The Bush Brothers’ Policies on HIV/AIDS, “Budget Cuts, Deception and Denial.”
One has to look no further than the latest headlines to see the detrimental direction of both of the Bushes’ budget policy priorities towards reproductive health including information on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment:
• President Bush's Proposed HIV/AIDS Budget Very Inadequate: 04/24/01
Treatment Access News
• President's Wartime Budget Misses Mark in U.S. War Against
HIV/AIDS, Says National Minority AIDS Council: 02/06/02 U.S. Newswire
• Florida Cuts $5 Million in Services for Homebound People With
HIV/AIDS: 02/20/02 Miami Herald
• Budget Problems May Force Closure of Broward County, Fla., HIV/AIDS Clinic: 05/20/02 South Florida Sun-Sentinel
• Bush backs away from reproductive health pact: 11/01/02 Knight Ridder Newspapers
These headlines demonstrate how the Bushes’ policy on promoting a well-rounded approach to reproductive health and prevention/treatment information has taken a 180° turn from that of their Republican predecessor, President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s administration believed informed access to reproductive health to include contraceptives was a benefit. In fact, informed access was one of Nixon’s pet concerns and it helped in the passage of Title X of the Public Health Services Act, the primary federal program for providing family planning services, including information on contraceptives. However, beginning with the Reagan and now Bush regimes, "We have gone backward on prevention and information programs,” affirmed Congressman Dick Gephardt in the 2002 November issue of A&U.
Who or what has been the catalyst of this backwards trend? On the whole, religious-extremists who now identify themselves as “Faith-Based People,” have steered the course of obstruction, deceit and denial of reproductive health, prevention information of HIV/AIDS and other STD’s. Sadly, the Bushes have embraced these fundamentalist groups and their draconian ideology of abstinence-only programs, turning back the clock to a time of ignorance and escalating rates of HIV/AIDS infection.
This is not to imply that abstinence should not be promoted, however. The danger is that abstinence-only education programs teach only abstinence, steering teenagers toward risky sexual activities because many consider abstinence to mean only refraining from intercourse. Hard to believe? Guess again. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that many teens believe oral sex "posed no risk" of HIV infection. When in fact, HIV can be transmitted via oral sex.
Even more disheartening is to listen to President Bush beat the drums of war saying he won’t tolerate "deception or denial or deceit" from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Yet, his "aggressive promotion" of abstinence-only sex education programs is no more than his version of “denial and deceit” of this worldwide health crisis that threatens the National Security of the United States, as was poignantly expressed by former President Clinton.
The deceit and denial is of such a magnitude that Bush ignores the fact that the nation's capital has the dubious distinction of having a per-capita infection rate that's 12 times higher than any other place in the country. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Bush’s misinformation isn’t limited to sex education or denying the continued increase of new HIV infections but it also extends to perpetuating the myth that HIV/AIDS is a “gay disease.” He’s done this by the appointment of openly gay men to the position of director to the Office of National AIDS Policy. Break it down and Scott Evertz, his first appointment, is simply a gay Republican fundraiser with no intergovernmental connections needed for a leadership position. He was unable to develop a national profile in his White House post, so Dr. Joseph O’Neill, also an openly gay man with better qualifications, replaced him. O'Neill's job is to work with federal agencies and coordinate the development of HIV/AIDS policy for the White House, but the White House, already bowing to pressure from right-wing groups seeking abstinence-only education programs that also ban the discussion of homosexuality, isn't listening. Under such circumstances, how can O'Neill possibly impact national AIDS policies?
The administration is not only using misinformation but also intimidation tactics to suppress the dissemination of prevention education and access to treatment. In a ruthless display of arrogance Health and Human Services Director, Tommy Thompson, ordered the review of a dozen AIDS service organizations, at the request of 12 Congressmen simply because members of those organizations participated in a demonstration against him during the XIV International AIDS Conference held in Barcelona, Spain in July. The outcome of those investigations is still pending but the message is clear, either fall in line with what we say or lose federal funding!
Just when we were making significant strides in increasing life expectancy of HIV/AIDS patients because of treatment access, the leading funding source, "The Ryan White CARE Act is flat funded [in President Bush's budget FY02], which means a 6% decrease when you take into consideration the increased cost of providing the service. We need so much more money than that, and we must have it. Literally, this is a figure we cannot live with, and neither can anybody with HIV or AIDS live with that figure," explains Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA in a Q&A in the San Francisco Examiner, 4/12/01. The effects of that budget were immediately felt forcing 17 states to restrict access to their AIDS Drug Assistance Programs this past year.
Just a year later the President’s 2003 budget, “misses the mark in three important ways -- first, it does not add one dime to the most effective AIDS funding mechanism," the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.” Second, "despite the fact that the AIDS problem will grow dramatically next year, the president's plan doesn't propose any new money for 2003." Finally, the plan is a "narrowly tailored program to prevent mother-to-child [HIV] transmission, rather than a comprehensive approach which focuses on prevention, care and treatment," Sen. Durbin said in a press release (Sen. Dick Durbin D-IL, Release, 6/19/02).
The President’s arrogance is not limited to the “Homeland.” In his most recent attack on worldwide HIV/AIDS prevention education he has unilaterally ordered the immediate suspension of $34 million in international family planning funds from the United Nation's Population Fund. "Who would have thought that in the 21st Century, we would be turning back the clock on human rights for the poorest women of the world? Yet now we are seeing the poorest women on this planet being held hostage to the extreme elements in the Republican Party. U.S. assistance for family planning and reproductive health allows women in the poorest countries access to critical health services” said Nancy Pelosi, new elected House Minority Leader. The results of this UN fund are clear: lower rates of infant and child mortality, decreased maternal mortality, decreased incidents of new HIV/AIDS infections and fewer abortions.
This arrogance, deceit, denial and backwards attitude towards HIV/AIDS policy should come as no surprise from the man who said, “If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.” (President Bush’s infamous statement in a CNN interview that aired 12/18/00)
And not to be left behind is the “devious plan”
master, Gov. Jeb Bush.