Wendy Sherman: “This entire bill is woefully underfunded. We should be adding several billions to this bill, perhaps many billions to…”

“This entire bill is woefully underfunded. We should be adding several billions to this bill, perhaps many billions to this bill. But within the scope of the bill as presented, all we can do is move money from one part of the bill to another. That is an important task, because there are parts of this bill that are more in need of funding than others. As explained by the speeches for the last hour, the most important part of this bill is the funding for AIDS. With some 34 million people in Africa, with over 10 million people in South Asia and Southeast Asia stricken with HIV, we need to do more, not just the $202 million provided in the bill, not just the $242 million which will be available if the Pelosi-Lee amendment is passed, but we need to do all we can. This amendment will increase the amount for AIDS by an additional $10 million. That is still not even $10 for every infected person in the continent of Africa, let alone less than $5 for each infected person on the face of the earth. The question is not why is it important to provide more funds to combat AIDS, but where do we get those funds? This bill, this amendment takes those funds from the allocation from the World Bank and more particularly from IDA. Now, IDA is a good program of the World Bank, but it is not as important as dealing with AIDS.”