A key player in crafting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief joined administration officials Friday in calling for a clean five-year reauthorization of the long-standing HIV/AIDS program.
Speaking Friday at an annual legislative conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., ranking member of the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, recalled a letter she and her Congressional Black Caucus colleagues sent in December 2002 to then-President George W. Bush, calling for a broader global investment in HIV/AIDS.
In 2003, Bush called on Congress to create such a program during his State of the Union address. The bipartisan law establishing PEPFAR came to fruition later that year.
