With two days remaining before the start of FY 2008, President Bush signed into law a continuing resolution (CR) (HJ Res 52) on September 29 to continue funding government agencies at their current levels through November 16. None of the 12 annual appropriations bills were completed, necessitating the CR. The Senate passed its FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor-HHS) spending bill on October 23 with a veto-proof vote of 75-19, and now must conference the bill with the House to negotiate differences in the two versions before sending it to the President. The House passed its version on July 19 by a vote of 276-140, 14 votes short of a veto-proof majority. Currently, the House bill allocates $2 billion more in spending on Labor-HHS programs than the Senate, and President Bush has threatened to veto either version because both exceed his spending requests.
The House bill, overall, provides more than $100 million in additional resources for the Ryan White CARE Act, including an increase in funding of $3.5 million for Part D (Title IV). This would bring total funding for Part D (Title IV) to $75.3 million. Part A (Title I) received a $32 million increase, Part B (Title II) a $44 million increase and Part C (Title III) a $17 million increase; AETCs and Dental programs were flat-funded. In the Senate, the Labor-HHS bill includes a $33 million increase for the Ryan White CARE Act -- $3.2 million of that increase for HIV services for women and children through Part D (Title IV). The Senate bill also includes a $30.4 million increase to Part B (Title II) -- $5 million for the base and $25.4 million to ADAP. All other parts of Ryan White were flat-funded at their FY 2007 levels. Given increases to Part D (Title IV) in both the House and Senate bills, AIDS advocates are advocating that a Part D (Title IV) funding increase prevail in the final bill adopted for FY 2008. This would mark the first funding increase for Part D (Title IV) in five years!
Before the bill is finalized, conferees must negotiate a Ryan White Part A (Title I) provision included in the House report accompanying its bill, but explicitly prohibited from implementation via an amendment to the Senate bill. The provision would provide additional hold harmless protection to Part A (Title I) cities experiencing deep losses due to the new funding formulas of the reauthorized Ryan White program. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of HIV Prevention received a $17 million increase in the House, and funding was blocked for the Early Diagnosis Grant Program that was included in the Ryan White reauthorization last year. This program – which was not entirely blocked in the Senate bill, but would only be implemented if there were eligible grantees – would carve out money from existing prevention resources to set aside for incentives to states that implement opt-out HIV testing and mandatory newborn testing. The Senate level funded CDC's HIV prevention line at $698.1 million, which would result in a cut if the Early Diagnosis provision was implemented. Both bills flat funded CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health.
Conferees also must decide funding for the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) account, which saw a $28 million increase in the House and a $28 million cut in the Senate, and final funding for National Institutes of Health funding, which was increased by $1 billion in the Senate and $750 million in the House.
