Assessing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
House Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
2025-04-08
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Source: Congress.gov
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Transcript
Good morning. The Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and related programs will come to order. I want to particularly thank the ranking member I know who had a big ordeal to try to get here this morning, and she got here despite some difficulties in transportation. Let me start by welcoming all of you to our hearing today to assess the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. something that we all commonly refer to as PEPFAR. So let me first introduce our distinguished witnesses. Ambassador Mark Dybul is a professor in the Department of Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, where he serves as Chief Strategy Officer of the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact. He is also Chair of the Board of Purpose Africa. Thank you for being here. Ambassador Eibel played a key role, a lead role in the founding of PEPFAR, of the program during the Bush administration and served as the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Miss Catherine Connor is the Vice President of Public Policy and Advocacy at the Elizabeth Visor Pediatric AIDS Foundation and has been with the organization for over 17 years. I am thrilled and honored to have both of you here. You both have a wealth of experience on this topic and we are grateful for your testimony this morning. Again, thank you both for being here. I have long been a supporter of PEPFAR. Since it was launched in 2003, the program has saved over 26 million lives and prevented 7.8 million babies from being born with HIV. Those numbers are frankly remarkable. It's an incredible feat. Over 20 million people are now on life-saving treatment and over 70 million people receive testing services in more than 50 countries.
The PEPFAR program, through the generosity, the extreme generosity of the American people, really saved a generation of individuals. Much of the success, both in terms of impact and the decades of trust and continued support from Congress, is due to the unmatched level of accountability and transparency that President Bush and you, Ambassador, demanded from the very start and obtained from the very start. Excuse me. This is especially important for us, for appropriators. The data-driven approach that PEPFAR uses to justify budget allocations and the detailed reports that this committee receives clearly outline results achieved through the annual funding. Now, unfortunately, under the previous administration, the Biden administration, the PEPFAR program was not immune from misguided campaign to push controversial ideologies using taxpayer dollars. You've all heard me say this before. I warned in every hearing in every market and frankly in every engagement that using funds to promote radical or partisan agendas will cost support for the program and for all programs that I and many other Republicans have historically supported. but even more egregious, under the Biden administration's watch, the PEPFAR program violated the Helms Amendment and used taxpayer funds to pay for abortions. The very first time, for the very first time, as far as we know. Now, this is interesting. My staff was briefed on the violation literally hours before the Biden administration was out of the door. Even though, and this is key, even though The facts had been uncovered months, months prior. I was obviously outraged, to say the least, to learn of this shocking betrayal.
Funds provided by Congress to save lives were instead used to end lives. Now, this was despite my efforts as chairman to push for more training and oversight with respect to enforcement of longstanding provisions in law to protect life. The incoming Trump administration announced a review of all foreign assistance programs on day one. I want to be crystal clear. Given the circumstances and the gross mismanagement of the previous administration, a review is necessary. So I fully support this administration's doing a thorough scrub of PEPFAR programs as well as every other program. Frankly, it was sorely needed to ensure that bipartisan support can actually continue. Now, we understand the challenges that that entails, and we understand that challenges remain in terms of ensuring programs that receive lifesaving waivers get continued support and that owed payments are provided in a timely fashion. So here's a question. Where do we go from here? I trust that the administration is going to continue to work through these challenges in coordination with Congress. And I'm looking forward to continuing a fulsome discussion to understand implementation and the results of this thorough review.
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