One of the worst ideas in the history of the struggle against AIDS
Bush wants control of AIDS programs
By Amy Goldstein, Washington Post | June 24, 2004
PHILADELPHIA -- President Bush proposed yesterday that the executive branch assume significant control over the program that has been the backbone of federal assistance for Americans infected with AIDS.
Bush said that the $2 billion Ryan White Care Act, since 1990 the government's largest subsidy of medical and other services specifically for HIV-infected people in the United States, ''takes too little account of the most urgent needs." He said the administration should have greater power to decide where the money is distributed and how it is spent, focusing more on paying for medicine and doctors' visits rather than social services for people who are sick.
Bush made his proposals at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church, a black church near City Hall, during a speech that interwove themes of AIDS and religion. Bush speaks often about a law the administration pushed through Congress last year to combat the epidemic in Africa and the Caribbean, but yesterday's remarks focused more on his philosophy for curbing the epidemic domestically. ''We will continue to confront the disease abroad, and we will confront it here at home, as well," he said. ''These efforts are not mutually exclusive."
AIDS activists have argued that Bush has largely sought to freeze spending on the Ryan White Care Act, and yesterday, the president did not pledge any expansion of the program. Instead, Bush and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who accompanied him, said the solution is to ask Congress, which must renew the program next year, to give HHS far more discretion to target the way the subsidies are used.
Give this program to Bush and they'll claim all the money should be spent on abstinence programs.
