Betraying the Sick in Africa

NYTimes Editorial -- There is an old joke about a man who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan. For such chutzpah on a global scale, consider President Bush's overseas AIDS initiative.

The Senate is scheduled to vote soon on an appropriations bill that contains $2 billion for the AIDS initiative — only $500 million more than this year's spending. The House has approved even less. This is the White House's doing. It is twisting arms to get Congress to cut its own program. The House and Senate had authorized $3 billion for next year.

EL - At the time I said GW's $15 billion for AIDS in Africa was a lie. Most of the money was from existing programs and Bush has a history of gutting funding after getting the political milage out of any program.

Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, is proposing to restore the full $3 billion. The Senate should adopt this amendment, then prevail upon the House. Several top Republicans, including President Bush and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, have recently been to Africa, where they hugged orphans and visited the dying. If they break America's promise on AIDS, they will be cynically using suffering Africans as nothing more than a photo opportunity.