Bay Area Reporter - October 25, 2007
Bob Roehr

An amendment by Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) to an appropriations bill reinstated the more drastic cuts. It passed a Senate committee Tuesday on a vote of 65-28.

In a statement, Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said that Enzi "misrepresented the impact of the House stop-loss provision," which Pelosi said "will not take away funding from other areas."

"I urge senators who voted in favor of the amendment to reconsider their vote and instead support removing the Enzi provision in conference," Pelosi added.

Reauthorization of the Ryan White programs last year changed the funding formulas to better reflect where the HIV epidemic is moving, particularly within communities of color and in the South. The hope was that with sufficient new money added to the pot, no jurisdiction would suffer an actual loss in funding.

But new money proved to be scarce this year during the appropriations process and Pelosi engineered the stop-loss provision in the House bill that would minimize loss of funding to 11 cities that would actually lose money. San Francisco, one of those cities, would be the hardest hit.

Some AIDS advocates and politicians have charged that money was being diverted from other parts of the country to benefit San Francisco. Pelosi said that those areas where the epidemic continues to grow would receive large increases in funding regardless of whether or not the stop-loss provision is included.

The Senate did not buy that. It passed an amendment to the appropriations bill, put forward by Enzi, the ranking Republican on the health committee, prohibiting use of funds to modify HIV/AIDS funding formulas.

All but two Republicans supported the measure, and they were joined by nearly a third of the Democrats. There was no real pattern to the Democratic votes; liberals such as Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Dick Durbin (Illinois) joined with the Republicans, while conservative Robert Byrd (West Virginia) voted no.

Among the seven senators not voting were presidential hopefuls Democrats Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama, and Republican John McCain. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) was recuperating from recent surgery.

Ernest Hopkins, director of federal affairs for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, told the Bay Area Reporter Tuesday afternoon that nothing is done yet. He put some of the blame on the technicality that there is no congressional committee report to accompany the three-year reauthorization that was negotiated for the CARE Act. It's that document that would contain language that Pelosi referenced in her statement about how the reauthorization would be funded, he said.

"It is something to be concerned about," Hopkins said of Tuesday's Senate vote. He said that the issue "mischaracterized the intentions of San Franciscans and the impact these cuts have on our community."

"The notion that we're trying to get resources grabbed from folks is offensive," he said.

Hopkins was optimistic that the matter would be resolved in conference committee.

"My understanding is that Enzi is not going to have any impact on conference. Enzi is making a statement of no tampering with the formula and that's fine û that's not what this does," Hopkins added.

San Francisco Health Director Dr. Mitch Katz told the B.A.R. that if the amendment were to pass, the city would indeed lose millions of dollars. However, Katz said the city is confident that such drastic cuts would be avoided.

Pelosi said, "AIDS continues to be the city's second leading cause of premature death and nearly 23,000 San Franciscans are currently living with HIV/AIDS, more than at any point in the history of the epidemic."

She vowed to continue to oppose the amendment when it comes to conference to reconcile differences in the legislation passed by the two chambers.

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