While both the House and Senate reauthorization bills more than triple funding from $15 billion over five years to $50 billion, they irresponsibly simultaneously eliminate the critical priority of funding on treatment that characterizes the current program, and expand the focus and scope of this HIV/AIDS program to an unaccountable menagerie of loosely related development and poverty programs.

The current Senate reauthorization bill:

• Eliminates the requirement for providing life-saving treatment.

• Triples the funding, but only increases the treatment target by 50%.

• Diverts funding from the poorest and neediest countries to richer countries with space exploration and nuclear programs, including Russia, China, and India;

• Expands the scope of the bill from HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and care to include every poverty and development program under the sun, such as: agriculture, schools, legal aid, gender empowerment, lobbying, microfinance, sanitation, and community food aid (as opposed to just critical nutritional support for patients on anti-HIV medications)

• Doubles the U.S. contribution to the U.N. affiliated Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria despite the Fund’s drug quality problems, administrative corruption, and ability to bypass U.S. laws and policies on abortion, needle exchange, and prostitution/trafficking.

Senators Coburn, Demint, Burr, Vitter, Chambliss, Bunning and Sessions wrote Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, asking him to protect their rights to object to movement of the House or Senate global AIDS reauthorization bill, which turns the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) from a succesful, $15 billion program to care and treat people with AIDS in the poorest countries into a $50 global development slush fund.

Click here to read the letter.

The latest WebMemo from the Heritage Foundation on global AIDS legislation.