Democrats Assail Bush on AIDS Funding

As President Bush pledged U.S. assistance to fight AIDS during his tour of Africa on Thursday, Democrats accused him and the Republican leadership in Congress of shortchanging a recently enacted campaign against the disease.

A new law signed by Bush in May created the global AIDS initiative and pledged $3 billion a year for five years, a total of $15 billion. Now Bush and top Republicans say $2 billion will suffice in the next fiscal year, with more to come later.

Spurred by Democrats, the Senate voted, 78 to 18, on Thursday to approve a nonbinding measure urging the Bush administration to spend the full $3 billion.

The partisan clash in Washington offered a jarring counterpoint to Bush’s stop in Botswana, a country in southern Africa that has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV infection.

In Gaborone, the Botswanan capital, Bush told President Festus Mogae that the United States would step up its efforts against the epidemic, which has killed or infected tens of millions of Africans and orphaned millions of children.

“The first thing I wanted the leadership in Africa to know is, the American people care deeply about the pandemic that sweeps across this continent, the pandemic of HIV/AIDS,” Bush told reporters after the meeting.

He added: “It doesn’t matter what political party or what the ideology of the American citizen, the average citizen cares deeply about the fact that people are dying in record numbers because of HIV/AIDS. We cry for the orphan. We care for the mom who is alone. We are concerned about the plight and therefore will respond as generously as we can.”

To back up his assurances during meetings with African leaders, Bush has cited his plan to spend $15 billion over five years, the same plan Democrats complain is not being fully funded.

“That’s easy math to see it’s a billion dollars less than they [Republicans] had promised,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

Democrats and Republicans alike hailed the plan when Bush unveiled it in his State of the Union address in January. No previous administration, Republican or Democratic, had pledged so much money in the global fight against the disease, which has ravaged populations for more than two decades. Most of the money would go to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in some of the world’s poorest regions.

But the bill Bush signed in May creating the AIDS initiative contained the seeds of the current debate.

The law envisioned spending $3 billion annually, with the first installment due in fiscal year 2004, which begins in October. The target, however, does not square with Bush’s own budget or the spending bills being drafted in the Republican-led Congress. The administration and GOP lawmakers seek to spend about $2 billion on the AIDS initiative in the fiscal year.

Well aware that Bush was onstage in Africa, Democrats drew attention to that discrepancy.

While the Senate voted to urge the administration to spend the full $3 billion, legislation to provide $2 billion was working its way through Congress.

In the House, anti-AIDS funding advanced on two fronts Thursday. The full House passed a bill to fund labor, education and health programs that would allocate $644 million for the initiative.

A separate foreign aid funding bill won approval from a Republican-dominated appropriations subcommittee. Expected to be passed by the full House toward the end of July, it would grant the initiative $1.43 billion in funding.

Combined, the bills would allocate $2.07 billion to Bush’s anti-AIDS campaign. That is a shade more than the $2.04 billion the administration requested for fiscal 2004. It also would represent an increase of about one-third over the $1.56 billion being spent in the current fiscal year.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, defended the House approach, saying Congress and the administration would raise spending totals in coming years to meet the $15-billion goal.

Kolbe, a leading Republican advocate of AIDS relief, said the administration wouldn’t be able to spend effectively any more than $2 billion in the first year.

“I just don’t think it’s realistic to assume we will spend that much more in this first year,” Kolbe said. “Let’s do it and do it right.”

As evidence of House Republican commitment to the program, Kolbe cited a provision in the bill he authored that would quadruple, to $400 million, the $100 million Bush requested for a special multinational fund to fight AIDS. The fund, which helps the United States leverage money from other wealthy nations, is considered a crucial part of the overall initiative.

In Pretoria, South Africa, after returning with Bush from Botswana, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday night sought to put the best face on the actions on Capitol Hill.

“We will make the best use of the money that Congress has provided to us,” he said.

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Anderson reported from Washington and Chen from Gaborone and Pretoria.