Joe Barton: “I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the last Congress, and one of the things that I am most proud of…”

“I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the last Congress, and one of the things that I am most proud of was that in the late stages of that Congress we passed the Ryan White CARE Reauthorization Act of 2006. It's a 3-year reauthorization act. It was a bipartisan, bicameral compromise. Some of the House Members that worked on it included Congresswoman Mary Bono on the Republican side, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo on the Democrat side, Senator Enzi, Senator Kennedy, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein, Congressman Dingell, of course myself, and many, many others. One of the cornerstones of that reauthorization was a formula change in the dispensation of HIV/AIDS funding to more reflect where the epidemic is actually still in play in this country. Under the old formula you had one-half of funds based on a formula based on population, things like this, and then you had one-half of the funds based on a discretionary fund. Under the reauthorization we changed that to two-thirds formula and one-third discretionary. But because we were changing the formula, we did put in a hold-harmless provision for the formula funding.”