| May
26, 2006
This Week in Washington
1. House Adopts Budget Resolution
CARE Act in Brief
1. Energy and Commerce Committee Hosts Ryan White Stakeholder
Meeting
Announcements
1. “The Age of AIDS” to Air on PBS
This Week in Washington
1. House Adopts Budget Resolution
Last week the House of Representatives adopted the Budget Resolution
(H. Con. Res. 376) on a vote of 218-210. The House leadership
agreed to create a $3.1 billion reserve fund for health, education
and other domestic programs, but only if offsets could be achieved.
Elizabeth Wenk with Rep. Castle's (R-DE) staff is quoted in Congressional
Quarterly as stating that the offsets would not come: “from mandatory
programs that serve the very people we are trying to help — like
Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, foster programs and others.”
Under an amendment authored by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), at least
$1 billion would come from an Iraq reconstruction fund.
Rep. Castle, and the moderates that supported
his efforts, should be thanked by health groups for their excellent
work in supporting additional funding for health programs. It
was their pressure on the House leadership, backed by the advocacy
work of health and education programs, that resulted in $4 billion
being shifted from defense and foreign operations to the Labor-HHS-Education
Subcommittee in the 302b allocations three weeks ago, and their
pressure that may result in additional increases for health and
education programs in the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriation
bill, and their pressure that makes the final conference with
the Senate likely to be a more positive outcome.
We are in a far better place than we were at
the beginning of the budget process when the President's budget
request meant deeper cuts for health programs.
AIDS Action will thank these moderates; however
it will be most important if our member organizations can find
a way to thank these moderates in their Districts -- via op-eds,
letters to the editors, or ads in local newspapers, or other media
outlets, or by staging press events with your state and local
chapters/members, or just in your own organization's newsletters.
The list of moderate Members of Congress who
need to be thanked is as follows:
Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE)
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT)
Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT)
Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-MI)
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT)
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY)
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH)
Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA)
Rep. Joanne Emerson (R-MO)
Rep. John R. (Randy) Kuhl (R-NY)
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)
Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA)
Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD)
Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA)
CARE Act in Brief
1. Energy and Commerce Committee Hosts Ryan White Stakeholder
Meeting
On Wednesday, May 24th, 19 Members of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee met to host a “Stakeholder Meeting” with HIV/AIDS Community
Members. The meeting was not an official hearing (and therefore
was not recorded for the record), but was rather a roundtable
to air issues and to discuss the CARE Act. Representative Nathan
Deal (R-GA) who chairs the Subcommittee on Health (a subcommittee
of the Energy and Commerce Committee) chaired the meeting.
The audience consisted of a number of national,
state and local organizations and individuals who were interested
in the outcome of the CARE Act reauthorization. Members of the
Committee were allowed five minutes to speak about the CARE Act,
delegate time to audience members to speak about the CARE Act
or to ask questions of audience members. Most of the Members had
pre-arranged questions with various organizations, often representing
HIV organizations in the member’s district or region.
There were a number of major issues that were
discussed by multiple Members of Congress or by audience members.
These included concerns from Members of the New Jersey, New York
and Texas delegations about the creation of a proxy level for
states that have already had their “names reporting systems” accepted
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but which are
not reporting large numbers of names reported for HIV compared
to the number of names being reported for AIDS. Representatives
Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Edolphus Towns (D-NY) asked about ensuring
the inclusion of the Minority AIDS Initiative in the reauthorization.
Representative Tammy Baldwin (R-WI) asked AIDS Action’s executive
director Rebecca Haag about Core Medical Services. Ms. Haag argued
for greater inclusion of services under these new requirements,
specifically suggesting allowing more case management, nutrition
services -- therapy and food, medical transportation and inpatient
substance abuse treatment. AIDS Action has since added the inclusion
of linguistic services to its list. Finally several Members of
Congress expressed concern about the implementation of a Severity
of Need Index. Julie Scofield, the Executive Director of NASTAD
suggested that the Severity of Need Index should be created by
HRSA during the course of this reauthorization, but should not
be implemented until Congress has reviewed it and specifically
authorized it during the next CARE Act reauthorization due to
take place in 2010.
Although most of the Representatives expressed
appreciation for the bipartisan, bicameral process which has produced
this draft, there seemed to be a consensus that there were still
a number of issues that needed to be worked out. One particularly
interesting development was the number of Texas and New Jersey
Republicans who spoke about finding a solution to the proxy issue
in agreement with Democratic committee members from New York and
New Jersey. This clearly indicated that some of the divisions
within the committee are falling along geographic rather than
partisan lines. The only member of the committee to speak strongly
in favor of the Administration’s principles and in favor of “phasing
out a system that counts some people with AIDS twice” was Representative
Joseph Pitts (R-PA). At least one staffer remarked afterwards
that the community stakeholder meeting format, although unorthodox,
had allowed more community members to speak and avoided having
only three presenters with narrower visions of how to reauthorize
the CARE Act.
In addition to the House Energy and Commerce
Stakeholder Meeting, which some Senate staff members did attend,
staffers from both the Energy and Commerce and Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committees hosted a community
meeting on Friday, May 19th. At that meeting, the staffers outlined
the status of the CARE Act reauthorization and what they expected
the next steps to be. The current status is:
- May 17th: The
Senate HELP Committee introduced and marked up a bill, S. 2823,
the “Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006”
which would reauthorize the CARE Act. AIDS Action understands
that although this bill is called the “Modernization Act,” the
Ryan White CARE Act will retain its name. We continue to review
this issue.
- Week of either June
5th or June 12th: the Health Subcommittee of the Energy
and Commerce Committee is expected to introduce and mark up
a House version of the Senate Bill. The bill that is marked
up must be agreed to by all members of the bipartisan bicameral
process.
- After the House Markup:
Both the House and Senate hope to pass identical versions
of the bill. Doing so would allow the President to sign the
bill without a conference committee. Whatever bill emerges from
the House Markup is expected to be the final version of the
bill. Assuming that the bill that emerges from the House Markup
contains all the language, unchanged and as agreed upon by the
bicameral bipartisan process, the Senate will be free to pass
it on the Senate floor.
- Week of June 19th:
This week has been designated as “Health Week” in the House
of Representatives. The House would like to pass the final bill
on the House floor during this Week.
- After the House and
Senate Pass a Bill (Possibly Late June): Assuming that
the bills passed by the House and Senate are identical, the
bill will go to the President for his signature and final passage
into law.
As noted above, the bills must be identical
and in the language agreed upon by both the House and Senate to
reach final passage. If amendments are added that remove the identical
language, then all of the agreements of the bipartisan, bicameral
process are off and either the House or Senate may seek to kill
the bill and likely end efforts to reauthorize the CARE Act until
after the 2006 elections in November.
Representatives who attended the Stakeholder
meeting were:
Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), Chair of the Health
Subcommittee
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ranking member of the Health Subcommittee
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Rep. Mary Bono (R-CA)
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX)
Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA)
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-NJ)
Rep. Henry Gonzalez (R-TX)
Rep. Gene Green (D-TX)
Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NJ)
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA)
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL)
Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA)
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)
Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR)
Announcements
1. “The Age of AIDS” to Air on PBS
On Tuesday, May 30, and Wednesday, May 31, the PBS television
series, Frontline, will air, “The Age of AIDS,” an examination
of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The shows come just in advance of the
25th anniversary of the MMWR which identified cases of the disease
that would later be known as AIDS. That anniversary takes place
on Monday, June 5th. The broadcast airs from 9:00 –11:00 pm Eastern
Time on PBS.
A preview from the television show can be viewed
at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/
The AIDS Action Weekly Update
The Weekly Update is written
with a mind toward the interests of our members. If you are interested
in membership with AIDS Action, we invite you to contact members@aidsaction.org.
AIDS Action works
to end the HIV epidemic by advancing public policies that
prevent new infections, provide care for people living with
HIV, and support the search for a cure. AIDS Action serves
as the national voice for people living with HIV and represents
AIDS service organizations, health departments, and a diverse
network of community-based organizations across the country. |
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