[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 15, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4365-S4366]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

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                              RESCISSIONS

  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, a June 25 article in the New York Times 
captured, in a single headline, the disaster that the misguided 
policies of this White House are inflicting on the world's most 
vulnerable people. It also illustrates the immense damage this White 
House is causing to years of hard-won goodwill for the United States 
around the world.
  The title of the article, ``Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as 
U.S. Withdraws Support,'' says it all. The headline goes on to describe 
how, ``a new drug that gives almost complete protection against the 
virus was to be administered across Africa this year. Now, much of the 
funding for that effort is gone.''
  I remember vividly, as do many of my colleagues, when President 
George W. Bush announced the PEPFAR program, a program that for the 
past 22 years has received enthusiastic bipartisan support, a program 
that has saved countless lives, a program that people and governments 
around the world have thanked the American people for.
  Each year in our appropriations bills we have always, without 
disagreement, provided the funds to sustain PEPFAR and to fulfill our 
pledges to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria. The 
Global Fund works in close collaboration with PEPFAR, as well as in 
countries where PEPFAR does not, because HIV/AIDS and other infectious 
diseases do not pick and choose who they infect. No country is immune, 
and no person is safe. Millions of Americans travel, work, and serve 
overseas, and then they return home. Everyone is at risk if the virus 
is not contained everywhere.
  Now, the Trump administration is proposing drastic cuts to PEPFAR and 
our contribution to the Global Fund, two programs that by any measure 
have been wildly successful. This week the Senate will consider 
President

[[Page S4366]]

Trump's request to cut $400 million from PEPFAR and another $500 
million in other global health programs. If Congress goes along with 
that, we will share responsibility for sabotaging one of the great 
public health achievements of this century.
  President Trump is pushing these cuts at the cusp of a potential 
breakthrough in our fight against the HIV epidemic.
  There is a new preventative therapy for HIV; it is called 
lenacapavir, and it is a twice-yearly injection that protects against 
infection. This drug was supposed to be getting rolled out in eastern 
and southern Africa.
  Not many years ago, preventing HIV infection altogether would have 
seemed impossible. Now it is real--and it is being derailed by these 
reckless cuts.
  Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund, put it this 
way:

       If you want countries to take on the responsibility for 
     their H.I.V. responses, in terms of both leadership and 
     funding, it's a very different thing to take on a problem 
     that is still growing than a problem where you have made a 
     significant dent in the numbers of new infections. . . And 
     lenacapavir gives that opportunity to dramatically reduce new 
     infections.

  We don't even know what the full impact of these cuts will be because 
funding for collecting the data needed to track infection rates is on 
the chopping block.
  So I can't help but wonder why? Why is the White House walking away 
from these lifesaving programs that everyone agrees have been a huge 
success story? It would be one thing if HIV/AIDS had been eradicated. 
But we are a very long way from that. There are an estimated 1.3 
million new HIV infections every year.
  We cannot let down our guard. We cannot be so shortsighted to think 
that we would save money by cutting funding for PEPFAR and the Global 
Fund. Prevention is far less expensive than treatment. If Congress does 
not reject these funding cuts there will almost immediately be more 
infections, not fewer. More Americans will get sick. Mother to child 
transmission will exponentially increase. Many more people will die 
needlessly.
  A drug developed by an American biopharmaceutical company that can 
prevent HIV/AIDS finally exists. Let's do again what President Bush did 
nearly a quarter century ago and show the world that the United States 
can be the world's leader in saving lives from a deadly disease.

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