WASHINGTON - When an AIDS funding bill came up for a Senate vote Tuesday, Sen. Mark Dayton, a supporter of the bill, exercised the right of a single senator to block it.
"Not on my account," the Minnesota Democrat said, "but on behalf of some of my other Senate colleagues."
When backers of the Ryan White CARE Act again tried to force an expedited vote Thursday, Dayton objected anew, even though the bill would increase federal AIDS funding for Minnesota by almost $3.8 million.
The House of Representatives passed the bill Thursday night by a vote of 325-98. Passage in the Senate now remains uncertain as lawmakers prepare to break for recess until after the Nov. 7 elections.
Senate Republican leaders said they hoped to get the bill passed before current funding authorizations expire Saturday. Some charged that Dayton, who isn't running for re-election, is carrying water for other Democrat allies, chiefly Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible 2008 presidential contender whose home state of New York stands to lose more than $78 million.
"I find it unconscionable that somebody would have somebody object for them rather than come down to defend their objection," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., one of the top backers of the bill.
Dayton declined to name the senators who asked him to object.
In a written statement Friday, he noted that he supports the AIDS legislation but wanted to buy time for negotiations to head off funding cuts to other states.
"This is typical end-of-session negotiating, which I hope will resolve those senators' objections and permit this important legislation to be voted upon by the Senate," he said.
Chief among the holdouts is Clinton, who has strenuously opposed cuts in AIDS funding for New York, one of the places hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic.
Republicans suggested that electoral politics played a role, noting that important primary states such as Iowa, South Carolina and Ohio all stand to gain from the new measure and thus would be hurt by the delay.
In a Senate speech Friday, Clinton blamed Republicans for underfunding the AIDS programs in the new bill, which comes with a price tag of $2.1 billion.
"We're having a formula fight," she said. "We should be focused on fixing . . . the funding."
The funding debate poses a dilemma for AIDS activists as well as for Congress. Current federal funding formulas, first established in 1990, largely favor coastal states with big cities, where the epidemic spread through large populations of gay white men. New incidences of the disease are becoming more prevalent in the South and rural parts of America, particularly among minorities.
In addition, current funding formulas count only patients with full-blown AIDS. The revised law would also count people with the HIV virus who haven't developed AIDS.
