Global AIDS Funding Saved Despite Vought Abortion Smear
In a victory for Republican senator Susan Collins, Senate Democrats, and basic decency, OMB Director Russell Vought agreed to amend his $9.4 billion rescission package to remove a $400 million cut to a renowned program that has helped with the fight against AIDS around the world.
The package of cancellations for previously authorized spending had already been rubber-stamped by the House. Now, it’s being considered by the Senate, which has until July 17 to approve it or let it die. Senate Republicans announced PEPFAR funding had been saved after Collins was outspoken in denouncing this particular cut during a luncheon meeting with Vought. Politico reports:
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who is leading the rescissions effort in concert with the White House, said Republicans will remove a $400 million cut to the global AIDS program known as PEPFAR [President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief], bringing the total amount of cuts in the package down to $9 billion.
Schmitt’s comments came after White House Budget Director Russ Vought briefed senators during a closed-door lunch. Schmitt said the White House is on board with the change …
“Susan Collins was very vocal against it” inside the lunch, said one person granted anonymity to discuss a private meeting. “I don’t think you can win her over” …
It’s not clear whether the $400 million rollback will be enough to secure her vote but it might placate enough Republicans to eke the package through the Senate.
Vought wasn’t in the best position to push back against the PEPFAR omission after he was caught in an apparent fabrication about the program, as the New York Times reported today:
On June 25, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a Senate committee that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, had spent $9.3 million “to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis” …
“If they have reason to believe that’s true, they should put the information forward,” said Dr. Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR under Mr. [George W.] Bush, adding that he was “shocked” by the allegation.
Other former PEPFAR leaders and staff members were incensed.
“It’s so irresponsible and so demeaning for them to think that they could get away with a strategy that includes open, overt, aggressive, accelerated lying,” said Dr. Eric Goosby, who led PEPFAR under President Barack Obama.
“I’m so distraught over having things thrown at the wall to see if they stick,” he added.
Jirair Ratevosian, PEPFAR’s chief of staff under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he was puzzled by the statement because it was so easy to disprove.
Shorn of the false accusation, PEPFAR, a legacy initiative of George W. Bush, stands as a testament to the compassionate conservatism the 43rd president always claimed to champion. Aside from Vought’s smear, the main problem with PEPFAR in MAGA eyes is apparently that it represents “foreign aid,” albeit an especially successful and universally admired form of foreign aid that notably helped African nations cope with the deadly AIDS epidemic. And to be clear, other foreign-aid cuts (including those first imposed by DOGE in its assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development) remain in the rescission package, along with the speedy termination of subsidies for public broadcasting. But PEPFAR will survive for now.
Assuming the rescission package does make it out of the Senate, the House will have to approve the amended version. Perhaps some fiscal hard-liners will object to the slightly reduced size of the cuts, and possibly some anti-abortion ultras still believe Vought’s apparent whopper about PEPFAR and Russian abortions. But House Republicans will probably go along and leave the job of driving final nails into the coffin of the United States’s proud foreign-aid tradition for another occasion.