Bono Gets a Visit From AIDS ActivistsSTEVE DiMEGLIO
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - Jim Taylor said he was on the verge of being homeless 10 years ago, had nowhere to turn for medical assistance and treatment for the HIV disease that was ravaging his body and wondered how he was going to live to the end of the year.

The Ryan White CARE Act saved his life.

Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and other lawmakers listened to Taylor's story and similar tales as an army of advocates and people living with HIV/AIDS converged on Capitol Hill this week to lobby members of Congress for increased funding and reauthorization of the CARE Act.

The federal government's main source of funding for AIDS programs expires Sept. 30.

"If it weren't for the Ryan White CARE Act, I wouldn't be here," Taylor told Bono.

Taylor and other southern California advocates including John Brown, executive director of the Desert AIDS project in Palm Springs, met with Bono and other lawmakers Tuesday. Other teams of advocates visited all 100 Senate offices and dozens of House offices and provided numerous packets of information to lawmakers concerning the CARE Act. Members of Congress also listened to scores of stories detailing the importance of the funding provided by the act and the depths of despair associated with living with HIV/AIDS.

Fred Flotho of San Bernardino, co-chairman of the Inland Empire HIV Planning Commission, told Bono that more than 6,000 people in Riverside and San Bernardino counties will need assistance from the CARE Act next year. The act provides the Desert AIDS Project and other assistance programs with 80 percent of their funding.

"It really is critical," he said. "All of these people would have to go to county clinics, and that would be quite a burden for them."

Bono told the gathering in her office that she is on board for the fight.

"Politically you have my support, and I will do all I can do to help," she said. "The best thing you can do is to keep knocking on Capitol Hill doors. If you aren't, someone else is, and they're always asking for money. My door's always open.

"This funding is critical, and I think everyone cares about this."

Named after the late Indiana teen-ager who crusaded against AIDS discrimination after he contracted the disease through hemophilia treatment, the CARE Act has supplied about $ 6.4 billion to help individuals who lack insurance or personal resources to pay for HIV/AIDS treatment and support services. In his budget proposal for 2001, President Clinton requested an 8 percent funding increase of $ 125 million for the CARE Act, bringing the total to $ 1.5 billion annually.

Through June 1999, 702,000 people in the United States have been diagnosed with AIDS, of which 420,000 died. About 40,000 Americans become infected with HIV each year.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee is preparing to present a Ryan White CARE Reauthorization Bill this week. Lawmakers from both parties agree on previously controversial issues and find more common ground than in the past.

"I'm very optimistic we'll be able to move legislation quickly as there's been much more unity this time around," said Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., who chairs the committee.

No reauthorization bill has been introduced in the House. But last week, Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. - a physician and member of the House Commerce Health and Environment Subcommittee, who also played a lead role in negotiating the last reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act in 1996 - said the CARE Act needs to be refocused from treatment toward prevention.

He said he is planning sweeping changes for this year's measure.

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