Senate Democrats
are cutting President Bush's marquee foreign aid program
to funnel more money to fight AIDS, malaria, and
tuberculosis in Africa and elsewhere.
The Senate
Appropriations Committee is slated Thursday to cut Bush's $3
billion request for the Millennium Challenge Corporation to
$1.4 billion. The program channels foreign aid to
countries implementing economic and political reforms
but has been slow to disburse prior appropriations.
The Senate panel
is boosting Bush's $4.2 billion request for the foreign
aid bill's Global HIV/AIDS account by $900 million,
including adding $550 million to the Administration's
request for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria—enough to almost triple it.
Altogether,
however, the Senate panel would cut Bush's request for
foreign aid and the State Department budget by almost $900
million, transferring money to domestic accounts
favored on Capitol Hill.
But the Senate
foreign aid bill, like its House counterpart, faces a veto
since it would ease restrictions on overseas groups that
perform or promote abortion by allowing them to
receive U.S.-donated contraceptives. A ban on direct
monetary aid would remain in place.
The Senate panel
also faces a battle over whether to loosen restrictions
on local law enforcement agencies' ability to gain access to
gun-purchasing data to trace the movement of illegal guns
around the nation.
Such restrictions
have been in place for almost four years as part of a
separate spending bill funding the Justice Department and
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, drawing
fire from gun control groups, who say they hamper law
enforcement authorities' ability to trace illegal guns
and arrest weapons traffickers.
Gun rights groups
such as the National Rifle Association say the
data-sharing restrictions protect gun owners' privacy
The $54.6 billion
Justice Department funding bill also fully finances
NASA's budget, as well as Bush's ''competitiveness
initiative'' boosting basic research and improving
training and recruitment of math and science teachers.
It contains budget hikes totaling $3.8 billion above Bush's
February budget.
That's more than
7% and is sure to also attract a veto threat.
Meanwhile, the
House continued to wade through a $21.4 billion bill
funding the Treasury Department and White House budgets, as
well as numerous agencies. The low-profile bill is one
of the few measures not facing a veto threat over its
price tag.
But the bill
still faces a veto since Democrats lifted restrictions
barring the use of U.S. funds to implement the District of
Columbia's domestic-partnership law. The District
government uses locally raised money to implement the
law, so the outcome of a floor battle over keeping the
current restriction in place won't have much of an impact.
(AP)