PEPFAR Funding Restored

The Hill (“White House agrees to exempt PEPFAR from cuts“):

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told reporters after meeting with Senate Republicans on Tuesday that the White House is on board with a substitute amendment to the rescissions package that would exempt PEPFAR, the global anti-AIDS initiative from cuts.

Vought said that the president could accept the substitute amendment to exempt the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative George W. Bush launched in 2003, from rescissions.

He said the size of the rescissions package would be $9 billion if the Senate substitute amendment is adopted.

“It’s substantially the same package and the Senate has to work its will and we’ve appreciated the work along the way to get to a place where they’ve got the votes,” he said.

“There is a substitute amendment that does not include the PEPFAR rescission and we’re fine with that,” Vought said Tuesday after the lunch.

The amendment means the House will have to vote again on the legislation. House Republicans had pressed for the Senate not to change the bill.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior member of the Appropriations panel, had expressed concern over the proposed cut to PEPFAR, which is now likely to be dropped from the bill.

For reasons I outlined Saturday (“Millions Will Die Unless US Aid Money is Replaced“), this is an unalloyed good. That the cuts managed to make it through both Houses of Congress in the first place, though, is a sign of how uncoordinated and rushed through the process was in the first place.