Trump Administration
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I didn't agree with former President George W. Bush on a lot of things, but I have repeatedly given him credit for making the United States the world's leader in stemming the HIV-AIDS epidemic in some of the poorest parts of the world. That was 22 years ago.
The program is called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR. PEPFAR and its companion effort, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, dramatically curtailed the AIDS epidemic that was ravaging many parts of the world. PEPFAR alone has saved more than 26 million lives.
Thank you, President George W. Bush.
Both of these programs provide retroviral drugs for those with AIDS, allowing them to continue to live productive lives and prevent the spread of the disease at childbirth. They have been so effective that many have forgotten just how devastating AIDS was in many parts of the world, at one point killing more than 2 million people every year and leaving 14 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries, life expectancy had dropped to 20 years.
A few years ago, we took a look at the nation of Malawi. PEPFAR and the Global Fund Program increased the number of Malawians living with AIDS and receiving treatment from 5 to nearly 90 percent.
Thank you, President George W. Bush.
These programs are not only the right thing to do but also highly effective examples of American soft power and, until recently, a stark contrast to what China and the other nations of the world were doing. So imagine my reaction to the Trump administration's decision at the highest level to gut this lifesaving, bipartisan program under the heartless tutelage of the President's unelected billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world--never elected to anything; gleefully, senselessly dancing on stage with a chain saw so he can gut programs just like President Bush's PEPFAR.
It has been estimated by experts that the gutting of USAID could jeopardize the health of more than 20 million people worldwide, including 500,000 children.
What a contrast. Republican President George W. Bush will go down in history as a caring man who symbolized what the United States means to the world: a giving, caring people who have helped so many poor people in other nations, many of whom will never visit, and put them in a position where they can survive.
The Trump administration says that no programs were actually cut, just paused. The reality is far different.
Any of us who have raised a family can remember when that baby needed a bottle and was darned determined to let you know about it, screaming and shouting until you finally plugged that bottle in her mouth and she quieted down.
So now the Trump administration says, when it comes to feeding programs for babies and infants and children around the world, because they are screaming and they are hungry, just tell them we have decided to pause the program--pause the program. Parents laugh out loud when you consider that possibility.
Just last month, the Trump administration dismissed the few remaining public health officials overseeing programs for pregnant women with HIV in low-income countries. Don't tell me that you have dedicated public service to strengthening families and then take away this basic need so that mothers giving birth to babies don't have to worry about HIV-AIDS.
All the experts at the Centers for Disease Control, the State Department, and USAID have been terminated and are waiting for reassignment. That is the Trump record. That is what he will be remembered for in history if we go along with it.
Even with some funding restored, how will the critical work continue without professional staff to carry it out? Like so many White House policies, this is cruelty and madness and certainly not efficiency.
In upcoming funding bills and any rescissions effort, it will be up to Congress--all of us in Congress, not the Democrats, although we are in the minority, but Republicans and Democrats together--to protect and restore these critical, lifesaving programs that are both the right thing to do and the strategic thing to do.
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