In the four years since Congress and the President made a historic commitment to fight AIDS abroad, U.S. leadership has brought hope and healing to millions of people around the world.   Treatment rates in Africa have increased eightfold, with 50,000 new people being introduced to treatment each month.

Still, infection rates are increasing – with more than four million new infections in 2006 alone.   Further scale-up of U.S. programs is drastically needed to build on initial successes, and U.S. efforts have been carefully calibrated to plan for promised funding increases.

Because lawmakers never took final action on most fiscal year 2007 spending bills, however, Congress is now poised to fund most U.S. government programs at their 2006 funding levels all throughout 2007. This would mean the loss of the $1 billion increase in planned funding for AIDS, TB, and malaria.

The consequences of losing these funds would be devastating:

• Current momentum in fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria will be slowed dramatically. At least 350,000 people slated for live-saving treatment in 2007 would not receive it, with anywhere from 100,000 to 175,000 of those people dying.   The hardest-hit will be women, orphans, and vulnerable children.
  
• No new grants will be made through the U.S.'s "New Partners Initiative," an ambitious program to equip faith-based groups and other community-based partners to further strengthen local capacity for prevention and care.
  
• Failure to deliver promised funding will undermine U.S. credibility in the world.  Our nation's AIDS-prevention and treatment efforts have gradually established credibility in host countries and with other funding partners.  U.S. leaders working to build upon this credibility in other disease and poverty-prevention efforts can ill afford to see AIDS funding reduced at this critical moment. 

Lawmakers are under a great deal of pressure to make limited U.S. resources stretch a long way. It is possible, however, to provide the promised $1 billion for AIDS, TB, and malaria without shortchanging other key domestic and international programs.

Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers – along with the Bush Administration – are working to secure funding at FY07 levels proposed by the Senate Appropriations Committee. In the Senate, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) are circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter urging others to sign on to their effort to support this vital funding.  In the House, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) have released a similar letter.  The more signatures that Senators Durbin and Brownback, and Representatives Lee and Shays, get on their letters, the more likely it is that congressional leadership will support FY 07 funding levels for AIDS, TB and Malaria.

ELCA Policy Base:
For Peace in God’s World, ELCA Social Statement:

• Affirms that "our nation has responsibility to contribute a portion of its wealth to people in poorer nations through effective economic assistance," and that the purpose of such assistance "should be to reduce hunger and poverty in sustainable and environmentally sound ways." (16)
• Acknowledges that "While the United States has been generous in providing humanitarian aid, our nation dramatically trails the rest of the industrialized world in providing development assistance relative to our production of wealth." (16)

Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All, ELCA Social Statement:

• Calls for "addressing the barriers individuals face in preparing for and sustaining a livelihood" (such as lack of education, transportation, child care, and health care).
• States that "Outrage over the plight of people living in poverty is a theme throughout the Bible. The poor are those who live precariously between subsistence and utter deprivation. It is not poor people themselves who are the problem, but their lack of access to the basic necessities of life. Without such, they cannot maintain their human dignity."