Washington Blade - July 18, 2003
Lou Chibbaro Jr

Scott McClellan, the new White House press secretary, declined to comment on reports that Dr. Joe O'Neill, the current head of the White House AIDS office, may be transferred to another job at the newly created global AIDS office at the State Department. But McClellan refuted speculation that the office might be dismantled or restructured.

In another development, McClellan disputed an assertion by some AIDS groups that the president was not doing enough on domestic AIDS programs, saying the administration has an "unprecedented commitment to fight AIDS, both at home and abroad."

In a telephone interview with the Blade, McClellan noted that Bush so far has increased overall AIDS funding by $2 billion.

Representatives from 151 AIDS groups, including the District's Whitman-Walker Clinic, criticized Bush in a letter for not significantly increasing the budget for domestic AIDS prevention and treatment programs in the three years since Bush took office.

While praising the president's global AIDS program for Africa and the Caribbean, the groups charged that the Bush administration was making "politically motivated decisions intent on dismantling or discrediting" domestic HIV prevention programs aimed at gay men and people of color.

The groups said Bush was putting too much emphasis in the prevention area on HIV testing and on education efforts for people who have tested positive. The groups said Bush has failed to provide sufficient emphasis on targeting prevention messages for uninfected people, such as sexually active gay men, who are at high risk for contracting HIV.

The normally low-key Republican Unity Coalition, which bills itself as a gay-straight alliance of GOP leaders, denounced the AIDS groups for sending the critical letter to President Bush.

"[Y]our letter so distorts the record and intentions of the Bush administration that we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is pure politics, intended to spin and mislead the LGBT community about President Bush's accomplishments on HIV/AIDS," wrote RUC co-chairs Charles Francis and Donald Capoccia, in a July 6 letter to the AIDS groups.

Also signing the letter was David Greer, a gay Republican activist whom Bush appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Gay GOP activist and PACHA member Jim Driscoll, who is not a signatory to the letter, said he endorses it.

"First, let us say that President Bush has done more than any other president in such a brief period on HIV/AIDS," the RUC letter says. "On the domestic front, President Bush continues to show compassion and leadership on HIV/AIDS," according to the letter.

The letter praises the administration for questioning the expenditure of large sums on domestic HIV prevention programs that do not appear to be working. The RUC letter notes that the new HIV infection rate in the U.S. has remained at 40,000 cases a year for the past decade, despite the prevention messages advocated by many of the AIDS groups that signed the letter criticizing the president.

"Accountability and effectiveness of current HIV/AIDS programs must be ascertained, otherwise funding for HIV/AIDS care and treatment will fail to maintain a broad base of support in the Congress and with the American people," the RUC letter says.

In addition to defending Bush's domestic AIDS programs, the RUC letter delves into the highly controversial subject of proposals for restructuring the funding formula for the Ryan White Care Act. Congress will be asked to renew the act when it expires in 2005. Congressional deliberations over the act's reauthorization are expected to begin next year in the midst of the 2004 presidential and congressional elections.

In their RUC letter to the AIDS groups, Francis, Capoccia and Greer appear to take sides with a faction of AIDS advocates who have called for a radical overhaul of the Ryan White program. The faction favors redistributing large parcels of funds from urban areas - that were hit hardest by AIDS in the 1980s - to smaller urban centers and rural areas that were affected by the epidemic in the latter part of the 1990s.

"More money must be accompanied by restructuring and prioritizing federal AIDS programs," the RUC letter says.

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