The President's 'Hopeful'
Vision Doesn't Match His Administration's Callous Actions
(February 1, 2006 - The Black AIDS Institute). President Bush
once again pledged bold action last night to stop the HIV/AIDS
epidemic in America, citing the disproportionate impact among
African Americans in particular. The Institute applauds that
pledge. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve
heard it -- and we’re sadly still waiting for the administration
to act in a way that is congruent with its words.
Since the debacle of the 2004 vice presidential debates –
in which Vice President Cheney acknowledged ignorance of the
epidemic’s intensity among Black women – the White
House has become adept at mouthing the rhetoric of the struggle
against AIDS. But the gap between those words and its actions
has grown so large that what once sounded “hopeful”
now carries the sting of mockery.
Last night, President Bush declared, “A hopeful society
acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented
and treated and defeated.” These words echoed those he delivered
in his 2005 State of the Union and that he repeated on World
AIDS Day in December. But the administration continues to advocate
policies that will produce just the opposite result.
The White House’s budget proposal last year – which
shaped the budget now awaiting final congressional approval –
cut funding for the HIV prevention work of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention by $4.5 million. And it flat-lined almost
every aspect of the Ryan White CARE Act for a third-straight
year.
Meanwhile, the administration spent the last congressional
session shoving its proposal to gut Medicaid through Congress.
The budget Congress is now poised to approve would shift the
program’s growing cost onto the backs of the poor families
it was designed to help in the first place.
At the White House’s insistence, the bill will allow
states to charge co-pays that may reach as high as hundreds of
dollars for some. The Congressional Budget Office has said this
cynical step would not save money through people actually paying
the co- pays but rather by discouraging them from using Medicaid
at all. Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer for AIDS
treatment, and two-thirds of Blacks getting AIDS care pay for
it with public health insurance.
In the coming days, the White House will submit its next budget
proposal. Perhaps it will reflect the ideals of the “hopeful
society” the President described. But given the goals outlined
in the rest of his speech, we won’t hold our breath.
Even as President Bush called for renewed efforts to stop
new infections, he championed unproven abstinence education as
a strategy for promoting sexual health. The President was correct
to note the steady improvements we have seen in sexual health
among young people; but he was either uninformed or deliberately
misleading when he attributed those advancements to abstinence
promotion.
The CDC has clearly stated that research suggests the improving
trends found in its national surveys on youth risk-behavior are
an outgrowth of comprehensive sex education. No credible research
exists showing abstinence-only sex education to work – indeed,
some suggests that it makes matters worse, because those young
people who do eventually have sex don’t know how to do so
safely.
Parents overwhelmingly agree with this commonsense: Nearly
half of those surveyed in a 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard/NPR
poll said they wanted kids to learn about both delaying sex and
protecting themselves.
Yet, the administration continues to ignore the urgings of
both scientists and parents in its reckless effort to make schools
bend to its unfounded beliefs. So while the White House has pushed
cuts to the CDC’s proven prevention work with one hand,
with the other it has more than doubled the annual budget for
abstinence-only education since 2001.
Similarly, while President Bush said last night that AIDS
can be “treated and defeated,” in the same speech he
repeatedly vowed to continue taking apart the very same safety-net
programs (or, “entitlement spending”) that poor people
with HIV/AIDS depend upon to get and stay healthy. He also urged
Congress to entrench the reckless tax cuts that have left government
unable to adequately fund these long-standing, crucial initiatives.
“Tonight, the state of our Union is strong,” the
President insisted. But whether it be AIDS in particular, health
care in general or our well-being more broadly, far too many
Americans are left wondering which Union the President is talking
about. His administration’s actions have consistently betrayed
the callousness hiding behind its professed compassion. Merely
asserting otherwise with “hopeful” words in high-profile
speeches doesn’t alter that reality.
Learn More at BlackAIDS.org
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