WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush signed legislation Wednesday that triples U.S. funding to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world.Yes indeed, it seems that throwing some more spending on the national MasterCard™ unites our supervisors across those nasty old "party lines."
The five-year, $48 billion plan renews a program credited with saving millions of lives in Africa alone and is widely seen as one of the major achievements of the Bush presidency.
Bush said the program, launched by him in 2003, "is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history."
The president signed the bill in the ornate East Room of the White House, surrounded by lawmakers and people affected by AIDS whom he met on his February trip to Africa.
The legislation is a rare case of relatively easy cooperation between the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House. It passed the House last week by a 303-115 vote and the Senate earlier in the month by a vote of 80-16.
It renews Bush's original five-year, $15 billion program called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was set to expire in September.
Some GOP conservatives questioned the new plan's sharp spending increase. But most on both sides of the aisle, and in groups that advocate both health initiatives and Africa, praised the U.S. aid for boosting America's reputation abroad.
Or maybe there's really only one party? Ya think?
3 comments:
Yeah, well, if we don't make the monthly payments, I would much rather have the bank repossess the Iraq War rather than the AIDS program. Foreclose on that gargantuan embassy in the Green Zone, please, sell it off for cheap if you must... can't say I'll miss it...
Hear, hear!
Oh my gosh, Jim, and just think about all those folks who have less glamorous, if you will, diseases than those that are federally funded by King Jorge and the gang. As you know, I'd love it if the federal government got out of the health care business altogether. If you fund one or two diseases, however, you simply must fund them all or else it's not really fair, is it? And the way that everybody's being diagnosed with something these days, well, I think that it's only a matter of time until the federal government's paying for everyone's trip to the doctor. Wait a minute, the feds are already trying that scheme, aren't they, with Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.
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