Patrick Leahy: “I want to echo what my friend from Kentucky has just said. This is a good bill. Our subcommittee allocation is below the…”

“I want to echo what my friend from Kentucky has just said. This is a good bill. Our subcommittee allocation is below the President's request, so we had to make some tough choices, but we did the best we could with what we had. I want to thank Senator McConnell for working in the best spirit of the Senate to produce a bipartisan bill and accommodate the overwhelming majority of requests from Senators. Chairman Stevens and Senator Byrd also deserve a great deal of credit for this year's Foreign Operations bill. Senator McConnell went over the details of the bill so I will highlight just a few items: The bill contains much-needed increases in refugee assistance that goes to some of the most vulnerable people in the world. The bill rolls back proposed cuts to the Child Survival and Health and the Development Assistance accounts. This is important because most of the requests we received from Senators on both sides of the aisle were for projects or activities funded in these accounts. The bill provides a total of $2.4 billion to combat AIDS, TB and Malaria, including $150 million in emergency money for the global fund that we added by Senators Durbin and Brownback during the committee markup. When combined with the funds in the Labor-HHS bill, this brings the Senate total for AIDS prevention and treatment to $3.1 billion, including $550 million for the global fund. The bill added $150 million in emergency funds to address the crisis in Darfur.”