Politics Holding Up Emergency Funding for AIDS Meds- WTH!!

Hi there

I'm reading an article on how the Tea Party is threatening all moves towards funding for anything including emergency funding to help states across the nation to continue their needed AIDS Drug Assistance Program is beyond frustrating.

There are various political reasons why now eleven states now have people on waiting lists for life-preserving meds but it all boils down to the threat that this rag-tag uber-conservative nationwide mob called the Tea Party is blocking what people living with HIV and AIDS are dependent on for their lives. Not their livelihood but there very lives. How much more power will this mangy dog have before we get brave enough to put a muzzle on it? How many more lives get to be ruined before they are reminded that they know nothing about compassion or community?

"Some Democrats and Republicans in Congress who have long supported funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program are reluctant to back the struggling program this year because they fear the additional spending will jeopardize their chances of being re-elected, Capitol Hill observers and AIDS activists said this week.

William Arnold, executive director of the National ADAP Working Group, said intense pressure on members of Congress to curtail spending by the so-called Tea Party movement has made it difficult to line up support for an emergency supplemental appropriation measure.

Arnold and officials with other national AIDS and LGBT organizations say the program is facing a crisis never seen before, where a growing number of low income people with HIV or AIDS may be denied life-saving anti-retroviral drugs in at least 11 states this year because state ADAP affiliates have run out of money.

Due to a shortage of funds, the 11 states have been forced to put in place waiting lists for patients who otherwise would have received AIDS medication prescribed by their doctors.

“It’s ridiculous that people have to be wait-listed for medicine that they need to stay alive,” said Laurie Young, a policy analyst for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force."

And how much more damage has to be done to not only the system but also to society before leaders, Democratic and Republican grow a pair and put the good of American citizens over the good of their political careers?

It's time that the rest of us speak out and threaten that inaction will also decide their political careers. To all those that are cowering to these Tea Party bullies, we say, "Defy them and do what's right or go down with them!"

take care

Kelly Rivera Hart