Joe Barton: “I want to point out in the brief time that the gentleman from California still has, the Barton amendment doesn't lessen…”

“I want to point out in the brief time that the gentleman from California still has, the Barton amendment doesn't lessen funding for this; it doesn't change the total amount of dollars at all. It simply protects the agreed-upon compromise that the stakeholders, the House, and the Senate on both sides of the aisle agreed to in the last Congress. And what the compromise was is, we moved more to a formula funding mechanism, two-thirds, and one-third for discretionary. And on the discretionary side, that is totally based on active HIV/AIDS case counts. It does not include people who have passed away from AIDS. And the gentlelady that spoke earlier about the number of people in San Francisco that have contracted the disease and have passed away is totally right that those people, unfortunately, are no longer here. They should not be counted for the discretionary funding because you can't help them now. We want the funding from the discretionary side to go to those that actually still have the infection.”