the best bill possible through the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Feb 7. Our best chance of passing the bill without these harmful party-line amendments is to make sure that all of the members of Congress who support us show up to vote—and stay for the entire session! If several members who would have voted in favor of the bill don’t show up, then we’ll have a hard time defending all of the good things in the bill from attacks.
Do you have an hour between now and Wednesday to call several members of Congress on the committee and encourage them to show up for the vote on Thursday, Feb. 7?
If you can help make calls, e-mail Kaytee Riek at kaytee@healthgap.org or call 267-334-6984 to get a list of names and numbers to call, plus a script. This is a very simple thing to do, even if you’ve never called Congress before.
Your help is needed right now! Every supportive Member of Congress who shows up to vote on Feb. 7 matters, and every call to their offices gets us closer to ensuring they show up to vote!