Global Health Advocates Protest Funding Cuts at House Majority Leader Event

HIV/AIDS advocates and other opponents of the House FY11 budget proposal "faced off" with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who spoke at Harvard University on Thursday, The Hill reports. Cantor said budget cuts were a "necessary 'tradeoff' in tight fiscal times," the newspaper writes (Berman, 2/24).

"Several hundred protested outside the event against plans for cuts to Teach for America, global health initiatives ... among many other programs. Inside the forum, a group of students briefly interrupted Cantor's question and answer session, unfurling a large banner that read 'Fully Fund Global Health' and chanting 'Budget Cuts Kill!,'" Reuters reports (Krasny, 2/24).

In response to a question about "sav[ing] one million lives" by restoring $1.5 billion in global AIDS funding, Cantor said, "This is about trade offs. This is about that we don't have the money. We just don't," The Hill reports (2/24).

Members of the national Student Global AIDS Campaign from Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, The New School, Wellesley and Yale, "as well as representatives from community groups and people living with AIDS from around the northeast," came together for the protest, the Washington Post's "2chambers" blog reports (Sonmez, 2/24).

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