“Their names may not be known on the streets of Africa, but Nancy Pelosi, Nita Lowey and Dave Obey have done something heroic today for millions of poor families across the globe. Their leadership speaks loudly to America’s generosity, but also to their understanding that it is in the West’s strategic interest to end the kind of brutal destabilizing poverty that means tens of thousands die every day in Africa of preventable, treatable diseases. It's important to look up from the spreadsheets to see the real human lives saved by this bill. These numbers on the page will literally translate into life-saving AIDS medicines, doctors in hospitals, children in schools and hope on the ground. The House should be proud,” said Bono, U2 lead singer and co-founder of DATA.

Background information on Foreign Operations Appropriations bill:

Today the House of Representatives passed the 2008 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. The bill would provide an historic increase of approximately $2 billion in funding for poverty-fighting programs abroad, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, education, clean water and economic development.

Specifically, the bill would provide the following funding:

• HIV/AIDS—PEPFAR programs in the 15 focus countries will receive the President’s full request of $4.15 billion, which is an increase of almost $1.3 billion over the FY07 CR. Bilateral AIDS programs in the non-focus countries receive flat funding.
• Global Fund—The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria receives a total of $550 million in Foreign Ops and another $300 million from Labor-HHS, bringing its total to $850 million (more than $100 million over the FY07 CR level of $724 million).
• MCA—The MCA receives $1.8 billion, a slight increase over the FY07 CR, but much lower than the President’s Request of $3 billion.
• Bilateral Tuberculosis and Malaria funding – These programs faired well at $103 million for tuberculosis and $350 million for malaria. This is a slight increase for tuberculosis and a significant boost to malaria to fund the President’s Malaria Initiative (though this bill cuts the President’s request for PMI by $15 million).
• IDA and Debt Restructuring—This bill would flat-fund IDA from the FY07 CR which makes the funding just under the President’s request. $200 million is additionally provided for debt restructuring, which will cover some debt relief for Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo (this is $136 million over the FY07 CR).
• Education received a boost of more than $200 million over the FY07 CR for a total of $750 million.

This bill combined with funding proposed in the Labor-HHS funding bill would bring total HIV/AIDS and related funding to $6.3 billion for 2008. If held flat at that level for 2009-2013, the combined total would be $31.5 billion, exceeding the President's announcement of $30 billion over that same time frame. Senate action on this legislation is expected in July.