Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune - April 4, 2003
The House International Relations Committee, chaired by Hyde, voted 37-8 to authorize $15 billion over five years to global AIDS prevention and treatment. The measure should move quickly through the House and to the Senate.
"AIDS is a pandemic that is erasing the gains of human development," Hyde said, citing figures that 25 million people have died of the disease and--unless there is some dramatic intervention--the toll could rise to 80 million by 2010.
In his State of the Union address last January, President Bush proposed a $15 billion U.S. contribution to fight AIDS, particularly in Africa. But the presidential initiative soon got caught in a cobweb of details and small-gauge agendas.
The White House proposal provided approximately $200 million a year to the Swiss-based Global Fund to Combat AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a public-private venture, already up and running and widely regarded as very well administered. The administration feared that the U.S. would become the sole or primary supporter of the fund. Funding under the Bush proposal would be "backloaded," ramping up over the five years of the effort.
Then religious issues arose over the role that condoms ought to play in AIDS prevention programs.
Hyde allayed White House suspicions of the Global Fund by structuring the American contribution as a challenge grant: The U.S. will contribute 33 cents of every dollar raised elsewhere in the world. The U.S. contribution could be as much as $1 billion a year. That commits more than Bush proposed but makes it contingent on other countries, particularly the Europeans, to contribute a substantial share.
Hyde's proposal also earmarks $2 billion a year to other AIDS efforts, rather than backloading the contributions near the end of the five-year commitment. AIDS is growing exponentially, he said, and won't wait for budget maneuvers.
On condoms, the Hyde bill does not give preference to any one method of prevention, though the wording exempts religious groups from pushing condom use if they object to it.
Like any good compromise, all sides can claim their views were taken into account. More important, the Hyde bill recognizes that the catastrophe of AIDS waits for no one, and accordingly puts money in the pipeline quickly.
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