STATEMENT: State of the Union 2006

The President's Mocking Call for 'Hope'

President Bush once again pledged bold action last night to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America, citing the disproportionate impact among African Americans in particular. The Institute applauds that pledge. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve heard it -- and we’re sadly still waiting for the administration to act in a way that is congruent with its words.

Since the debacle of the 2004 vice presidential debates – in which Vice President Cheney acknowledged ignorance of the epidemic’s intensity among Black women – the White House has become adept at mouthing the rhetoric of the struggle against AIDS. But the gap between those words and its actions has grown so large that what once sounded “hopeful” now carries the sting of mockery.

Last night, President Bush declared, “A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented and treated and defeated.” These words echoed those he delivered in his 2005 State of the Union and that he repeated on World AIDS Day in December. But the administration continues to advocate policies that will produce just the opposite result.

The White House’s budget proposal last year – which shaped the budget now awaiting final congressional approval – cut funding for the HIV prevention work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $4.5 million. And it flat-lined almost every aspect of the Ryan White CARE Act for a third-straight year.

Meanwhile, the administration spent the last congressional session shoving its proposal to gut Medicaid through Congress. The budget Congress is now poised to approve would shift the program’s growing cost onto the backs of the poor families it was designed to help in the first place.

At the White House’s insistence, the bill will allow states to charge co-pays that may reach as high as hundreds of dollars for some. The Congressional Budget Office has said this cynical step would not save money through people actually paying the co-pays but rather by discouraging them from using Medicaid at all. Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer for AIDS treatment, and two-thirds of Blacks getting AIDS care pay for it with public health insurance.

In the coming days, the White House will submit its next budget proposal. Perhaps it will reflect the ideals of the “hopeful society” the President described. But given the goals outlined in the rest of his speech, we won’t hold our breath.

Even as President Bush called for renewed efforts to stop new infections, he championed unproven abstinence education as a strategy for promoting sexual health. The President was correct to note the steady improvements we have seen in sexual health among young people; but he was either uninformed or deliberately misleading when he attributed those advancements to abstinence promotion.

The CDC has clearly stated that research suggests the improving trends found in its national surveys on youth risk-behavior are an outgrowth of comprehensive sex education. No credible research exists showing abstinence-only sex education to work – indeed, some suggests that it makes matters worse, because those young people who do eventually have sex don’t know how to do so safely. Parents overwhelmingly agree with this commonsense: Nearly half of those surveyed in a 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard/NPR poll said they wanted kids to learn about both delaying sex and protecting themselves.

Yet, the administration continues to ignore the urgings of both scientists and parents in its reckless effort to make schools bend to its unfounded beliefs. So while the White House has pushed cuts to the CDC’s proven prevention work with one hand, with the other it has more than doubled the annual budget for abstinence-only education since 2001.

Similarly, while President Bush said last night that AIDS can be “treated and defeated,” in the same speech he repeatedly vowed to continue taking apart the same safety-net programs that poor people with HIV/AIDS depend upon to get and stay healthy. He also urged Congress to entrench the reckless tax cuts that have left government unable to adequately fund these long-standing, crucial initiatives.

“Tonight, the state of our Union is strong,” the President insisted. But whether it be AIDS in particular or our well-being more broadly, many Americans are left wondering which Union the President is talking about. His administration’s actions have consistently betrayed the callousness hiding behind its professed compassion. Merely asserting otherwise with “hopeful” words doesn’t alter that reality.