The Wall Street Journal - May 2, 2003
David Rogers, Staff Reporter

The 375-41 vote represents a victory for President Bush, who wants quick Senate action this month and hopes to leverage further international support for the AIDS cause when the leading industrial nations meet in France next month. But to placate conservatives, concessions were made on contentious social issues, and it is unclear if Congress can deliver on the promised funding, given spending limits of the Republican budget.

For the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, the bill authorizes $3 billion, for example, including as much as $1 billion for the multinational Global Fund, an independent body created at the urging of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa and other parts of the developing world. This is significantly more than even the White House requested in its budget, and Republicans provided still less room for the Appropriations Committees in the spending plan adopted last month.

"The budget resolution doesn't permit fiscal 2004 funding anywhere near the $1 billion" for the Global Fund, said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R., Ariz.), who must manage the foreign-aid appropriations bill later this summer and fall.

Democrats almost unanimously supported the bill, albeit with some disbelief after years of fighting with many of the same Republican leadership over funding for AIDS treatment and prevention. "The proof of the pudding will be when we go to Appropriations and see what the funding is in there," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). "We have something dramatic, and I applaud it and hope that it will be sustained."

The spending levels also are a concern among Republicans, and a majority voted in favor of an unsuccessful amendment to pare back the 2004 assistance by $1 billion. But the more divisive fights were over the social issues that accompany any government program that so touches on health and sexual practices.

The White House pressed hard -- and successfully -- to keep the bill free of entanglements dealing with abortion. Unlike international family planning assistance, for example, no litmus test is imposed that would bar participation by nonprofit groups based on their beliefs on abortion rights. Abortion-related riders have killed many bills, most notably bankruptcy legislation. And both on the right and left, lawmakers appeared willing to step back given the gravity of the AIDS pandemic overseas.

If there was a proxy fight, it was over the relative priority to give condoms compared with abstinence programs in preventing the spread of AIDS. And Mr. Bush used the opportunity to reach out to social conservatives by supporting language -- narrowly adopted 220-197 -- that assures a third of the prevention funds in the bill will be spent for abstinence programs.

Write to David Rogers at david.rogers@wsj.com
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