To a lot of people, the budget can seem dry or wonky…but the truth is that as heavy on numbers and figures as it is, it’s a profoundly moral document, it’s a blueprint for the nation’s priorities. -- the Obama Administration

Obama Budget Reverses Progress on Global AIDS and Health

March 6, 2009

On February 26, President Obama released part of his first budget request to Congress.  For Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10), he requested $51.7 billion for the 150 Account, which funds U.S. foreign affairs priorities.[1]  The President’s request sets the current Administration on a path to breaking many of its promises to the people of Africa and its commitments to reassert U.S. moral leadership around the world.

President Obama has broken his commitment to double foreign assistance by 2012.

Although President Obama has promised to double U.S. foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012,[2] his FY10 budget request is well below what is required to keep this promise.  There is simply too little money to keep many others.

·      If the U.S. increases spending on foreign affairs by only $4.4 billion each year, the average yearly increase as outlined in the President’s budget projections through FY14, it will take until at least FY17 to double foreign assistance.

·      Other promises made by the President, Vice President and Secretary of State cannot be kept with the current budget request, including the fair-share contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

PEPFAR cannot be funded at the level authorized by Congress last year, which threatens to halt or even reverse its success.

In 2007, President Bush signed into law a bill to continue PEPFAR, the successful U.S. bilateral AIDS program.  The law authorizes a significant increase in funding consistent with promises made by President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton when they signed the Presidential Pledge for Leadership on Global AIDS and Poverty, which contained a commitment to provide at least $50 billion by 2013 for PEPFAR.

·         It is clear that PEPFAR cannot be fully funded with such a meager increase in the overall 150 Account.[3].

·         The U.S. will fail to meet its targets of three million people on treatment, 12 million new infections prevented and 12 million people receiving care by 2013 if PEPFAR is underfunded.

The health and well-being of the people of the world is not prioritized.

Without a detailed budget, it is impossible to know what President Obama has in mind for the global health, education, and poverty-reduction programs important to his administration.

·         Under a limited budget, development and foreign assistance priorities become trade-offs, with clear winners and losers. This often means that the poorest of the poor remain at the mercy of preventable disease, violence, and other poverty-related challenges.

·         The U.S. has made commitments to Africa that must continue; it is our moral obligation to maintain leadership for the poorest and most marginalized people of the world.

The Global AIDS Alliance looks forward to a detailed budget request that prioritizes poverty and disease reduction in sub-Saharan Africa, and increases the 150 Account significantly so as to ensure that a doubling of U.S. foreign assistance will not become just another broken promise.