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Senate Approves Amendment To Provide Additional $289M for Global AIDS Initiative
Washington DC - The Senate on Thursday voted 89-1 to approve an amendment to the $18.4 billion foreign operations appropriations bill (S 1426) that would provide an additional $289 million for the five-year, $15 billion global AIDS initiative, Reuters reports (Clark, Reuters, 10/30). The amendment would increase federal spending on the global AIDS initiative for fiscal year 2004 from $2.1 billion already approved by the Senate to nearly $2.4 billion, $400 million more than the Bush administration requested.
The House has approved $2.1 billion for the initiative (Gay Stolberg, New York Times, 10/31). Although the measure (HR 1298) supporting the initiative authorizes $3 billion for the first year of the program, the Bush administration has requested only $2 billion. Bush said that his administration requested less than $3 billion in order to give the program time to "ramp up" (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 10/28). Action on the bill had been held up for several days because Senate Budget Committee Chair Don Nickles (R-Okla.)