Lobby Visits

As a closing activity of this weekend's FAIR conference, I went with some fellow activists to the Washington offices of Senators Specter and Clinton.

Both aids we met showed positive feelings towards increased AIDS funding, with Specter's aide specifically saying that his boss wants to push funding for the Global Fund beyond the $800 million provided for by the Durbin/Santorum amendment to the budget. He brought up Specter's push last year as evidence of his past action, but most significantly said this was going to be the Senator's future commitment as well. Charles is just an LC, but I left confident that Santorum's office will be the place to go for leadership on the Fund.

Clinton's aide walked in with a beaded AIDS ribbon pin much like the one I was wearing, which provided a significant amount of reassurance for me; we don't know where Clinton stands on a lot of foreign policy issues, but it's good to see that her aides are at least conscious of the issues at hand. And that AIDS activists are important enough to have a pin around to placate us. The meeting was depressing on the Global Fund side - Ann expressed skepticism of efforts to increase funding because of the harmful 1/3 limit of US funds as a share of global contributions, and practically laughed off efforts to change funding rules on other moneys. What was great, though, was when we got to CAFTA - she specifically credited AIDS activists with having contacted her on the issue.

Sadly, the Senator still has no position on the trade agreement. She'll likely come out better than Specter's weak "for free and fair trade," but it'd be nice if the democratic leadership would come out and say something. I can understand their reluctance, though, since NAFTA is so popular (cough, cough).