Departments of Labor , Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - October 23, 2007)
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AMENDMENT NO. 3437 TO AMENDMENT NO. 3325
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3437.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. ENZI] proposes an amendment numbered 3437.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
AMENDMENT NO. 3437
(Purpose: To prohibit the use of funds to modify certain HIV/AIDS funding formulas)
At the appropriate place in title II, insert the following:
SEC. __. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no funds shall be made available under this Act to modify the HIV/AIDS funding formulas under title XXVI of the Public Health Service Act.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, at the present time, the last numbers that I saw, Congress's approval rating was 12 percent. There is a reason for that. We have been nibbling around the edges on a lot of things, and we have been doing earmarks. I have an amendment that deals with one of the most egregious earmarks I have seen.
Less than a year ago we passed a bill in this body unanimously, that the House then passed unanimously, that addressed the Ryan White AIDS program, and it included transparency, it included accountability, and it included a change in the formula. The change in the formula gave some protection to those who have had a declining population, but it allowed the money to follow the people who had the problem.
Today, in this bill, there is an earmark that provides for money now to go to people who may no longer even exist--people who are dead. It is a way that they are trying to change the authorization process we went through so meticulously, so unanimously, in such a way that it undoes it in an appropriations bill. We shouldn't be changing law in an appropriations bill. We especially shouldn't be changing law for a specific area of the country in an appropriations bill. That is why I bring this amendment.
I want to discuss the Ryan White program and the need to ensure that this Labor-HHS bill does not undo our recent work. Last December, after months of negotiations, the House and the Senate passed a new 3-year Ryan White reauthorization. Most importantly, we ensured that those new formulas focused on the lifesaving treatment by including individuals with HIV, not just AIDS.
One of the key items that delayed this reauthorization for months was the careful negotiations surrounding the funding formulas. In that bipartisan, bicameral agreement, we were very clear about the implications of those new formula changes. We provided GAO data runs that were nearly identical to how the funding has been distributed. I hope everybody takes a look at those GAO data runs.
Those funding formulas also included hold-harmless provisions to ensure the formula funding would not decrease by more than 5 percent from the previous year. While I would have preferred no hold-harmless provisions or ones that allowed for more dramatic fluctuations so the money could follow the HIV-infected person, that was what we agreed upon a few short months ago.
We didn't pull the wool over anyone's eyes; we provided clear information about the implications about those funding formulas. Now, with one simple pen stroke, the House majority would like to undo all of those carefully crafted, bipartisan, bicameral compromises and insert a new hold-harmless provision with little thought to how this change will affect others. I am pleased to note that the Senate did not include this egregious provision, and I hope today the Senate will go on record for opposing doing so.
What is even more ridiculous is that this provision primarily benefits San Francisco, a city that continues to receive funding to care for dead people. San Francisco received two-thirds of the $9 million available, racking up $6 million of new dollars. All the while, nearly every other city would have reduced funding just so San Francisco can receive more riches. That additional $6 million is not based on the number of people they are treating or on how many new cases they have. As a hold-harmless provision, it is related to what that city has received before.
As GAO noted in the report last month, even within their current funding, they are receiving money for people who have died. Let me repeat that. GAO, the Government Accountability Office, confirmed that San Francisco currently receives funding under Ryan White for dead people. That is without this additional $6 million earmark. Now, I don't know about my colleagues, but I find this a little reprehensible. Where I come from, that is called cheating. This is patently unfair to those cities and States that are striving to come up with the moneys for basic HIV/AIDS treatment.
House Democrats reneged on a bipartisan, bicameral solution and are trying to slide this authorizing legislation into an appropriations bill, hoping no one will notice. Well, I noticed. I object to this provision and the implications of it. Rather than providing nearly $10 million to help those cities that don't need it, why aren't we providing funds to those cities with large numbers of people with HIV?
So I offer my amendment to Labor-HHS, Enzi amendment No. 3437. This amendment is quite simple. It states that the Labor-HHS bill cannot be used to undo all of the work we did on Ryan White. We should not be diverting key funds from cities with rising HIV cases to go to San Francisco--a city that is still receiving funds for treating people who have already died from AIDS. If you support keeping people alive, I believe you should also support my amendment. We did last December. We should again. We need to keep it on track to take care of the problem.
I yield some time to my fellow Senator from Oklahoma, such time as he would like.
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Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, before we passed the legislation, there were waiting lines in many of the States in this country, lines of people waiting to get treatment and care for AIDS. I am pleased to let you know there are no waiting lines today. No waiting lines anywhere--not in San Francisco, not in Connecticut, not in New Jersey or in New York.
There has been a cut. The cut is guaranteed to be no more than 5 percent under the formula. Now, there has always been supplemental money besides the formula. We did not guarantee the supplemental money. The supplemental money was never guaranteed. And if there are larger cuts, it comes out of the supplemental money, not the formula. So I certainly hope we don't change the formula under the appropriations bill instead of through the proper process, which is authorization.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services in North Carolina with some very pertinent quotes.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
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Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, again, I would ask that Senators support my amendment to strike what we are talking about, which is an earmark of $6.2 million for San Francisco and another $3 million for a few other towns.
We are changing law that we passed less than a year ago under an authorization process. It is much harder to pass an authorization bill than it is an appropriations bill. We should not be changing formulas under an appropriations bill.
The GAO numbers that we said would happen are approximately what has happened. Of the $9 million, San Francisco gets $6.2 million. They already get twice as much per HIV/AIDS case as any of the rest of the towns. We put in a hold harmless provision so nobody would lose more than 5 percent of their money. We have been staying by that. We did not guarantee supplemental money. That was done less than a year ago. This is an earmark.
There were waiting lines for people who needed HIV treatment and care. There are no waiting lines today. What we did last year worked. We should not change it under appropriations now.
I ask that you vote for my amendment.
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