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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, as you and I both know, we are in the process of talking about the spending bills, long overdue. We are in our fiscal year as of October 1. Well, here comes the end of October, and we are still laboring over how we are going to spend money for the next fiscal year from October 1 to September 30 of the year 2024.
And there is debate back and forth between the House and Senate, debate on the Senate floor, and some issues are becoming priorities. I would like to address one of them that doesn't get a lot of attention, and it should.
I don't agree with former President George W. Bush on many things, but I have given him credit repeatedly for making the United States a leader in stemming the HIV/AIDS epidemic in some of the poorest parts of the world.
Twenty years ago, the program was called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, what Bono once said was ``the most eloquent expression of American values anyone can think of in recent times.''
You see, PEPFAR, and its companion effort, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, dramatically curtailed the AIDS epidemic that was ravaging the world. It has saved more than 25 million lives so far.
Both of these programs provided retroviral drugs for those with AIDS, allowing them to live productive lives and prevent the spread of disease through childbirth.
They have been so effective that some might have forgotten just how devastating AIDS was in certain parts of the world. At one point, it was killing more than 2 million people a year globally and leaving 14 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. In some of the most highly affected countries, life expectancy had dropped 20 years.
PEPFAR and the Global Fund dramatically improved outcomes for millions of people across the world. These programs are not only the right thing to do, they are also one of the most effective examples of America's soft power and the international development effort and a stark contrast of what China and others are displaying in many parts of the world.
So imagine my concern and surprise that there is currently an effort by extreme Republicans in the House of Representatives to block the reauthorization of this hugely successful, bipartisan George W. Bush program over a false and manufactured abortion concern. Taking the extreme position of blocking this lifesaving program is as shortsighted and nihilistic as siding with Vladimir Putin and failing to help Ukraine.
Just last week, the Bush Institute and a group of more than 30 retired Ambassadors and foreign policy leaders urged Congress to swiftly reauthorize PEPFAR.
They wrote:
Abandoning it abruptly now would send a bleak message, suggesting we are no longer able to set aside our politics for the betterment of democracies and the world.
With this, I agree completely. Right now, America's reputation on the global stage is being threatened by House Republicans' internal politics, but reauthorizing PEPFAR is common sense to reassure the world that Americans can push past partisanship and use our influence, resources, and power to save lives. Some things are simply beyond politics.
Former President Bush acknowledged this when he wrote in the Washington Post recently:
We are on the verge of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. To abandon our commitment now would forfeit two decades of unimaginable progress and raise further questions about the worth of America's word.
I couldn't agree more, and I call on my Republican friends to help reauthorize this historic, bipartisan, lifesaving effort without further delay.
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