Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), who is chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, warned that PEPFAR might be on the chopping block. As readers will recall, PEPFAR is the initiative, launched by Republican president George W. Bush, that works to combat AIDS in Africa.
By any measure, PEPFAR has been a runaway success—arguably the crowning achievement of the Bush administration. It has saved an estimated 25 million lives, and at a relatively modest cost of $5 billion per year. If we were somehow to serve as president, and we could leave office with that on our résumé, we'd be pretty happy, even if the rest of our presidency had been a disaster.
So, what seems to be the problem? Well, Mozambique is one of the countries that receives PEPFAR funding, to the tune of about $200 million per year. In one of that nation's smallest provinces, several nurses at a clinic receiving PEPFAR funding performed abortions. That is legal under Mozambican law, but is a violation of U.S. law, as the Helms Amendment prohibits U.S.-funded clinics from performing abortions. Once the issue came to light, an investigation was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, and the offending clinic refunded its PEPFAR funding, a total of... $4,100. In other words, approximately 0.002% of the funding for Mozambique, and approximately 0.000082% of the overall PEPFAR funding.
Despite the relative smallness of the error, and the fact that restitution has been made, Risch described the situation as "disgusting," called for heads to roll, and warned that the entire program "is certainly in jeopardy." This is not an idle threat, either, as the program's current authorization runs out in March, and the re-approval process would run through Risch's committee.
As readers might have gathered by now, we cannot take seriously Risch's complaint. One clinic in one country misunderstood the rules, and that justifies killing the whole program? Please. We can only see two plausible explanations for Risch's response. The first is that he's doing a little anti-abortion posturing, in advance of his 2026 reelection bid. We tend to doubt this explanation, however, as he probably won't run (he's 81 right now), and even if he does, he wins every election in a walk. He didn't even have a primary opponent in 2020, and when he did face a GOP challenger in 2014, he won by 60 points. He has no real need for political theater.
That leaves us with the alternate explanation: If the 2017 tax cut is going to be extended, then there are going to be cuts elsewhere. The PEPFAR funding is discretionary, is $5 billion annually, and goes to "sh**hole" countries. The Republican Party of the early 2000s saw merit in the program; the MAGA Party presumably does not. It sure looks to us like Risch is helping lay the groundwork for at least one budget cut that will be used to (sort of) balance out the next tax-cut bill. (Z)