Tom Coburn: “The Global Fund initiative has been a very important tool in terms of fighting HIV, TB, and malaria, which are the three…”

“The Global Fund initiative has been a very important tool in terms of fighting HIV, TB, and malaria, which are the three significant diseases around the world that are limiting progress, health, life, and sustainability for many people throughout the world. What this amendment does is eliminate the secrecy of the operation of that group. I am not highly critical of discretionary spending to accomplish a goal, but I am highly critical of not having transparency on where money goes. We can do that in a way that protects whistleblowers and in a way that satisfies the American public that if we are going to send their money overseas, we know exactly what it is spent on and how it is spent. This is a very simple amendment. It conditions 20 percent of our contributions to the Global Fund, which is significant, on certification by the Secretary of State that the Global Fund has made all the financial and programmatic documents available to the public on a Web site. That says if you are going to spend $100 million on a drug, put it on a Web site and say whether you competitively bid it, and here is what we paid for it. If you paid a consultant, say here is how much we paid them for it. It is the American taxpayers' money. I think it is significant that the total amount of money contributed to date for the Global Fund, which I support, has been $2.9 billion.”