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FOIA Number: 2006-0462-F FOIA MARKER This is not a textual record. This is used as an administrative marker by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Staff. Collection/Record Group: Clinton Presidential Records Subgroup/Office of Origin: Speechwriting Series/Staff Member: Terry Edmonds Subseries: OA/ID Number: 10980 FolderID: Folder Title: White House Conference on AIDS, Washington, D.C. 12-6-95 [4] Stack: Row: Section: Shelf: Position: S 0 0 0 0 draft 12/1/95 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON HIV AND AIDS THE WHITE HOUSE DECEMBER 6, 1995 [Acknowledgements: Patsy Fleming, Secretary Shalala [other Cabinet members?], Scott Hitt, distinguished guests.] Let me first welcome each of you to this historic White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. You are the frontline faces and voices of our national commitment to conquer the devastating disease known as AIDS. I welcome you and I thank you, not only for your participation here today but for the work you do every day to improve the lives of the people of our nation and around the world. I'd also like to thank Dr. Hitt and the members of the President's Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS for their work on this critical issue and for suggesting that we convene this meeting. And I want to express my appreciation to the two extraordinary Americans who have just shared the stories of their lives with all of us. It is the passion, the commitment, and, yes, the anger of people like Sean Sasser and Eileen Mitzman that remind us all of the extraordinary courage it takes to hold on to hope as we continue to even the odds in this struggle. Each generation of Americans has faced an important challenge that has, in many ways, defined their time here on earth. For my parents' generation, World War Two was that defining moment, unifying a nation against a common foe. For my own generation, the civil rights movement provided the focus and the drive of our lives. But for the generation of my own child and all of those in her age group, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS may well be that defining challenge. My daughter and her friends are growing up in the shadow of something we could never have imagined. They are coming of age in world in which AIDS is a very sobering reality. That reality has already changed the lives of all of us in this room. It has taken from us too many friends and too many loved ones much too soon. It has shaken our faith in the future. But it has also brought us together and inspired a community spirit that strengthens our values as a nation. It is our collective responsibility to rise to this challenge and change the future for our ourselves, for our children, and for their children. We can do this. In fact, we must do this. I want to share with you the story of just one of the people who is here today. Just one of the human faces and human voices of AIDS. It's the story of a young man who grew up in a typical American suburb as part of a typical American family. He attended college and became politically active. His quick mind and active spirit marked him as a "comer," and after graduating he joined the Corporation for National Service to help start AmeriCorps. It was while he was working for AmeriCorps that he found out he was HIV-positive. He was 23 years old. Demetri Moshoyannis took that news as a challenge. A challenge to use his communication skills, his organizational skills, and his leadership skills to educate and support his peers and help them escape the fate that had been visited upon him. It's that combination of heartbreak and hope that makes this epidemic so unique. And it is what challenges all of us to channel our energy and our talent into the fight to make AIDS a thing of the past. Ten days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that our nation has reached another sad milestone in the AIDS epidemic. Half a million Americans have now been diagnosed with AIDS and more than 300,000 men, women, and children have already died of AIDS. As we meet, on this day, 120 more Americans will lose their lives to AIDS, another 220 people will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 140 people in this country will become infected with HIV. And that will happen again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will continue to happen until we succeed in our efforts to defeat this epidemic. That is why this meeting is so important. It is an opportunity for us to refocus and reenergize our national commitment to ending this epidemic. It is a time to rally our troops for the fight ahead and arm them with the weapons they need to win this battle. You and I have some important work to do. We have a common goal -- a cure for all those who are living with HIV and a vaccine to protect all of us from this deadly virus. Let's be very clear on that. A cure and a vaccine are our number one priority. In my own lifetime, we have eliminated smallpox from our planet. We have eliminated polio from our hemisphere. And we are within striking distance of controlling measles. We must -- we must -- find a way to rid our planet of the threat of HIV. 2 I am proud of the work we have done in these last three years to infuse new resources, new focus, and new leadership into our AIDS research effort. We have increased funding for AIDS research by more than 25 percent. We have dramatically strengthened the Office of AIDS Research and we have focused our work on basic science and applied research so that we can concurrently unlock the mysteries of HIV while we pursue treatment opportunities that extend and improve the quality of the lives of people living with HIV. This investment in science has already paid tremendous dividends. Today, people with HIV live twice as long as they did just ten years ago. AIDS-related conditions that often meant a quick and many times painful death for people living with HIV can now be treated and even prevented. And we have reason to believe that there will more progress in the near future. New classes of AIDS drugs are being approved for use by the FDA that will help to restore the damaged immune systems of people with HIV. Combination drug therapies are showing great promise as a means for controlling the virus in the human body. And just last year we were able to show that the use of drug therapy could actually block HIV transmission from mother to child. Our scientists tell me that it is within our grasp to virtually eliminate pediatric AIDS by the end of this decade. This is neither science fiction nor a distant dream. It can be accomplished by offering all pregnant women HIV counseling and testing and guaranteeing that they have access to the treatment they need to protect their unborn children. If we do this, we can have a generation of Americans born without HIV. We can do this -- and we will. These advances have resulted in longer and fuller lives for people living with HIV, but are they enough? Absolutely not! We must do more. I am taking three steps today that I believe will move us forward at a faster pace. First, I am asking the Vice President to convene a meeting of scientists and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry to identify ways to accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and microbicides that can protect people from HIV and the infections it causes. There are no guarantees in science, but the collective will of government and industry can overcome even the biggest obstacles. Second, I am asking Patsy Fleming to convene an interdepartmental task force working group to develop a coordinated plan for AIDS 3 research, including a coordinated research budget. I will expect their report within 90 days. Third, I want to make clear my personal commitment to make every feasible effort to find a cure and an effective vaccine or vaccines. To that end, I am intensifying my relationship with the Office of National AIDS Policy. We can't afford to miss any new opportunities. We can't afford any unnecessary delays. That's why I am asking Patsy Fleming to provide me even more regular updates on the emerging opportunities and obstacles in this struggle. No President can promise success in such an effort but I need to know what needs to be done to move this along. of course our work does not end in the laboratories of our great research institutions. It continues in the clinics and the hospitals and the doctors' offices around the country where people with HIV and AIDS go for the care they need to survive, to maintain their health, and to preserve their dignity. When we make advances in science we must match those strides with improvements in our delivery of health care. For people with AIDS, the current discussions over a balanced federal budget are not some distant political firefight. Let me talk for a few minutes about a subject that is very important to me -- the future of Medicaid. For people with AIDS, Medicaid is a lifeline of support. Medicaid provides health care for nearly half of the 200,000 Americans who are living with AIDS including 90 percent of the children. It provides access to doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and home care that allows people with HIV and AIDS to live their lives more fully. Medicaid pays for the drugs that keep HIV under control for longer and longer periods of time and it pays for the drugs that prevent the infections that often end the lives of those with AIDS. Medicaid pays for the care that allows families to stay together. Yet today, Medicaid is under attack by the Republican leaders in Congress who want to slash its spending and eliminate the thirty- year common ground commitment we have made to the poor, the elderly, and those with disabilities. We cannot, we must not, and I will not allow us to destroy this vital lifeline. Medicaid cannot do the job alone. That's why we created the Ryan White CARE Act to plug the holes in our health care system that left many people with HIV and AIDS out in the cold. Last year, more than 360,000 Americans received care under the Ryan White Act. When I ran for President, I promised to fully fund the CARE Act and we have. Funding has increased by 108 percent, more than 4 doubling the number of cities receiving funds and enabling every state in the country to receive some level of assistance. The CARE Act must be extended for another five years. Both houses of Congress have approved legislation to accomplish this but final legislation remains stalled. That's why on last Friday, World AIDS Day, I sent a letter to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, asking them to make every effort to get me a final bill by the end of this month so that I can sign it and we can get on with the work ahead. I am also fighting for the funding increases that I have requested for the CARE Act as well as housing programs for people with AIDS and our AIDS prevention programs at CDC. I am concerned by the continued rate of new infections in this country. In the 1980s, we made important progress in reducing the number of new infections by nearly 50 percent. But for the last five years, the estimated number of infections has hovered between 40,000 and 60,000 per year. We also know that as many as half of those infections occur among people under the age of 25 and half are among teenagers. Any new infection is an unnecessary infection. I am setting a goal, today, of reducing the number of new infections in the United States by half in the next five years and to zero within the next decade. Until we have a cure and a vaccine, education and prevention are our best hope. For prevention to work it must be targeted and it must be sustained. We saw that at work in the gay community in the 1980s, when activists overcame the inertia of their government to protect their lives. We must pay particular attention to two populations who are at the center of this epidemic -- young people and those who abuse drugs. I was pleased to see the new public service announcements released last week by Secretary Shalala. They point young people toward the tools they need to protect themselves. We also need to recognize that substance abuse treatment is a form of HIV prevention. We must ensure that those who are receiving drug treatment also receive AIDS prevention services at the same time. We have increased the number of drug treatment slots available in this country and I am working to convince the Congress to approve our requests for money to bring that number even higher. I have also asked the CDC to convene a meeting of state and local health officials and their counterparts on substance abuse to develop an action plan to assure the integration of HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention. 5 We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding -- as the Republicans in Congress have proposed -- because the epidemic cannot be frozen. It will just grow and grow and grow. We also cannot forget the basic human rights of people living with HIV and AIDS. The stories of AIDS related discrimination break the hearts of all Americans of conscience. Five years ago, our nation took a huge step forward toward a more just society when we enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act. It offers more than 40 million Americans who are living with physical or mental disabilities -- including those who are living with HIV and AIDS -- protection against discrimination. The Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services have been vigorously enforcing the A.D.A. And we are about to launch a new effort to ensure that health care facilities -- nursing homes in particular -- are providing equal access to people with HIV or AIDS. Still, all of us can do more. We can start by cleaning our own house. I am asking Patsy Fleming to conduct an immediate 60-day review of all government programs that require HIV testing as a condition of participation in government service and government programs. Those that do not have a strong public health rational, must be amended or they must be ended. We must continue to examine our societal attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, and others for whom fear of AIDS becomes a convenient excuse for discrimination. We cannot let our fear outweigh our common sense or our compassion. If we do, all of us will lose. As I have said before, the thing we have to remember is that people with AIDS and those who are living with HIV are part of our American family. Whether they are gay or straight, black, white, Native American, Latino or Asian American, they are our sons and daughters; our brothers and sisters; our aunts and uncles; our mothers and fathers; our grandmothers and grandfathers. They are Americans one and all. They need our compassion. They deserve our respect. Finally, let me say that the fight against AIDS is international in scope. HIV knows no geographic boundaries. It is found on every continent and virtually every country. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 18 million men, women, and children are living with HIV around the world. The United States is and will remain a full partner in the international effort to fight the pandemic. 6 As a world leader, we have a moral and a national responsibility to help developing nations with prevention programs, medical care, and other vital services. We also have much to learn from them. And when we do find the cure and the vaccine that we seek, it will not only be a victory for America, it will be a victory for the world. When this country was in the throes of another sickness that threatened to tear us apart -- the sickness of slavery -- Frederick Douglas, the great American abolitionist, wrote: "It is not light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled." Each of you have been the thunder and the lightening. Each of you is helping to awaken the conscience of our nation. Our challenge is to draw more of our citizens into our circle of hope. Together, I am certain, we can change our future for the better. Thank you and God bless you all. 7 draft 12/1/95 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON HIV AND AIDS THE WHITE HOUSE DECEMBER 6, 1995 [Acknowledgements: Patsy Fleming, Secretary Shalala [other Cabinet members?], Scott Hitt, distinguished guests.] Let me first welcome each of you to this historic White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. You are the frontline faces and voices of our national commitment to conquer the devastating disease known as AIDS. I welcome you and I thank you, not only for your participation here today but for the work you do every day to improve the lives of the people of our nation and around the world. I'd also like to thank Dr. Hitt and the members of the President's Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS for their work on this critical issue and for suggesting that we convene this meeting. And I want to express my appreciation to the two extraordinary Americans who have just shared the stories of their lives with all of us. It is the passion, the commitment, and, yes, the anger of people like Sean Sasser and Eileen Mitzman that remind us all of the extraordinary courage it takes to hold on to hope as we continue to even the odds in this struggle. Each generation of Americans has faced an important challenge that has, in many ways, defined their time here on earth. For my parents' generation, World War Two was that defining moment, unifying a nation against a common foe. For my own generation, the civil rights movement provided the focus and the drive of our lives. But for the generation of my own child and all of those in her age group, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS may well be that defining challenge. My daughter and her friends are growing up in the shadow of something we could never have imagined. They are coming of age in world in which AIDS is a very sobering reality. That reality has already changed the lives of all of us in this room. It has taken from us too many friends and too many loved ones much too soon. It has shaken our faith in the future. But it has also brought us together and inspired a community spirit that strengthens our values as a nation. It is our collective responsibility to rise to this challenge and change the future for our ourselves, for our children, and for their children. We can do this. In fact, we must do this. i want to share with you the story of just one of the people who is here today. Just one of the human faces and human voices of AIDS. It's the story of a young man who grew up in a typical American suburb as part of a typical American family. He attended college and became politically active. His quick mind and active spirit marked him as a "comer," and after graduating he joined the Corporation for National Service to help start AmeriCorps. It was while he was working for AmeriCorps that he found out he was HIV-positive. He was 23 years old. Demetri Moshoyannis took that news as a challenge. A challenge to use his communication skills, his organizational skills, and his leadership skills to educate and support his peers and help them escape the fate that had been visited upon him. It's that combination of heartbreak and hope that makes this epidemic so unique. And it is what challenges all of us to channel our energy and our talent into the fight to make AIDS a thing of the past. Ten days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that our nation has reached another sad milestone in the AIDS epidemic. Half a million Americans have now been diagnosed with AIDS and more than 300,000 men, women, and children have already died of AIDS. As we meet, on this day, 120 more Americans will lose their lives to AIDS, another 220 people will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 140 people in this country will become infected with HIV. And that will happen again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will continue to happen until we succeed in our efforts to defeat this epidemic. That is why this meeting is so important. It is an opportunity for us to refocus and reenergize our national commitment to ending this epidemic. It is a time to rally our troops for the fight ahead and arm them with the weapons they need to win this battle. You and I have some important work to do. We have a common goal -- a cure for all those who are living with HIV and a vaccine to protect all of us from this deadly virus. Let's be very clear on that. A cure and a vaccine are our number one priority. In my own lifetime, we have eliminated smallpox from our planet. We have eliminated polio from our hemisphere. And we are within striking distance of controlling measles. We must -- we must -- find a way to rid our planet of the threat of HIV. 2 I am proud of the work we have done in these last three years to infuse new resources, new focus, and new leadership into our AIDS research effort. We have increased funding for AIDS research by more than 25 percent. We have dramatically strengthened the Office of AIDS Research and we have focused our work on basic science and applied research so that we can concurrently unlock the mysteries of HIV while we pursue treatment opportunities that extend and improve the quality of the lives of people living with HIV. This investment in science has already paid tremendous dividends. Today, people with HIV live twice as long as they did just ten years ago. AIDS-related conditions that often meant a quick and many times painful death for people living with HIV can now be treated and even prevented. And we have reason to believe that there will more progress in the near future. New classes of AIDS drugs are being approved for use by the FDA that will help to restore the damaged immune systems of people with HIV. Combination drug therapies are showing great promise as a means for controlling the virus in the human body. And just last year we were able to show that the use of drug therapy could actually block HIV transmission from mother to child. Our scientists tell me that it is within our grasp to virtually eliminate pediatric AIDS by the end of this decade. This is neither science fiction nor a distant dream. It can be accomplished by offering all pregnant women HIV counseling and testing and guaranteeing that they have access to the treatment they need to protect their unborn children. If we do this, we can have a generation of Americans born without HIV. We can do this -- and we will. These advances have resulted in longer and fuller lives for people living with HIV, but are they enough? Absolutely not! We must do more. I am taking three steps today that I believe will move us forward at a faster pace. First, I am asking the Vice President to convene a meeting of scientists and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry to identify ways to accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and microbicides that can protect people from HIV and the infections it causes. There are no guarantees in science, but the collective will of government and industry can overcome even the biggest obstacles. Second, I am asking Patsy Fleming to convene an interdepartmental task force working group to develop a coordinated plan for AIDS 3 research, including a coordinated research budget. I will expect their report within 90 days. Third, I want to make clear my personal commitment to make every feasible effort to find a cure and an effective vaccine or vaccines. To that end, I am intensifying my relationship with the Office of National AIDS Policy. We can't afford to miss any new opportunities. We can't afford any unnecessary delays. That's why I am asking Patsy Fleming to provide me even more regular updates on the emerging opportunities and obstacles in this struggle. No President can promise success in such an effort but I need to know what needs to be done to move this along. Of course our work does not end in the laboratories of our great research institutions. It continues in the clinics and the hospitals and the doctors' offices around the country where people with HIV and AIDS go for the care they need to survive, to maintain their health, and to preserve their dignity. When we make advances in science we must match those strides with improvements in our delivery of health care. For people with AIDS, the current discussions over a balanced federal budget are not some distant political firefight. Let me talk for a few minutes about a subject that is very important to me -- the future of Medicaid. For people with AIDS, Medicaid is a lifeline of support. Medicaid provides health care for nearly half of the 200,000 Americans who are living with AIDS including 90 percent of the children. It provides access to doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and home care that allows people with HIV and AIDS to live their lives more fully. Medicaid pays for the drugs that keep HIV under control for longer and longer periods of time and it pays for the drugs that prevent the infections that often end the lives of those with AIDS. Medicaid pays for the care that allows families to stay together. Yet today, Medicaid is under attack by the Republican leaders in Congress who want to slash its spending and eliminate the thirty- year common ground commitment we have made to the poor, the elderly, and those with disabilities. We cannot, we must not, and I will not allow us to destroy this vital lifeline. Medicaid cannot do the job alone. That's why we created the Ryan White CARE Act to plug the holes in our health care system that left many people with HIV and AIDS out in the cold. Last year, more than 360,000 Americans received care under the Ryan White Act. When I ran for President, I promised to fully fund the CARE Act and we have. Funding has increased by 108 percent, more than 4 doubling the number of cities receiving funds and enabling every state in the country to receive some level of assistance. The CARE Act must be extended for another five years. Both houses of Congress have approved legislation to accomplish this but final legislation remains stalled. That's why on last Friday, World AIDS Day, I sent a letter to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, asking them to make every effort to get me a final bill by the end of this month so that I can sign it and we can get on with the work ahead. I am also fighting for the funding increases that I have requested for the CARE Act as well as housing programs for people with AIDS and our AIDS prevention programs at CDC. I am concerned by the continued rate of new infections in this country. In the 1980s, we made important progress in reducing the number of new infections by nearly 50 percent. But for the last five years, the estimated number of infections has hovered between 40,000 and 60,000 per year. We also know that as many as half of those infections occur among people under the age of 25 and half are among teenagers. Any new infection is an unnecessary infection. I am setting a goal, today, of reducing the number of new infections in the United States by half in the next five years and to zero within the next decade. Until we have a cure and a vaccine, education and prevention are our best hope. For prevention to work it must be targeted and it must be sustained. We saw that at work in the gay community in the 1980s, when activists overcame the inertia of their government to protect their lives. We must pay particular attention to two populations who are at the center of this epidemic -- young people and those who abuse drugs. I was pleased to see the new public service announcements released last week by Secretary Shalala. They point young people toward the tools they need to protect themselves. We also need to recognize that substance abuse treatment is a form of HIV prevention. We must ensure that those who are receiving drug treatment also receive AIDS prevention services at the same time. We have increased the number of drug treatment slots available in this country and I am working to convince the Congress to approve our requests for money to bring that number even higher. I have also asked the CDC to convene a meeting of state and local health officials and their counterparts on substance abuse to develop an action plan to assure the integration of HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention. 5 We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding -- as the Republicans in Congress have proposed -- because the epidemic cannot be frozen. It will just grow and grow and grow. We also cannot forget the basic human rights of people living with HIV and AIDS. The stories of AIDS related discrimination break the hearts of all Americans of conscience. Five years ago, our nation took a huge step forward toward a more just society when we enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act. It offers more than 40 million Americans who are living with physical or mental disabilities -- including those who are living with HIV and AIDS -- protection against discrimination. The Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services have been vigorously enforcing the A.D.A. And we are about to launch a new effort to ensure that health care facilities -- nursing homes in particular -- are providing equal access to people with HIV or AIDS. Still, all of us can do more. We can start by cleaning our own house. I am asking Patsy Fleming to conduct an immediate 60-day review of all government programs that require HIV testing as a condition of participation in government service and government programs. Those that do not have a strong public health rational, must be amended or they must be ended. We must continue to examine our societal attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, and others for whom fear of AIDS becomes a convenient excuse for discrimination. We cannot let our fear outweigh our common sense or our compassion. If we do, all of us will lose. As I have said before, the thing we have to remember is that people with AIDS and those who are living with HIV are part of our American family. Whether they are gay or straight, black, white, Native American, Latino or Asian American, they are our sons and daughters; our brothers and sisters; our aunts and uncles; our mothers and fathers; our grandmothers and grandfathers. They are Americans one and all. They need our compassion. They deserve our respect. Finally, let me say that the fight against AIDS is international in scope. HIV knows no geographic boundaries. It is found on every continent and virtually every country. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 18 million men, women, and children are living with HIV around the world. The United States is and will remain a full partner in the international effort to fight the pandemic. 6 As a world leader, we have a moral and a national responsibility to help developing nations with prevention programs, medical care, and other vital services. We also have much to learn from them. And when we do find the cure and the vaccine that we seek, it will not only be a victory for America, it will be a victory for the world. When this country was in the throes of another sickness that threatened to tear us apart -- the sickness of slavery -- Frederick Douglas, the great American abolitionist, wrote: "It is not light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled." Each of you have been the thunder and the lightening. Each of you is helping to awaken the conscience of our nation. Our challenge is to draw more of our citizens into our circle of hope. Together, I am certain, we can change our future for the better. Thank you and God bless you all. 7 To Tam Edmords- Comments from OMB. Thanks December for 1, 8 1995 nb she chance to Health Division inveriew You Office of Management and Budget dhatt Executive Office of the President Washington, DC 20503 Namcy A Please route to: Richard Turman Rx Decision needed - Please sign - Barry Clendenin Per your request Please comment Nancy-Ann Min - For your information - With informational copies for: Subject: Suggestions on the Draft Presidential Speech HD Chron, HPS Chron HPS,mm,mm on AIDS From: Greg White GW and Gordon Agress ga Phone: 202/395-4926 Fax: 202/395-3910 Room: #7026 We have reviewed the attached draft of the President's speech for the White House Conference on AIDS, comparing the figures in it with those available to us in journal articles and CDC surveillance materials. We have made several edits in the speech to improve its accuracy. We consulted with HFB staff on the Medicaid references in the speech. On page 5, the speech commits the President to the goal of reducing new HIV infections to zero within a decade. While this goal addresses the right problem, meeting it is probably impossible, and advancing it would require substantial improvements in HIV data and prevention programs. We suggest a more feasible goal would be to reduce new HIV infections in each successive year until the number of new infections is zero. This would focus government programs on the right problem, motivate them, and could feasibly be met. On page 6, the speech says "We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding..." we note the RMO recommendation for FY 1997 currently straightlines prevention funding from the Likely FY 1996 Level. Attachment ID: DEC 01'95 17:24 No.001 P.01 12/1/95 12:30 pm Here 18 a draft of the President's remarks to the White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. Please rcview and send comments to Terry Edmonds by 2:00 Monday. CC: Marsha SCOET Michael Waldman Nancy Min Jeremy Bcn-Ami DC/ RT - This look, OK to me. would you pls read through it 1 let #5 me know it any Sum off to yes? ? The NC ID: DEC 01'95 17:24 No. 001 P.02 draft 12/1/95 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON HIV AND AIDS THE WHITE HOUSE DECEMBER 6, 1995 (Acknowledgements: Palsy Fleming, Secretary Shalala [other Cabinet members?], Scott Hitt, distinguished guests.) Let me first welcome each of you to this historic While House Conference on HIV and AIDS. You are the frontline faces and voices of our national commitment to conquer the devastating disease known as AIDS. I welcome you and I thank you, not only for your participation here today but for the work you do every day to improve the lives of the people of our nation and around the world. I'd also like to thank Dr. llitt and the membors of the President's Advisory council on HIV and ATDS for their work on this critical issue and for suggesting that we convene this meeting. And 1 want to express my appreciation to the two extraordinary Americans who have just shared the stories of their lives with all of US. Tt is the passion, the commitment, and, yes, the anger of people like Sean Sasser and Eileen Mitzman that remind us all of the extraordinary courage it takes to hold on to hope as we continue to even the odds in this struggle. Each generation of Americans has faced an important challenge that has, in many ways, defined their time here on earth. For my parents' generation, World War Two was that defining moment, unifying a nation against a common foe. For my own generation, B the civil rights movement provided the focus and the drive of our lives. But for the generation of my own child and all of those in her age group, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS may well be that defining challenge. My daughter and her friends are growing up in the shadow of something we could never have imagined. They are coming of age in a world in which AIDS is M very sobering reality. That reality has already changed the lives of all of us in thic room. It has taken from uc too many friends and too many loved ones much Loo soon. It has shaken our faith in the future. But it has also brought us together and inspired a community spirit that strengthens our values as a nation. It is our collective responsibility to rise to this challenge and ohange the future for our ourselves, for our children, and for their children. We can do this. In fact, we must do this. ID: DEC 01'95 17:25 No 001 P.03 I want to share with you the story of just one of the people who is here today. Just one of the human faces and human voices of AIDS. It's the story of a young man who grew up in a typical American suburb as part of a typical American family. He attended college and became politically active. His quick mind and active spirit marked him as a "comer," and after graduating he joined the corporation for National Service to help start Americorps. It was while he wac working for AmeriCorps that he found out he WAR HIV-positive. He was 23 years old. Demetri Moshoyannis took that nows ac a challenge. A challenge to use his communication skills, his organizational skills, and his leadership skills to educate and support his peers and help them escape the fate that had been visited upon him. It's that combination of heartbreak and hope that makec thic cpidemic so unique. And it is what challenges all of us Lo channel our energy and our talent into the fight to make AIDS a thing of the past. Ten days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that our nation has reached another sad milestone in the AIDS epidemic. Half a million Americans have now been diagnosed with AIDS and more than 300, men, women, and children have already died of AIDS. 160 As we meet, on this day, 120 more Americans will lose their lives to AIDS, another 220 people will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 140 people in this country will become infected with HIV. And that will happen again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will continue to happon until we succeed in our efforts to defeat this epidemic. That is why this meeting is so important. It is an opportunity for us to refocus and reenorgize our national commitment to ending this epidemic. It is a time to rally our troops for the fight ahead and arm them with the weapons they need to win this battle. You and I have some important work to do. We have a common goal -- a cure for all those who are living with HIV and a vaccine to protect all of us from thic dcadly virus. Let's be very clear on that. A cure and a vaccine are our number one priority. In my own lifetime, we have eliminated cmallpox from our planet. We have climinated polio from our hemisphere. And we are within striking distance of controlling meacles. We must -- we must -- find a way to rid our planet of the threat of HIV. 2 ID: DEC 01'95 17:25 No 001 P..04 1 am proud of the work we have done in these last three years to infusc now resources, new focus, and new leadership into our AIDS research effort. We have increased funding for AIDS research by 20% more than 25 percent. We have dramatically strengthened the Office of AIDS Research and we have focused our work on basic science and applied research so that we can concurrently unlock the mysteries of HIV while we pursue treatment opportunities that extend and improve the quality of the lives of people living with IIIV. This investment in science has already paid tremendous dividends. Today, people with HIV live twice as long as they did just ten years ago. AIDS-related conditions that often meant a quick and many times painful death for people living with HIV can now be treated and even prevented. And we have reason to believe that there will more progress in the near future. New classes of AIDS drugs are being approved for URA by the FDA that will help to restorc the damaged immune systeme of people with HIV. Combination drug therapies are showing great promise as a means for controlling the virus in the human body. And just last year we were able to show that the use of drug therapy could actually block H1V transmission from mother to child. Our scientists tell me that it is within our grasp to virtually climinate pediatric AIDS by the end of this decade. This is neither science fiction nor a distant dream. It can be accomplished by offering all pregnant women HIV counseling and testing and guaranteeing that they have access to the treatment they need to protect their unborn children. If we do this, we can have a generation of Amoricans born without HIV. We can do this -- and we will. These advances have resulted in longer and fuller lives for people living with HIV, but are they enough? Absolutely not! We must do more. I am taking three steps today that I believe will move us forward at a faster pace. First, I am asking the vice President to convene a meeting of scientists and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry to identify ways to accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and microbicides that can protect people from HIV and the infections it causes. There are no guarantees in science, but the collcotive will of government and industry can overcome even the biggest obstacles. Second, I am asking Patcy Fleming to convene an interdepartmental task force working group to develop a coordinated plan for AIDS 3 ID: DEC 01'95 17:26 No. 001 P.05 research, including a coordinated research budget. I will expect their report within 90 days. Third, I want to make clear my personal commitment to make every feasible effort to find a cure and an effective vaccine or vaccines. To that and, I am intensifying my relationship with the office of National AIDS Policy. We can't afford to micc any now opportunities. We can't afford any unnecessary delays. That's why I am asking Patsy Fleming to provide me even more regular updates on the emerging opportunities and obstacles in this struggle. No Precident can promise success in such an effort but I need to know what needs to be done to move this along. Of course our work does not end in the laboratories of our great research institutions. It continues in the clinics and the hospitalc and the doctors' offices around the country where people with HIV and AIDS go for the care they need to survive, to maintain their health, and to preserve their dignity. When we make advances in science we must match those strides with improvements in our delivery of health care. For people with AIDS, the current discussions over a balanced federal budget are not some distant political firefight. Let me talk for a few minutes about a subject that ic very important to mc the future of Medicaid. For people with AIDS, Medicaid is a lifeline of support. Medicaid provides health care for nearly half of the 200,000 Americans who are living with AIDS including 90 percent of the 190,000 children. It provides access to doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and home care that allows people with HIV and AIDS to live their lives more fully. Medicaid pays for the drugs that keep HTV under control for longer and longer periods of time and it pays for the drugs that prevent. the infections that often end the lives of those with AIDS. Medicaid pays for the care that allows families to stay together. Yet today, Medicald is under attack by the Republican lcaders in Congress who want to clach its spending and eliminate the thirty- year common ground commitment we have made to the poor, the elderly, and those with disabilities. We cannot, we must not, and I will not allow us to destroy thio vital lifeline. Medicaid cannot do the job alone. That's why we created the kyan White CARE Act to plug the holes in our health care system that left many people with HIV and AIDS out in the cold. Last year, more than 360,000 Americans eceived care under the Ryan White A Act. Pu the 3 budgeto Thane have Not clear 1 When I ran for President, + promised to fully fund the CARE Act and WE have. Funding has increased by 108 percent, more than how fully fund" forthecare het Nearly is d efined; can cause contention, some argue that because some of the Ni-ens of the Act have never been Funded by Congren (nov have Ends been requisted), D we on not Fully Finded Ru an which ID: DEC 01'95 17:26 No 001 P.06 doubling the number of cities receiving funds and enabling every state in the country to receive some level of assistance. The CARE not muet be extended for another five years. Both houses of Congress have approved legislation to accomplich this but final legislation remains stalled. That's why on last Friday, World AIDS Day, I sent a letter to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, asking them to make every effort to get me a final bill by the end of this month so that I can sign it and we can get on with the work ahead. 96 I am also fighting for the (unding increases that I have requested for the CARE Act as well as housing programs for people with AIDS and our AIDS prevention programs at CDC. I am concerned by the continued rate of new infections in this country. In the 1980s, we made Important progress in reducing the number of now infections by nearly 50 percent. But for the last five years, the estimated number of infections has hovered hall of those infections occur among people under the age of 26 22 between 40,000 and 60,000 per year. We also know that as many as ONe quarter and half are among teenagers. Any new infection is an unnecessary infection. I am setting a goal, today, of reducing EVERY YEAR the number of new infections in the United States by half in the IN next five years and to zero within the next decade. UNTIL THERE ARE No NEW INFECTIONS Until we have a cure and a vaccine, education and prevention are our best hope. For prevention to work it must be targeted and it must be sustained. We saw that at work in the gay community in the 19805, when activists overcame the inertia of their government to protect their lives. We must pay particular attention to two populations who are at the center of this epidemic -- young people and those who abuse drugs. I was pleased to see the new public service announcemento released last week by Scoretary Shalala. They point young people toward the tools they need to protect themselves. We also need to recognize that substance abuse treatment is a form of HIV prevention. We must ensure that those who are OF receiving drug treatment also receive AIDS prevention services at SAMOUNT the same time. We have increased the number of drug treatment slots available] in this country and I am working to convince the FEDERAL congress to approve (IIIT requests for money to bring that number RESOURCES even higher. DEDICATED Ts I have alco acked the CDC to convene a meeting of state and local DRUG TREATMENT health officials and their counterparts on substance abuse to develop an action plan to assure the integration of HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention. 5 ID: DEC 01'95 17:27 No 001 P.07 wouldnot say this. On 1st broject FY94 -di We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding -- as the Republicans in Congress have proposed -- because the epidemic not person cannot be frozen. It will just grow and grow and grow fundiy we wer criticized We also cannot forget the basic human rights of people living with HIV and ATDS. The stories of AIDS related discrimination break the hearts of all Americans of conscience. This Five years ago, our nation took a huge step forward toward a more just society when we enacted the Americans with Dicabilities Act. CONSESTENT WISH THE It offers more than 40 million Americans who are living with physical 02 mental disabilities -- including those who are living with HIV and AIDS -- protection against discrimination. The Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunities REDUCING INFENTICK 60HL prem NEW Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services have been vigorously enforcing the A.D.A. And we are about to launch a now effort to ensure that health care facilities -- nursing homes in particular -- are providing equal access to people with HIV or AIDS. still, all of us can do more. We can start by cleaning our own Illooks house. I am acking Patsy Fleming to conduct an immediate 60-day review of all government programs that require HIV testing ac a though our condition of participation in government service and government programs. Those that do not have a strong public health rational, must be amended or they must be ended. We must continue to examine our societal attitudes toward racial LOL FX97- man next baulget and ethnic minoritics, gays and lesbians, and others for whom fear of AIDS becomes a convenient excuse for discrimination. We either cannot let our fcar outweigh our common sense or our compassion. If we do, all of us will lose. AH T have said before, the thing WO have to remember is that people with ALUS and those who are living with HIV are part of our American family. Whether they are gay or straight, black, white, Native American, Latino or Asian American, they are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters; our aunts and uncles; our mothers and fathers; our grandmothers and grandfathers. They are Americans one and all. They need our compassion. They deserve our respect. Finally, let me say that the fight against AIDS is international in scope. HIV knows no geographic boundaries. It is found on every continent and virtually every country. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 18 million men, women, and children are living with HIV around the world. The United States is and will remain a full partner in the international effort to fight the pandemic. 6 ID: DEC 01'95 17:27 No 001 P.08 As a world leader, we have a moral and a national responsibility to help developing nations with prevention programs, medical care, and other vital services. WH Also have much to learn from them. And when WC do find the cure and the vaccine that we seek, it will not only be is victory for America, it will be a victory for the world. When this country was in the throes of another sickness that threatened to tear us apart -- the sickness of slavery -- Frederick Douglas, the great American abolitionist, wrote: "It 16 not light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled." Each of you have been the thunder and the lightening. Each of you is helping to awaken the conscience of our nation. Our challenge is to draw more of our citizens into our circle of hope. Together, I am certain, WC can change our future for the better. Thank you and God blocc you all. 7 To Tam Edmonds- Comments from OMB. Thanks December for 1, 81995 mg 1995 Vb she chance to Health Division intreview You Office of Management and Budget dhatt Executive Office of the President Washington, DC 20503 Namey A Please route to: Richard Turman Rose Decision needed - Please sign Barry Clendenin Per your request - Please comment Nancy-Ann Min - For your information - With informational copies for: Subject: Suggestions on the Draft Presidential Speech HD Chron, HPS Chron HPS,mm,mm on AIDS From: Greg White GW and Gordon Agress JA Phone: 202/395-4926 Fax: 202/395-3910 Room: #7026 We have reviewed the attached draft of the President's speech for the White House Conference on AIDS, comparing the figures in it with those available to us in journal articles and CDC surveillance materials. We have made several edits in the speech to improve its accuracy. We consulted with HFB staff on the Medicaid references in the speech. On page 5, the speech commits the President to the goal of reducing new HIV infections to zero within a decade. While this goal addresses the right problem, meeting it is probably impossible, and advancing it would require substantial improvements in HIV data and prevention programs. We suggest a more feasible goal would be to reduce new HIV infections in each successive year until the number of new infections is zero. This would focus government programs on the right problem, motivate them, and could feasibly be met. On page 6, the speech says "We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding..." we note the RMO recommendation for FY 1997 currently straightlines prevention funding from the Likely FY 1996 Level. Attachment ID: DEC 01'95 17:24 No.001 P.01 12/1/95 12:30 pm Here is a draft of the President's remarks to the White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. Please rcview and send comments to Terry Edmonds by 2:00 Monday. CC: Marsha SCOOT Michael Waldman Nancy Min Jeremy Bcn-Ami DC/ RT - This look, OK to me. would you pls read through it 1- let #5 me know if any Sum off to yes? The NC ID: DEC 01'95 17:24 No 001 P.02 draft 12/1/95 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON HIV AND AIDS THE WHITE HOUSE DECEMBER 6, 1995 (Acknowledgements: Palsy Fleming, Secretary Shalala [other Cabinet members?], Scott Hitt, distinguished guests.] Let me first welcome each of you to this historic While House Conference on HIV and AIDS. You are the frontline faces and voices of our national commitment to conquer the devastating disease known as AIDS. I walcome you and I thank you, not only for your participation here today but for the work you do every day to improve the lives of the people of our nation and around the world. I'd also like to thank Dr. llitt and the memboro of the President's Advisory council on HIV and ATDS for their work on this critical issue and for suggesting that we convene this meeting. And 1 want to express my appreciation to the two extraordinary Americans who have juct shared the stories of their lives with -Natjust all of UR. Tt is the passion, the commitment, and, yes, the anger of people like Sean Sasser and Eileen Mitzman that remind us all of the extraordinary courage it takes to hold on to hope as WC continue to even the odds in this struggle. Each generation of Americans has faced an important challenge that has, in many ways, defined their time here on earth. For my parents' generation, World War Two was that defining moment, unifying a nation against a common foe. For my own generation, the civil sights movement provided the focus and the drive of our lives. But for the generation of my own child and all of those in her age group, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS may well be that defining challenge. My daughter and her friends are growing up in the shadow of something we could never have imagined. They are coming of age in world in which AIDS jr n very sobering reality. That reality has already changed the lives of all of us in thic room. It has taken from us too many friends and too many loved ones much too soon. It has shaken our faith in the future. But it has also brought us together and inspired a community spirit that strengthens our values as a nation. It is our collective responsibility to rise to this challenge and change the future for our ourselves, for our children, and for their children. We can do this. In fact, we must do this. ID: DEC 01'95 17:25 No 001 P.03 I want to share with you the story of just one of the people who is here today. Just one of the human faces and human voioco of AIDS. It's the story of a young man who grew up in a typical American suburb as part of a typical American family. He attended college and became politically active. His quick mind and active spirit marked him as a "comer," and after graduating he joined the corporation for National Service to help start Americorps. It was while he wac working for AmeriCorps that he found out he WAR HIV-positive. He was 23 years old. Demetri Moshoyannis took that nows ac a challenge. A challenge to use his communication skills, his organizational skills, and his leadership skillc to educate and support his peers and help them escape the fate that had been visited upon him. It's that combination of heartbreak and hope that makec thic cpidemic SO unique. And it is what challenges all of us Lu channel our energy and our talent into the fight to make AIDS a thing of the past. Ten days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that our nation hac reached another sad milestone in the AIDS epidemic. Half a million Americans have now been diagnosed with AIDS and more than 300, men, women, and children have already died of AIDS. 160 As we meet, on this day, 120 more Americans will lose their lives to AIDS, another 220 people will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 140 people in thic country will become infected with HIV. And that will happen again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will continue to happen until we succeed in our efforts to defeat this epidemic. That is why this meeting is so important. It is an opportunity for us to refocus and reenorgize our national commitment to ending this epidemic. It is a time to rally our troops for the fight ahead and arm them with the weapons they need to win this battle. You and I have some important work to do. We have a common goal -- a cure for all those who are living with HIV and a vaccine to protect all of us from thic deadly virus. Let's be very clcar on that. A cure and a vaccine are our number one priority. In my own lifetime, we have eliminated smallpox from our planet. We have climinated polio from our hemisphere. And we are within striking distance of controlling meacles. We must -- we must -- find a way to rid our planet of the threat of HIV. 2 ID: DEC 01'95 17:25 No.001 P..04 1 am proud of the work WE have done in these last three years to infuse now resources, new focus, and new leadership into our AIDS research affort. We have increased funding for AIDS research by 20%: more than 25 percent. We have dramatically strengthened the Office of AIDS Research and we have focused our work on basic science and applied research so that we can concurrently unlock the mysteries of HIV while we pursue treatment opportunities that extend and improve the quality of the lives of people living with IIIV. This investment in science has already paid tremendous dividends. Today, people with HIV live twice as long as they did just ten years ago. AIDS-related conditions that often meant a quick and many times painful death for people living with HIV can now be treated and even prevented. And we have reason to believe that there will more progress in the near future. New classes of AIDS drugs are being approved for URe by the FDA that will help to restorc the damaged immune systems of people with HIV. Combination drug therapies are showing great promise as a means for controlling the virus in the human body. And just last year we were able to show that the use of drug therapy could actually block H1V transmission from mother to child. our scientists tell me that it is within our grasp to virtually climinate pediatric AIDS by the end of this decade. This is neither science fiction nor a distant dream. it can be accomplished by offering all pregnant women HIV counseling and testing and guaranteeing that they have access to the treatment they need to protect their unborn children. If we do this, we can have a generation of Americans born without HIV. We can do this -- and we will. These advances have resulted in longer and fuller lives for people living with HIV, but are they enough? Absolutely not! We must do more. I am taking three steps today that I believe will move us forward at a faster pace. First, I am asking the vice President to convene a meeting of scientists and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry to identify ways to accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and microbicides that can protect people from HIV. and the infections it causes. There are no guarantees in science, but the collcotive will of government and industry can overcome even the biggest obstacles. Second, I am asking Patcy Fleming to convene an interdepartmental task force working group to develop a coordinated plan for AIDS 3 ID: DEC 01'95 17:26 No 001 P.05 research, including a coordinated research budget. I will expect their report within 90 days. Third, I want to make clear my personal commitment to make every feasible effort to find a cure and an effective vaccine or vaccines. To that and, I am intensitying my relationship with the office of National AIDS Policy. We can't afford to micc any now opportunities. We can't afford any unnecessary delays. That's why I am asking Patsy Fleming to provide me even more regular updates on the emerging opportunities and obstacles in this struggle. No Precident can promise success in such an effort but I need to know what needs to be done to move this along. Of course our work does not end in the laboratories of our great research institutions. It continues in the clinics and the hospitalc and the doctors' offices around the country where people with HIV and AIDS go for the care they need to survive, to maintain their health, and to preserve their dignity. When we make advances in science we must match those strides with improvements in our delivery of health care. For people with AIDS, the current discussions over a balanced federal budget are not some distant political firefight. Let me talk for a few minutes about a subject that ic very important to mc the future of Medicaid. For people with AIDS, Medicaid is a lifeline of support. Medicaid provides health care for nearly half of the Americans who are living with AIDS including 90 percent of the 190,000 children. It provides access to doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and home care that allows people with HIV and AIDS to live their lives more fully. Medicaid pays for the drugs that keep HTV under control for longer and longer periods of time and it pays for the drugs that prevent. the infections that often end the lives of those with AIDS. Medicaid pays for the care that allows families to stay together. Yet today, Medicaid is under attack by the Republican lcaders in Congress who want to clach its spending and eliminate the thirty- year common ground commitment we have made to the poor, the elderly, and those with disabilities. We cannot, we must not, and I will not allow us to destroy this vital lifeline. Medicaid cannot do the job alone. That's why we created the Ryan White CARE Act to plug the holes in our health care system that left many people with HIV and AIDS out in the cold. Last year, more than 360,000 Americans aceived care under the Ryan White Act. Pu the 3 budgeto Thane submittedto Congress have Not clear 1. When I ran for President, + promised to fully fund the CARE Act and WE have. Funding has increased by 108 percent, more than how fully fund" forthecare Act Nearly is defined; can cause contention, Some argue that because some of the Ri-ens of the Act have never been Funded by Congren (nor have Ends been requisted), R we ~ not Fully Funded man while ID: DEC 01'95 17:26 No 001 P.06 doubling the number of cities receiving funds and enabling every state in the country to receive some level of assistance. The CARE Aot muet be extended for another five years. Both houses of Congress have approved legislation to accomplich this but final legislation remains stalled. That's why on last Friday, World AIDS Day, I sent a letter to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, asking them to make every effort to get me a final bill by the end of this month so that I can sign it and we can get on with the work ahead. 96 I am also righting for the (unding increases that I have requested for the CARE Act as well as housing programs for people with AIDS and our AIDS prevention programs at CDC. I am concerned by the continued rate of new infections in this country. In the 1980s, we made Important progress in reducing the number of now infections by nearly 50 percent. But for the last five years, the estimated number of infections has hovered between 40,000 and 60,000 per year. We also know that as many as ONe quarter hell of those infections occur among people under the age of 26 22 and half are among teenagers. Any new infection is an unnecessary infection. I am setting a goal, today, of reducing the number of new infections in the United States by half in the IN EVERY YEAR next five years and to zero within the next decade UNTIL THERE ARE ND NEW INFECTIONS Until we have a cure and a vaccine, education and prevention are our best hope. For prevention to work it must be targeted and it must be sustained. We saw that at work in the gay community in the 1980s, when activists overcame the inertia of their government to protect their lives. We must pay particular attention to two populations who are at the center of this epidemic -- young people and those who abuse drugs. I was pleased to see the new public service announocmento released last week by Scoretary Shalala. They point young people toward the tools they need to protect themselves. We also need to recognize that substance abuse treatment is a form of HIV prevention. We must ensure that those who are OF receiving drug treatment also rcocive AIDS prevention services at SAMOUNT the same time. We have increased the number of drug treatment slots available in thic country and I am working to convince the FEDERAL congress to approve requests for money to bring that number RESOURCES even higher. PEDICATED To I have alco acked the CDC to convene a meeting of state and local DRUG TREATMENT health officials and their counterparts on substanoc abuse to develop an action plan to assure the integration of HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention. 5 ID: DEC 01'95 17:27 No. 001 P.07 I wouldnot say this, Our 1st broyet -FY94 -di We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding -- as the Republicans in Congress have proposed -- because the epidemic not T cannot be frozen. It will just grow and grow and grow Funding we wer criticized We also cannot forget the bacio human rights of people living with HIV and ATDS. The stories of AIDS related discrimination break the hearts of all Americans of conscience. This is Five years ago, our nation took a huge step forward toward a more CONSESTENT just society when we enacted the Americans with Dicabilities Act. WITH THE It offers more than 40 million Americans who are living with physical 02 mental disabilities -- including those who are living with HIV and AIDS -- protection against discrimination. The Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunities INFERTICE REDUCTING 60HL NEW Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services have been vigorously enforcing the A.D.A. And we are about to launch a now effort to ensure that health care facilities -- nursing homes in particular are providing equal access to people with HIV or AIDS. still, all of us can do more. We can start by cleaning our own It look, as house. I am acking Patsy Fleming to conduct an immediate 60-day review of all government programs that require HIV testing ac a though our condition of participation in government service and government programs. Those that do not have a strong public health rational, must be amended or they must be ended. Fx97 next baulget we must continue to examine our societal attitudes toward racial LOL and ethnic minoritics, gays and lesbians, and others for whom y fear of AIDS becomes a convenient excuse for discrimination. We. either cannot let our fcar outweigh our common sense or our compassion. If we do, all of us will lose. AH T have said before, the thing We have to remember is that people with ALDS and those who are living with HIV are part of our American family. Whether they are gay or straight, black, white, Native American, Latino OF Asian American, they are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters; our aunts and uncles; our mothers and fathers; our grandmothers and grandfathers. They are Americans one and all. They need our compassion. They deserve our respect. Finally, let me say that the fight against AIDS is international in scope. HIV knows no geographic boundaries. It is found on every continent and virtually every country. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 18 million men, women, and children are living with HIV around the world. The United States is and will remain a full partner in the international effort to fight the pandemic. 6 ID: DEC 01'95 17:27 No 001 P.08 As a world leader, we have a moral and a national responsibility to help developing nations with prevention programs, medical care, and other vital services. WH Also have much to learn from them. And when WC do find the cure and the vaccine that we seek, it will not only be M victory for America, it will be a victory for the world. When this country was in the throes of another sickness that threatened to tear us apart -- the sickness of slavery -- Frederick Douglas, the great American abolitionist, wrote: "It 16 not light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled." Each of you have been the thunder and the lightening. Each of you is helping to awaken the conscience of our nation. Our challenge is to draw more of our citizens into our circle of hope. Together, I am certain, WC can change our future for the better. Thank you and God blocc you all. 7 11/30/1995 11:11 3102786380 R SCOTT HITT PAGE 01 FAX Date 11/30/95 Number of pages including 30 cover sheet To: Terry Edmonds From: Scott Hitt, M.D. Assistant Steve Tyler Phone Phone 310-278-6380 Fax Phone 202-456-5709 Fax Phone 310-278-6380 CC: REMARK ) Urgent For your review Reply ASAP Terry, Dr. Hitt wanted me to be sure that you had these past speeches made by the President Please call me if you have any questions. Steve Tyler Asst. to Dr Hitt Document3 11/30/1995 11:11 3102786380 R SCOTT HITT PAGE 02 "Let Us Rise to the Challenge" Governor Bill Clinton Palace Theater, May 18, 1992 Thank you very Chank you. Thank you very much my longtime friend David he's speeches in his mind for thirty years, he's about to get good at it for that wondern. Thank you Roberta Achtenberg for your statement and for your friendship. Scott and Diane and Roberta and Bob, all the rest of you who were co-chairs this event. And / want to say " 4" of thanks to ANGLE for their work on my behalf over the last several months thank John Garamendi, my state chair, for being here and "Tonight, / warn all the others who support of this event. talk to you about how Y ou know. I have times that a campaign for president has two purposes. Onc we can be one per is for the country know the candidate, and the other is for the candidate to again -- without reg get to know the CODE candidate does not grow and deepen in understanding to race or gender and compassion and the race itself is already half lost. sexual orientation There are people in today to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude, for you age or region or have helped me to my country better than I did when I began. income, how we City We just finished the riots in our history in Los Angeles. And as the people be one again." here begin to pick or I think it might be well for us to note where WC are at this moment in our nation. Not just here in Los Angeles, and not just in the citics of our great law :11 of us, all across America. We should be dancine streets with joy today because the Cold War is over. If three years ago anyone had of you that within three years the Berlin Wall would fall, all of the governments Europe would fade away, the Soviet Union itself would collapse and cut its budget by 50% in a year, and the threat of nuclear annihilation would In into the distance of history, no one would have believed it. If anybody had told would happen and we would still be deeply divided and anxiety-ridden at elec: it would be difficult to believe. But we are. And we are because as we celebra triumph of our values around the world, we see them lying in tatters here at hom- emery defeated in so many ways economically a country in Date: 12/01/95 Time: 08:53 SJournal of Woman with AIDS Portrays Quiet Victims YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) Janice Burns says she and her husband, William, were a nauseatingly cute' couple who loved vacations and shopping for home furnishings. We love to eat out, go to Broadway shows, and shock people by revealing our liberal outlooks that hide under our conservative exteriors, Mrs. Burns wrote in 1987, when she was a 24-year-old university researcher married to a rising star in the financial community. Then comes the kicker: We spend $1,200 each month on prescription drugs, and we will never have children. We are HIV-positive. Thus begins Sarah's Song, Mrs. Burns' journal covering the years from 1987, when she and her husband were diagnosed with HIV, to 1994, when her husband died of AIDS at age 29. The Warner Books publication named for the daughter Mrs. Burns desperately wanted is a painfully poignant rendering of death foretold, of a woman whose world turned into a numbers game: How many pills, how many T cells, how many hospitalizations, years, months, days, hours until the counting stops? There are still a lot of people who stereotype people with AIDS, said Mrs. Burns, now 32 with full-blown AIDS. She is partially deaf and blind in one eye, takes 40 pills a day and has been hospitalized four times since June. There are those who don't want someone like me to have AIDS because it means they or someone they love can be at risk, she said in an interview Wednesday, two days before today's commemoration of World AIDS Day. More than 501,000 U.S. AIDS cases were diagnosed from 1981 through October 1995, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 311,000 of those people, or 62 percent, have died. Most interesting to Mrs. Burns is that the number of cases attributed to heterosexual transmission increased from 3 percent during 1981-87 to 10 percent from 1993 to October 1995. Female cases increased from 4,035, or 8 percent of the total between 1981-87, to almost 18 percent 43,383 from 1993-October 1995. I see more and more women who look like myself in support groups, said Mrs. Burns, a middle-class Catholic from the New York City borough of the Bronx. Her neat Yonkers apartment is filled with books, including a huge Bible on a stand in the living room, and is dominated by a nearly finished wooden Victorian dollhouse. She started the dollhouse in 1992, before her husband died, and still plans to complete it. ``I'll get to it one day, she said, the only time she speaks of the future during a 90-minute interview. Mrs. Burns believes her husband was infected with the virus that causes AIDS during a brief homosexual affair when he was 18. She married him a few years later and they were diagnosed as HIV-positive shortly after their first wedding anniversary, in February 1987. The couple became activists, founding advocacy groups and speaking on television shows and before high school groups, trying to tell the world that AIDS can strike anyone. Mrs. Burns maintains that even if she had known William Burns was HIV-positive, she still would have married him. I had a love, despite AIDS, " she wrote at the end of her book. `I could live off this love for the rest of my life. I think I will. " APNP-12-01-95 0850EST THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON n OFFICE OF SPEECHWRITING PHONE: (202) 456-2777 FAX: (202) 456-5709 TO: Jeff Levi FROM: Terry Edwords RECEIVER FAX: RECEIVER PHONE: NUMBER OF PAGES (INCLUDING COVER SHEET): 9 COMMENTS: Here. Our revised draft please Call me with any comments. Call by G A.m. M onday. Thanks, Terry ***WARNING*** Unauthorized use of these materials is subject to federal prosecution STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE ON MONEY LAUNDERING DECEMBER 2, 1995 Today, Treasury Secretary Rubin, representatives of the Department of Justice and the Department of State, joined the other nations of this hemisphere in signing a historic anti-money laundering communique. This accord will make it more difficult for international organized crime, including drug traffickers to profit from their criminal activities. As I stated in my address to the United Nations General Assembly in October, we must send a clear and unambiguous message to the cartels that profit from drug trafficking and other serious crimes: your dirty laundry is no longer welcome. You will no longer be able to wash the blood off profits from the sale of drugs from terror or from organized crimes. I have urged the nations of the world, and especially those in this hemisphere, to bring their banks and financial systems into conformity with international anti-money laundering standards. This communique is an important step in that direction. The communique affirms the commitment made during the December, 1994 Summit of Americas Ministerial in Miami, Florida. During that conference, with U.S. leadership, a Declaration of Principles, including a strategy for combatting the problem of organized crime and money laundering, was adopted by the member nations. The communique specifically directs the member nations to enact laws that make the laundering of proceeds from drugs and other serious crimes unlawful. It permits the seizure of proceeds and the equitable sharing of those assets by the investigating nations. In addition, it allows for cooperative methods for reporting suspicious bank transactions, including special efforts to prevent and detect financial crimes. As I have said many times, America will fight the war on drugs and crime on all fronts, both at home and abroad. Today, with our neighbors in the region, we are taking an important step by targeting the cartels and criminals who, until now, have moved vast sums of ill-gotten gains through the international financial system with absolute impunity. Finally, the nations of this hemisphere are standing as one to say, "No more." DEC-02-1995 15:07 FROM WHITE HOUSE AIDS POLICY TO 94565709 P.01 OFFICE OF NATIONAL AIDS POLICY EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 750 17th Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20503 Phone: 202-632-1090 Fax: 202-632-1096 FACSIMILE COVER SHEET TO: Teny Eduard! FAX NUMBER: 456-5709 FROM: Ribard Sam DATE: 12/2/95 PAGES INCLUDING COVER SHEET: 3 COMMENTS: +++ D BAER 4002 12/03/95 SUN 15:31 FAX SCHEDULE OF THE PRESIDENT FOR MONDAY DECEMBER 4, 1995 FINAL There is no public schedule. BC AND IIRC RON THE WHITE HOUSE - of December 2, 1995 1:26pm December 1995 Presidential Calendar Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 2 12/01/85 FRI 23:08 FAX DETAILS Depart For Germany (carly a.m.) World AIDS Day Baumholder, Generary Depart For Spann (p.cn.) RON Madrid, Spam Residence Closed for Holiday Decorating 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Madrid. Spain Morning Off Meeting With Former President's (T) WH Conference on AIDS Interview With People Magazine Congressional Meeting (Budget) (T) Arkansas Return to Luited States Event (T) Phone Calls Paegent of Peace DMC Lunch Off Complex Dos Santor of Angula RON Arkansas Kennedy Center Honors, DC Phone Calls Congressional Ball WH Holiday Reception Congressional Meeting (Budget) (T) Tape Radio Address Evening Off Hold Evening (ss) Oregan Reception Off Complex WH Holiday Reception Residence Closed (Alteman) Oregan Special Election Primary 10 П 12 13 14 15 16 Arkansus Meeting. Lunch & Press Conf. With Briefing & Interview DNC Coffee Pans, France Down Time (9:00 a m. 1:00 p.m) Live Radio Address Christmas in Washington PM Peres of (sreet Phone Calls Briefing Fer Interview Depart Pans en Resite DC Ip.m.) Presentation of Citizen's Medal to Holiday Party Photo With Social Aides Congrestional Bleeting (T) Holiday Reception Interview With New York Times Families US Diplomets (7) RON DC Holiday Receptions (2) Holiday Receptions (2) DNC Afternoon Coffee Depart For Pans (Tate p.m.) WH Holiday Dinner 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Holiday Party Banukkab Briefing For Nickelodeon Hold 8 JO a.m. 9:30 am (SS) DNC Ceffee Budget Meeting This Evening Off Britting For Interview Nickelodoon Taping, Off Complex Briefing For Interview VP Lunch Tape Radio Address Hold HJ (30 min) DNC Jervish Loach on Complex Imerv few With LA Times Budget Meeting the Holiday Children's Party (afternoon) Ambassador Credentials Drop By OK City Scholarship Fund Budger Meeting 2hrs Holiday Party (I) Residence Staff Party Holiday Reception Mtg Holiday Press Receptions (2) Hold Evening (ss) Holiday Press Receptions (2) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Phone Call to the Troops Christmas Day Live Radio Address Day our Evening Off Day & Eventing Off BAER C 31 November 93 January 96 SMTWTFS SMIWTFS I 114 ] 2 , a , 4 $ 4 , a 9 IS 11 7 a 9 If II u 13 12 as 14 IS M 17 A H U IS 11 IN 19 m 19 10 2) " D 20 " 21 n n 21 B 26 27 25 17 " 29 x 28 29 to " Day & Isveting on Printed on Friday, December 01, 1995 5:03 PM TOO January 1996 Presidential Calendar Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednes day Thursday Friday Saturday 2 3 4 5 6 New Years Day Hold Evening Blair Disnet @ WH VP Lunch Tape Radio Address Hold For Calston Group (1) Day off United Negro College Fund Dianer @ Evening Off Evening or WH VVJ 80'05 8 9 10 11 12 13 id For Guiston Graup (5) Evening Off Corol Moneley Beaun Fundraiser. Off Hold Evening Hold For CG Fundraising Dinner, Hold For CG undraising Disner, Hold For CG Travel Complex NYC Nashville Live Radio Address DNC National Democratic Club RON TBD RON TBD RON DC Fundraiser 15 16 17 18 19 20 Tripa, Off Martin Luther King It. Day WH Leadership Cons on Youth Drug Hold Evening VP Lunch Meating 1 Hour (DS) Live Radio Address Evening Off Abuse (T) Evening on Evening Off Evening Off Evening Off Anny. al Northrider Earthquake 22 23 24 25 26 27 raing our Evening off Hold For State of the Union Hold For State of the Union VP Lunch LS Cord. of Mayous (T) Live Radio Address Hold Evening Evening or Evening Off 29 30 31 Call To Winner of Super Bowl Evening Off Hold per AW Hold per AW December 95 February 96 realing Off BAER D +++ SMTWTES SMTWTFS 1 I 1 , , 1 3 6 1 0 , 4 , 6 1 8 , to 10 11 11 D " 13 is 17 11 19 10 11 11 13 11 n " И If is 11 14 11 IS 27 28 " 30 18 L9 20 21 D 13 24 31 " 16 17 If 29 Oregon Special Election Printed on Friday, December 01. 1995 4:56 PM 1 0 EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 28-Nov-1995 05:37pm TO: James T. Edmonds FROM: Marsha Scott Office of Political Affairs SUBJECT: AIDS Remarks Three people that could be very helpful on this speech are: Michael Itzkowitz Sen. Kennedy - 224-6572 David Mixner - FOB 310-289-1181 Dr. Scott Hitt ( Chair of WH AIDS Council) -310-278-1668 310-652-8729 ext 339 I know these three very well. They have all spent most of their adult lives working on this problem. All three are very articulate and extremely knowlegable. Even if you don't use anything they say, politically it would be a good thing to do. Date: 11/22/95 Time: 13:50 Growing AIDS Cases Overburden New York City NEW YORK (Nov. 22) XINHUA - Rapid growth of AIDS cases is so overburdening the New York City administration that it has decided to partially shift the service work for AIDS patients to community organizations. New York City established the Division of AIDS Service in 1987 to provide extensive services to people with AIDS, including providing case-workers to help obtain government assistance. At present, there are 18,000 people on the division's caseload with a diagnosis of AIDS or advanced HIV, with an additional 7,000 expected to seek help in the next three years. The division has budgeted 28.5 million U.S. dollars this year for the work. Although the New York State and the Federal Government have also made contributions to it, the city authorities have found it difficult to manage the matter alone and announced a plan Tuesday to turn a large scope of services to community organizations. According to the plan, the division will continue to provide a high level of AIDS services, but once a person's condition has stabilized, the case will be transferred to a community organization, which will follow up on the client's needs. However, the plan has aroused criticism from a number of groups. Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, chairman of the Health Committee, said the city administration was simply turning its back on the city's AIDS cases. draft 12/1/95 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON HIV AND AIDS THE WHITE HOUSE DECEMBER 6, 1995 [Acknowledgements: Patsy Fleming, Secretary Shalala [other Cabinet members?], Scott Hitt, distinguished guests.] Let me first welcome each of you to this historic White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. You are the frontline faces and voices of our national commitment to conquer the devastating disease known as AIDS. I welcome you and I thank you, not only for your participation here today but for the work you do every day to improve the lives of the people of our nation and around the world. I'd also like to thank Dr. Hitt and the members of the President's Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS for their work on this critical issue and for suggesting that we convene this meeting. And I want to express my appreciation to the two extraordinary Americans who have just shared the stories of their lives with all of us. It is the passion, the commitment, and, yes, the anger of people like Sean Sasser and Eileen Mitzman that remind us all of the extraordinary courage it takes to hold on to hope as we continue to even the odds in this struggle. Each generation of Americans has faced an important challenge that has, in many ways, defined their time here on earth. For my parents' generation, World War Two was that defining moment, unifying a nation against a common foe. For my own generation, the civil rights movement provided the focus and the drive of our lives. But for the generation of my own child and all of those in her age group, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS may well be that defining challenge. My daughter and her friends are growing up in the shadow of something we could never have imagined. They are coming of age in world in which AIDS is a very sobering reality. That reality has already changed the lives of all of us in this room. It has taken from us too many friends and too many loved ones much too soon. It has shaken our faith in the future. But it has also brought us together and inspired a community spirit that strengthens our values as a nation. It is our collective responsibility to rise to this challenge and change the future for our ourselves, for our children, and for their children. We can do this. In fact, we must do this. I want to share with you the story of just one of the people who is here today. Just one of the human faces and human voices of AIDS. It's the story of a young man who grew up in a typical American suburb as part of a typical American family. He attended college and became politically active. His quick mind and active spirit marked him as a "comer," and after graduating he joined the Corporation for National Service to help start AmeriCorps. It was while he was working for AmeriCorps that he found out he was HIV-positive. He was 23 years old. Demetri Moshoyannis took that news as a challenge. A challenge to use his communication skills, his organizational skills, and his leadership skills to educate and support his peers and help them escape the fate that had been visited upon him. It's that combination of heartbreak and hope that makes this epidemic so unique. And it is what challenges all of us to channel our energy and our talent into the fight to make AIDS a thing of the past. Ten days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that our nation has reached another sad milestone in the AIDS epidemic. Half a million Americans have now been diagnosed with AIDS and more than 300,000 men, women, and children have already died of AIDS. As we meet, on this day, 120 more Americans will lose their lives to AIDS, another 220 people will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 140 people in this country will become infected with HIV. And that will happen again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will continue to happen until we succeed in our efforts to defeat this epidemic. That is why this meeting is so important. It is an opportunity for us to refocus and reenergize our national commitment to ending this epidemic. It is a time to rally our troops for the fight ahead and arm them with the weapons they need to win this battle. You and I have some important work to do. We have a common goal -- a cure for all those who are living with HIV and a vaccine to protect all of us from this deadly virus. Let's be very clear on that. A cure and a vaccine are our number one priority. In my own lifetime, we have eliminated smallpox from our planet. We have eliminated polio from our hemisphere. And we are within striking distance of controlling measles. We must -- we must -- find a way to rid our planet of the threat of HIV. 2 I am proud of the work we have done in these last three years to infuse new resources, new focus, and new leadership into our AIDS research effort. We have increased funding for AIDS research by more than 25 percent. We have dramatically strengthened the Office of AIDS Research and we have focused our work on basic science and applied research so that we can concurrently unlock the mysteries of HIV while we pursue treatment opportunities that extend and improve the quality of the lives of people living with HIV. This investment in science has already paid tremendous dividends. Today, people with HIV live twice as long as they did just ten years ago. AIDS-related conditions that often meant a quick and many times painful death for people living with HIV can now be treated and even prevented. And we have reason to believe that there will more progress in the near future. New classes of AIDS drugs are being approved for use by the FDA that will help to restore the damaged immune systems of people with HIV. Combination drug therapies are showing great promise as a means for controlling the virus in the human body. And just last year we were able to show that the use of drug therapy could actually block HIV transmission from mother to child. Our scientists tell me that it is within our grasp to virtually eliminate pediatric AIDS by the end of this decade. This is neither science fiction nor a distant dream. It can be accomplished by offering all pregnant women HIV counseling and testing and guaranteeing that they have access to the treatment they need to protect their unborn children. If we do this, we can have a generation of Americans born without HIV. We can do this -- and we will. These advances have resulted in longer and fuller lives for people living with HIV, but are they enough? Absolutely not! We must do more. I am taking three steps today that I believe will move us forward at a faster pace. First, I am asking the Vice President to convene a meeting of scientists and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry to identify ways to accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and microbicides that can protect people from HIV and the infections it causes. There are no guarantees in science, but the collective will of government and industry can overcome even the biggest obstacles. Second, I am asking Patsy Fleming to convene an interdepartmental task force working group to develop a coordinated plan for AIDS 3 research, including a coordinated research budget. I will expect their report within 90 days. Third, I want to make clear my personal commitment to make every feasible effort to find a cure and an effective vaccine or vaccines. To that end, I am intensifying my relationship with the Office of National AIDS Policy. We can't afford to miss any new opportunities. We can't afford any unnecessary delays. That's why I am asking Patsy Fleming to provide me even more regular updates on the emerging opportunities and obstacles in this struggle. No President can promise success in such an effort but I need to know what needs to be done to move this along. of course our work does not end in the laboratories of our great research institutions. It continues in the clinics and the hospitals and the doctors' offices around the country where people with HIV and AIDS go for the care they need to survive, to maintain their health, and to preserve their dignity. When we make advances in science we must match those strides with improvements in our delivery of health care. For people with AIDS, the current discussions over a balanced federal budget are not some distant political firefight. Let me talk for a few minutes about a subject that is very important to me -- the future of Medicaid. For people with AIDS, Medicaid is a lifeline of support. Medicaid provides health care for nearly half of the 200,000 Americans who are living with AIDS including 90 percent of the children. It provides access to doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and home care that allows people with HIV and AIDS to live their lives more fully. Medicaid pays for the drugs that keep HIV under control for longer and longer periods of time and it pays for the drugs that prevent the infections that often end the lives of those with AIDS. Medicaid pays for the care that allows families to stay together. Yet today, Medicaid is under attack by the Republican leaders in Congress who want to slash its spending and eliminate the thirty- year common ground commitment we have made to the poor, the elderly, and those with disabilities. We cannot, we must not, and I will not allow us to destroy this vital lifeline. Medicaid cannot do the job alone. That's why we created the Ryan White CARE Act to plug the holes in our health care system that left many people with HIV and AIDS out in the cold. Last year, more than 360,000 Americans received care under the Ryan White Act. When I ran for President, I promised to fully fund the CARE Act and we have. Funding has increased by 108 percent, more than 4 doubling the number of cities receiving funds and enabling every state in the country to receive some level of assistance. The CARE Act must be extended for another five years. Both houses of Congress have approved legislation to accomplish this but final legislation remains stalled. That's why on last Friday, World AIDS Day, I sent a letter to the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, asking them to make every effort to get me a final bill by the end of this month so that I can sign it and we can get on with the work ahead. I am also fighting for the funding increases that I have requested for the CARE Act as well as housing programs for people with AIDS and our AIDS prevention programs at CDC. I am concerned by the continued rate of new infections in this country. In the 1980s, we made important progress in reducing the number of new infections by nearly 50 percent. But for the last five years, the estimated number of infections has hovered between 40,000 and 60,000 per year. We also know that as many as half of those infections occur among people under the age of 25 and half are among teenagers. Any new infection is an unnecessary infection. I am setting a goal, today, of reducing the number of new infections in the United States by half in the next five years and to zero within the next decade. Until we have a cure and a vaccine, education and prevention are our best hope. For prevention to work it must be targeted and it must be sustained. We saw that at work in the gay community in the 1980s, when activists overcame the inertia of their government to protect their lives. We must pay particular attention to two populations who are at the center of this epidemic -- young people and those who abuse drugs. I was pleased to see the new public service announcements released last week by Secretary Shalala. They point young people toward the tools they need to protect themselves. We also need to recognize that substance abuse treatment is a form of HIV prevention. We must ensure that those who are receiving drug treatment also receive AIDS prevention services at the same time. We have increased the number of drug treatment slots available in this country and I am working to convince the Congress to approve our requests for money to bring that number even higher. I have also asked the CDC to convene a meeting of state and local health officials and their counterparts on substance abuse to develop an action plan to assure the integration of HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention. 5 We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding -- as the Republicans in Congress have proposed -- because the epidemic cannot be frozen. It will just grow and grow and grow. We also cannot forget the basic human rights of people living with HIV and AIDS. The stories of AIDS related discrimination break the hearts of all Americans of conscience. Five years ago, our nation took a huge step forward toward a more just society when we enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act. It offers more than 40 million Americans who are living with physical or mental disabilities -- including those who are living with HIV and AIDS -- protection against discrimination. The Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services have been vigorously enforcing the A.D.A. And we are about to launch a new effort to ensure that health care facilities -- nursing homes in particular -- are providing equal access to people with HIV or AIDS. still, all of us can do more. We can start by cleaning our own house. I am asking Patsy Fleming to conduct an immediate 60-day review of all government programs that require HIV testing as a condition of participation in government service and government programs. Those that do not have a strong public health rational, must be amended or they must be ended. We must continue to examine our societal attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, and others for whom fear of AIDS becomes a convenient excuse for discrimination. We cannot let our fear outweigh our common sense or our compassion. If we do, all of us will lose. As I have said before, the thing we have to remember is that people with AIDS and those who are living with HIV are part of our American family. Whether they are gay or straight, black, white, Native American, Latino or Asian American, they are our sons and daughters; our brothers and sisters; our aunts and uncles; our mothers and fathers; our grandmothers and grandfathers. They are Americans one and all. They need our compassion. They deserve our respect. Finally, let me say that the fight against AIDS is international in scope. HIV knows no geographic boundaries. It is found on every continent and virtually every country. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 18 million men, women, and children are living with HIV around the world. The United States is and will remain a full partner in the international effort to fight the pandemic. 0 6 As a world leader, we have a moral and a national responsibility to help developing nations with prevention programs, medical care, and other vital services. We also have much to learn from them. And when we do find the cure and the vaccine that we seek, it will not only be a victory for America, it will be a victory for the world. When this country was in the throes of another sickness that threatened to tear us apart -- the sickness of slavery -- Frederick Douglas, the great American abolitionist, wrote: "It is not light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled." Each of you have been the thunder and the lightening. Each of you is helping to awaken the conscience of our nation. Our challenge is to draw more of our citizens into our circle of hope. Together, I am certain, we can change our future for the better. Thank you and God bless you all. 7 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON HIV AND AIDS THE WHITE HOUSE DECEMBER 6, 1995 [Acknowledgements: Patsy Fleming, Secretary Shalala [other Cabinet members?], Scott Hitt, distinguished guests.] Let me first welcome each of you to this historic White House Conference on HIV and AIDS. You are the frontline faces and voices of our national commitment to conquer the devastating disease known as AIDS. I welcome you and I thank you, not only for your participation here today but for the work you do every day to improve the lives of the people of our nation and around the world. I'd also like to thank Dr. Hitt and the members of the President's Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS for their work on this critical issue and for suggesting that we convene this meeting. And I want to express my appreciation to the two extraordinary Americans who have just shared the stories of their lives with all of us. It is the passion, the commitment, and, yes, the anger of people like Sean Sasser and Eileen Mitzman that remind us all of the extraordinary courage it takes to hold on to hope as we continue to even the odds in this struggle. Each generation of Americans has faced an important challenge that has, in many ways, defined their time here on earth. For my parents' generation, World War Two was that defining moment, unifying a nation against a common foe. For my own generation, the civil rights movement provided the focus and the drive of our lives. But for the generation of my own child and all of those in her age group, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS may well be that defining challenge. My daughter and her friends are growing up in the shadow of something we could never have imagined. They are coming of age in world in which AIDS is a very sobering reality. That reality has already changed the lives of all of us in this room. It has taken from us too many friends and too many loved ones much too soon. It has shaken our faith in the future. But it has also brought us together and inspired a community spirit that strengthens our values as a nation. It is our collective responsibility to rise to this challenge and change the future for our ourselves, for our children, and for their children. We can do this. In fact, we must do this. 1 I want to share with you the story of just one of the people who is here today. Just one of the human faces and human voices of AIDS. It's the story of a young man who grew up in a typical American suburb as part of a typical American family. He attended college and became politically active. His quick mind and active spirit marked him as a "comer," and after graduating he joined the Corporation for National Service to help start AmeriCorps. It was while he was working for AmeriCorps that he found out he was HIV-positive. He was 23 years old. Demetri Moshoyannis took that news as a challenge. A challenge to use his communication skills, his organizational skills, and his leadership skills to educate and support his peers and help them escape the fate that had been visited upon him. It's that combination of heartbreak and hope that makes this epidemic so unique. And it is what challenges all of us to channel our energy and our talent into the fight to make AIDS a thing of the past. Ten days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that our nation has reached another sad milestone in the AIDS epidemic. Half a million Americans have now been diagnosed with AIDS and more than 300,000 men, women, and children have already died of AIDS. As we meet, on this day, 120 more Americans will lose their lives to AIDS, another 220 people will be diagnosed with the disease and nearly 140 people in this country will become infected with HIV. And that will happen again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will continue to happen until we succeed in our efforts to defeat this epidemic. That is why this meeting is so important. It is an opportunity for us to refocus and reenergize our national commitment to ending this epidemic. It is a time to rally our troops for the fight ahead and arm them with the weapons they need to win this battle. You and I have some important work to do. We have a common goal -- a cure for all those who are living with HIV and a vaccine to protect all of us from this deadly virus. Let's be very clear on that. A cure and a vaccine are our number one priority. In my own lifetime, we have eliminated smallpox from our planet. We have eliminated polio from our hemisphere. And we are within striking distance of controlling measles. We must -- we must : find a way to rid our planet of the threat of HIV. 2 I am proud of the work we have done in these last three years to infuse new resources, new focus, and new leadership into our AIDS research effort. We have increased funding for AIDS research by more than 25 percent. We have dramatically strengthened the Office of AIDS Research and we have focused our work on basic science and applied research so that we can concurrently unlock the mysteries of HIV while we pursue treatment opportunities that extend and improve the quality of the lives of people living with HIV. This investment in science has already paid tremendous dividends. Today, people with HIV live twice as long as they did just ten years ago. AIDS-related conditions that often meant a quick and many times painful death for people living with HIV can now be treated and even prevented. And we have reason to believe that there will more progress in the near future. New classes of AIDS drugs are being approved for use by the FDA that will help to restore the damaged immune systems of people with HIV. Combination drug therapies are showing great promise as a means for controlling the virus in the human body. And just last year we were able to show that the use of drug therapy could actually block HIV transmission from mother to child. Our scientists tell me that it is within our grasp to virtually eliminate pediatric AIDS by the end of this decade. This is neither science fiction nor a distant dream. It can be accomplished by offering all pregnant women HIV counseling and testing and guaranteeing that they have access to the treatment they need to protect their unborn children. If we do this, we can have a generation of Americans born without HIV. We can do this -- and we will. These advances have resulted in longer and fuller lives for people living with HIV, but are they enough? Absolutely not! We must do more. I am taking three steps today that I believe will move us forward at a faster pace. First, I am asking the Vice President to convene a meeting of scientists and leaders of the pharmaceutical industry to identify ways to accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and microbicides that can protect people from HIV and the infections it causes. There are no guarantees in science, but the collective will of government and industry can overcome even the biggest obstacles. Patsy Fleming Second, I am asking Dr. William Paul', director of the Office of AIDS Research at NIH, to convene a permanent working group of 90deup scientists from all parts of government to assure a coordinated plan for AIDS research, including a coordinated research budget. committing every feasible effitts find a cure and 1 want Third, I am asking AIDS Director Patsy Fleming to provide me with quarterly reports on our progress on our search for a cure and an Tothert effective vaccine or vaccines. No President can promise success That's end- in such an effort but I need to know what needs to be done to wher want move this along. to Of course our work does not end in the laboratories of our great make us research institutions. It continues in the clinics and the hospitals and the doctors' offices around the country where depend count people with HIV and AIDS go for the care they need to survive, to clear maintain their health, and to preserve their dignity. When we make make advances in science we must match those strides with peasile improvements in our delivery of health care. effort For people with AIDS, the current discussions over a balanced federal budget are not some distant political firefight. Let me talk for a few minutes about a subject that is very important to me the future of Medicaid. For people with AIDS, Medicaid is a lifeline of support. Medicaid provides health care for nearly half of the 200,000 Americans who are living with AIDS including 90 percent of the children. It provides access to doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and home care that allows people with HIV and AIDS to live their lives more fully. Medicaid pays for the drugs that keep HIV under control for longer and longer periods of time and it pays for the drugs that prevent the infections that often end the lives of those with AIDS. Medicaid pays for the care that allows families to stay together. Yet today, Medicaid is under attack by the Republican leaders in Congress who want to slash its spending and eliminate the thirty- year common ground commitment we have made to the poor, the elderly, and those with disabilities. We cannot, we must not, and I will not allow us to destroy this vital lifeline. Medicaid cannot do the job alone. That's why we created the Ryan White CARE Act to plug the holes in our health care system that left many people with HIV and AIDS out in the cold. Last year, more than 360,000 Americans received care under the Ryan White Act. When I ran for President, I promised to fully fund the CARE Act and we have. Funding has increased by 108 percent, more than doubling the number of cities receiving funds and enabling every state in the country to receive some level of assistance. The CARE Act must be extended for another five years. Both houses of Congress have approved legislation to accomplish this 4 on ashed leaf but final legislation remains stalled. I am asking the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader to make every effort to get me a final bill by the end of this month so that I can sign it and we can get on with the work ahead. I am also fighting for the funding increases that I have requested for the CARE Act as well as housing programs for people with AIDS and our AIDS prevention programs at CDC. I am concerned by the continued rate of new infections in this country. In the 1980s, we made important progress in reducing the number of new infections by nearly 50 percent. But for the last five years, the estimated number of infections has hovered between 40,000 and 60,000 per year. We also know that as many as half of those infections occur among people under the age of 25 and half are among teenagers. Any new infection is an unnecessary infection. I am setting a goal, today, of reducing the number of new infections in the United States by half in the next five years and to zero within the next decade. Until we have a cure and a vaccine, education and prevention are our best hope. For prevention to work it must be targeted and it must be sustained. We saw that at work in the gay community in the 1980s, when activists overcame the inertia of their government to protect their lives. We must pay particular attention to two populations who are at the center of this epidemic -- young people and those who abuse drugs. I was pleased to see the new public service announcements released last week by Secretary Shalala. They point young people toward the tools they need to protect themselves. We also need to recognize that substance abuse treatment is a form of HIV prevention. We must ensure that those who are receiving drug treatment also receive AIDS prevention services at the same time. We have increased the number of drug treatment slots available in this country and I am working to convince the Congress to approve our requests for money to bring that number even higher. I have also asked the CDC to convene a meeting of state and local health officials and their counterparts on substance abuse to develop an action plan to assure the integration of HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention. We cannot afford to freeze prevention funding -- as the Republicans in Congress have proposed -- because the epidemic cannot be frozen. It will just grow and grow and grow. We also cannot forget the basic human rights of people living with HIV and AIDS. The stories of AIDS related discrimination break the hearts of all Americans of conscience. 5 BUDGET PLANNING NOVEMBER 30, 1995 ISSUES FOR THIS WEEK AND NEXT OVERALL: 1. Veto of GOP Budget 2. Release of Impact Statement Thursday morning 3. Direct Lending Event Thursday 1:15 p.m. - Tyson involvement? 4. Identify Real People and Specific Incidents -- (Sub-group/Silverman) 5. Cabinet/Local Government Calls [Wednesday/Thursday] HEALTH CARE: 1. Shalala Speech Friday 2. Elderly Women Report (Mrs. Clinton Speech) 3. Provider Meeting with Panetta (Congressional Leaders) - Stakeout for validation of taking too much out 4. Democratic Governors Meeting with POTUS on Medicaid 5. Medicare/Medicaid State-by-State 6. Medicare/Medicaid Walkthrough 7. Nursing Home vs. Homes and Family Farms 8. Disability Roundtable 9. Tyson/Stiglitz on Block Grants and Economic Downturns 10. Low-Income Medicare Recipients ENVIRONMENTAL: 1. Op-Eds -Browner regional Op-Eds on 25th Anniversary of EPA -Response Op-Ed to attacks on President's credibility 2. Browner National Press Club Speech TAX: 1. Release of State-by-State and District-by-District Analysis 1. EITC vs. Capital Gain/Estate Tax 2. Exploding Tax Cut EDUCATION: 1. Direct Lending briefing and paper 2. Riley education speech TBD 3. Improving America's School Act Conference next Monday-Wednesday Hosted by DoEd, attended by 3000 educators w/Sec Riley. 1 30 November 1995 THURS 11/30 BUDGET EVENTS OF THE DAY: Direct Lending/Education Kunin and groups VPOTUS meeting with Congressional Members and press conference POTUS - London VPOTUS - Meeting with Congressional Democrats and statement CABINET/IGA - Cabinet conference calls with mayors - Cisneros National League of Cities - Bump up CBPP Study in press conference with Mayors GROUPS - Panetta meeting with AHA at White House HILL DEMOCRATS - Press Briefing-"Republican Agenda for Medicare" w/Sens Graham,Kennedy,Rockefeller - Floor Sp/ Satellite/ Radio: 'Republican proposals are reckless & extreme, an assault on working families" - Press Conf-Effect of Republican Budget on States w/DemGovs (t) - Event-Mtg w/Natl Leadership Group on Sr Issues FRI 12/1 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: Shalala Medicare/Medicaid Speech POTUS - Travel to Ireland (through Dec.3) GROUPS - Meeting with Disability groups [Room 180, 2:30 p.m.] HILL DEMOCRATS - Floor Sp/ Satellite/ Radio: "Republican proposals are reckless & extreme, an assault on working families" - Press Briefing-"Nursing Home Stds Lost in Republican Budget" w/Sen Pryor et al - Press Conf-"Republican Agenda for Rural America" 2 30 November 1995 SAT 12/2 POTUS - Ireland MILESTONES - 25th Anniversary of the EPA SUN 12/3 POTUS: - Travel to Madrid; EU/US Summit, Madrid - Return to US MON 12/4 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS Veto? [If no veto today] Taxes event with Hill POTUS - DC VPOTUS - Travel to South Africa (through Dec.8) TUE 12/5 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS - Congressional Ball; - Nickelodeon taping (t) VPOTUS - South Africa A MILESTONES - 40th year of AFL-CIO 3 30 November 1995 WED 12/6 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: Medicare State-by-State POTUS: - WH Conference on AIDS; - Pageant of Peace VPOTUS - South Africa THURS 12/7 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: . Browner Environment speech at National Press Club POTUS - Budget meeting (daily through 22nd) - Interview with People magazine VPOTUS - South Africa FRI 12/8 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS: - Budget meeting (daily through 22nd) - President Dos Santos of Angola; - Oregon reception VPOTUS - Return from South Africa SAT 12/9 POTUS - Arkansas SUN 12/10 POTUS - Arkansas (a.m.) - Christmas in Washington (p.m.) 4 30 November 1995 MON 12/11 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS - Budget meeting; Holiday Reception - Mtg w/PM Peres of Israel VPOTUS - Budget meeting TUE 12/12 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS - Budget meeting; - Holiday Reception - Briefing & Interview VPOTUS - Budget meeting WED 12/13 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS - Holiday Reception - Budget meeting - Briefing & Interview VPOTUS - Budget meeting - Prayer breakfast THURS 12/14 BUDGET EVENT OF THE DAY: POTUS - Budget meeting VPOTUS - Budget meeting - Enviro breakfast 5 30 November 1995 FRI 12/15 DEADLINE FOR BUDGET AGREEMENT/CR 6 30 November 1995