Daschle: Bush AIDS spending 'too little too late'

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's plan to increase spending by $500 million to fight the global AIDS epidemic is too little and too late, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Friday.

The president's participation in the battle against AIDS is "welcome and

significant," Daschle said in a speech on the Senate floor. But the money pledged by the president is not enough, he said. "I cannot help but feel that we have just missed a tremendous opportunity."

The Bush plan unveiled at a Rose Garden ceremony this week focused on anti-AIDS medications to prevent the spread of the disease from pregnant women to their babies. It included $200 million that the House and Senate have already set aside as part of an anti-terror spending bill the two chambers are now working on and $300 million for fiscal year 2004, which begins in October 2003.

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The White House previously requested $900 million for the worldwide AIDS fight for fiscal year 2003.

Daschle, D-South Dakota, said that between now and October 2003, when the $300 million would become available, more than 1.1 million babies could contract AIDS. "Does the administration truly believe that this $300 [million] couldn't be spent wisely and well now?"

The Senate earlier this month defeated, by 49-46, an effort to boost the AIDS funds in the anti-terror bill to $500 million after the White House assured Senate Republicans that the president would soon offer a comparable amount of AIDS relief.

The resources the administration is willing to commit "still fall far short of what is needed," Daschle said. "And far short of what I believe this great nation is capable of and should be doing."